We bought the house.

We're expecting our first child.

Our 11-year anniversary is this week.

I don't miss my narcissistic mother anymore.

I finally know what it feels like to be free.

And my children will never know what that prison was like.

I can't wait to meet you and love you eternally, unconditionally, and with everything in me. I will always do my best for you, but I hope you can forgive me when I make mistakes. I will protect you from my pain as best as I know how, but when it seeps through, I hope your soul will be so light that you don't notice it. It's still hard for me to navigate the world sometimes, and I will always be learning. God knows I'm so afraid to fail you.

JOURNAL: 2020 So Far

2020 is turning out to be yet another "take-the-bad-with-the-good" year.

I've grown into my work, and my boss has finally admitted his faith and confidence in me, as well as his gratefulness to God for having sent me his way. Unfortunately, COVID has ravaged the business. We're surviving, but it's stressful and everything is uncertain. I'm proud to say, though, that I've been a pretty essential part of keeping the things up and running, according to everyone except my boss. I've been told he doesn't like to dish out compliments because he doesn't want anyone getting a big head.

I'm seven months into no-contact with my mother. Her number is blocked in my phone, but she's texted me three times, and called me once. The first two texts were just her wanting me to get my stuff out of her house. The third text and one call I didn't pick up were about my dad. I had to find out from my great aunt that my dad has cancer. He's had surgery to remove the tumor, and he's doing radiation therapy. He was supposed to visit this summer. I wanted to have a meaningful conversation with him, and ask him some hard questions. Thanks to COVID and cancer, I can't do that, and I feel now more than ever that my time to do so is running out.

My husband and I are this close to buying our first house. The work commute is a pain in the butt, but we will be far enough away from my mother's family that we can breathe a sigh of relief. We decided that once we move, we would start trying for a baby. It was a swell plan until we realized that we're Rh-incompatible. My blood type is A- and his is supposedly A+. I've seen the consequences of Rh-incompatible births gone wrong. My sister-in-law needed eight pints of blood transfused after birth, and she was born deaf. It's a terrifying prospect to say the least.

My half-brother, the only sibling I like, has become a self-recruited flying monkey for our mother. The last time I went to see him where he works, he told me repeatedly that I "needed" to call her. Sometimes, it's hard for me to tell when he's being sarcastic, so when he told me he was going to take a picture of me and send it to our mother, I very firmly refused and walked out of his office. He followed me out, swearing up and down that he didn't actually know how to take pictures with his phone, but how could anyone possibly believe that? I think that's going to have to be the last time I see him.

It still baffles me to think that no one in my family has reached out to me since I left. Clearly, I don't "need" to speak with my mother, let alone any of her family. They seem perfectly happy live their lives without me. And that's wonderful, because it means they'll leave me alone. It means I'll be able to continue living a peaceful, productive life with my husband and the children we will hopefully have.

I have a healthy support system, now. I don't need my mother or her family, much less want them.

JOURNAL: December 2019

DECEMBER 3

This was the end. The final act. My mother's magnum opus of hatred.

The day before, my cousin broke and admitted that I was the person who told her what my mother and aunt had been saying about her. My mother confronted me, tried to get me to admit to it, but I never did. But she isn't the sort that can resist being vengeful. I'd seen it in the years of her threatening legal action over every tiny, inconsequential bad thing that happened to her. But this? This crossed into the realm of psychopathy.

I heard her on the phone saying she wanted to take one of my cats to be euthanized while I was at work.

After that, all bets were off. I decided I was done being meek. I decided my so-called family was not worth the life of my pet. It never should've have gone that far, but my sense of self-worth had been so thoroughly destroyed by her that it took her threatening something I loved to make me realize just how dire the situation was.

The next morning, I decided to begin cutting her off. I told my husband to cancel our Hulu TV package. We logged all the devices off our account and cancelled. I came home from the vet with the cat my mom secretly threatened to euthanize, newly microchipped, and my account at their office flagged if anyone tried to bring him in. Not long after, my mother sent me a text demanding the login credentials for Hulu. I simply told her we cancelled our service. She stormed through the house, slamming doors until she came up the stairs. She started berating me, calling me spiteful, saying she bet I thought it was funny to cancel without telling her. It kinda was, though. Taking something as stupid as TV from her sent her into unbridled rage. It's so pathetic, how could it not be funny?

But it stopped being funny pretty fast. She suddenly demanded I give her the keys to the gun safe. My husband and I kept our firearms in that safe, along with the pistol my mother wanted locked away so she couldn't get to it, and a few of my brother's guns. I went to the safe to open it, and began removing mine and my husband's weapons. She began screaming at me not to remove anything. I knew it was because she thought we had stolen my brother's guns.

I called my husband to help me identify his guns, but my mother was in my ear, screaming at me, screaming at my husband. I pulled out two ammo cans that belonged to us, and she tried to take them, so I yelled at her to get off. She was on the phone with my former-cop aunt, and said, "oh, did you hear that?! Did you hear her yell at me?!" As if I wasn't justified. My aunt then told her to call the police as though I was doing something illegal by removing things that belonged to me and my husband from a safe that we were about to lose access to. She had both keys, and was undoubtedly going to change the lock combination. Of course I needed to secure our firearms! She kept saying, "if you don't listen, I'm calling the cops!" I didn't listen, so she stormed away like she was going to do it.

Once everything of ours was out of the safe, I locked it all in our bedroom and went outside to wait for the police to show up. I called my dad, I called R, just to make sure they knew what was happening. I even had to call my boss and tell him that I didn't know whether or not I was going to jail that day. Well, the cops never came. But the fact that the thought even occurred to her to ENDANGER MY LIFE BY CALLING THE POLICE ABOUT US FIGHTING OVER GUNS, showed me how far gone she really was. She valued my brother's guns more than she valued my life.

