the 'something's not right' feeling

[Guest guest]

I have talked here before about how my mother is a waif/hermit type or whatever

and how her actions are low key. Can anyone identify with that feeling of having

them react innappropriately but not knowing how or why to describe what is wrong

about it? I get this feeling from my mother SO MUCH and have gotten it all my

life. I don't know if anyone knows what I mean...it's not the screaming and

going into a rage queen/witch behavior, it's her having responses to things that

happen and in conversations that absolutely make you feel nuts. Said in a normal

tone of voice, like it's the most logical thing in the world to say. Literally

on a daily basis.

I have begun asking myself 'what would I have liked to hear from her?' when I

get that weird feeling that I have just crossed, or the conversation has just

crossed, into a completely illogical dimension outside the time-space continuum.

If anyone remember that famous Aha 'take on me video' where he moves in and out

of an animated sketch dimension into 3-d reality, it's like that. I wish I could

think of some examples right now, but it's 4 a.m so I guess I am too tired.

My mother is very sneaky and seems to go out of her way to invalidate me and my

sister both. But she does it with a level tone of voice, there is no detectable

malice. I have an aunt that is the same way. I feel like they are projecting

their own self-hatred onto their daughters, I know my mother was incested from

toddler-hood and my aunt probably has those issues too. All of the daughters

have very low self esteem and food and addiction issues. with both of them all

you have is this sense that something is not right, something is missing in your

interactions with them, in that you feel completely insulted and invalidated

somehow when you walk away from them but you don't know how it happened or why.

And you don't know what their reaction *should* have been or what a healthy

response would have been because you have never experienced it.

I don't know if anyone remembers the tv movie where Bertinelli plays a

deranged woman that goes into an elementary school and shoots some of the

children. It's based on a true story. Anyway the mother in that film is just

like this. At the end the girl Bertinelli plays commits suicide and directly

after this the mother calmy tells a police woman 'don't you think it's better

this way?' in a completely rational and calm tone of voice. You realize at that

point the mother is completely insane, which she had kept pretty well hidden

through most of the movie. She doesn't freak out or ever raise her voice or

behave in a histrionic fashion, but the last scene just freaks you out

completely because you see the level of insanity in that family that was not

really detectable up to that point, because the family looked normal, the house

was well-kept and things were in order from the outside appearance anyway. When

I was younger I used to think my mother might be MPD because of her bizarre

reactions to things sometimes. Nothing this extreme, of course, but such

weirdness.