I knew then that I never wanted anything to do with my "family" ever again. They feed into one another, and I can never know a healthy relationship with them.

And so began my life of no-contact.

JOURNAL: November 2019

NOVEMBER 8

I went to work to test for my next belt promotion. As the testing was ending, I got a text from my mother that said, "come to the top of the stairs." I then wondered how long she'd been standing at the bottom of the stairs, yelling my name to no avail, and it made me giggle. I told her I wasn't home, and she answered, "I have to be at my doctor's tomorrow at 12:45." I silently came home and responded to her message with, "okay?" She said, "need you to take me." I answered, "with what car? [My husband] is going camping and I'm working tomorrow." She came back with, "why can't HE ride with his friends?" Well, they didn't live anywhere near us, and he'd been planning this trip for a month. Belt promotions had been announced since before I even began working at the studio. I didn't dignify her whining with further response. I didn't owe her an explanation for the plans my husband and I had, and she never gave us any notice in advance about her appointment. I didn't understand why she couldn't just think, "okay, no big deal, I'll ask one of my other kids," instead of blowing up on me.

Of course, she immediately got on her phone and started complaining loudly to whoever she was talking to that she would have to take an Uber to get to her doctor. There are a million free transportation options for seniors to get around, but she wouldn't take advantage of them because she thinks they're beneath her.

NOVEMBER 12

My mother had been in the habit of putting anyone she calls on speakerphone, only taking them off if they start talking about me. She did this because we don't talk anymore, so it's the only way she can try to draw me into her gossip. I put my headphones in to try to tune her out, but she was so loud that I could still hear her.

On this day, I heard my mother laughing, saying that if she knew where my cousin lived, she would've called the Department of Children and Families on her, presumably so that her kids would be taken from her. Why else would someone call an organization whose claim to fame was for removing kids from their homes? It wasn't the first time she'd laughed about calling DCF on my cousin, either. It made me so sick. I told Master R about it and she advised me never to let my mom be around my future children. It was such an evil thing to laugh about, regardless of whether or not anything my aunt claimed about my cousin was true. They didn't want to help her, they just wanted to see her suffer.

So, I told her. I told my cousin about how I always have to listen to my mom and aunt say horrible things about her, that I was sick of it, and that she deserved to know what was being said. I warned her about allowing them to have access to her social media. They had done the same thing to me, used Facebook to perpetuate drama and keep tabs on me, so I advised her to block them. She was grateful that I told her, and blocked them.

Admittedly, I also did it for my own satisfaction. I just wanted my mother to shut up and turn off her speakerphone. I was certainly bothered by the things they said and felt a duty to warn my cousin, but the greatest satisfaction came from the quiet conversations that immediately came after my intervention.

Me and my cousin agreed to keep my involvement secret. When my mother inevitably asked if I'd spoken to my cousin, I told her to leave me out of whatever nonsense she was involved in. It was a truly Oscar-worthy performance, if I do say so myself. She believed it in a heartbeat. I rarely lie, and I don't like to do it, but it was especially satisfying watching my mother and aunt trying to figure out who told my cousin what they'd been saying about her. Like stupid dogs chasing their tails.

NOVEMBER 14

The two of them were still playing detective. They'd gotten in contact with a few family members who all denied involvement. It made me and my husband laugh, listening to them try to figure it out. My aunt was convinced it was me, but my mother insisted that I didn't care. In a victory for me, those conversations were not on speakerphone.

I was in the kitchen when I heard my mother say something rather illuminating about her character and who she thinks she is. She said, "this is my family. My family. I'm the oldest one. If I tell my family never to speak to her again, I can promise you they won't." I assumed she was referring to forbidding anyone from speaking to my cousin. She thinks she can just snap her fingers and everyone will do what she commands. She's a control freak. She thinks she has power over the family. It was an absolutely insane thing to hear her say out loud.

I knew I needed to get away from her.

NOVEMBER 21

My husband and I were wrapping up making dinner when my mother came into the kitchen and started talking to one of my cats. She asked him, "oh, what's wrong? Are they not treating you right?" I turned around and gave her a look I imagined was some cross of angry, disgusted, and bewildered. She immediately claimed it was "just a joke." We didn't "joke" with her anymore, and I didn't find it very funny. I treat my cats like kings and I love them to death. I don't appreciate "jokes" about me treating them poorly, especially not from her, given her neglect of her past pets.

When she saw my face, she threw her hands up and raised her voice, asking, "what was that look for?!" I shook my head and went back to washing dishes. She went on, griping that she was in her own house and "couldn't say anything." My husband tried to get her to calm down, and she started yelling, "don't you wave your hands at me!" He told her she was getting mad over nothing and told her to calm down, but that made it worse. She yelled, "don't you tell me to calm down!" She repeated that a few times before yelling, "I'm done!" and stomping away. She was clearly just looking for something to fight about.

She has no intention of changing. Her life is meaningless without conflict.

NOVEMBER 22

I heard her gossiping on the phone again. The first was with my sister. Of course it was about what happened the night before. She claimed that she "couldn't sleep" because of us. The conversation I overheard was made extremely personal and ugly. She called my husband and I dumb, said that we had no friends, that we didn't deserve "all she did for us," and that she would never be kind to us again. For sake of pettiness, she even called my cat stupid. She said she was thinking about calling my husband's father and telling him how "disrespectful" he'd been. So, I told my husband and he warned his dad. My father in-law said that he would just tell her to leave him out of her shitshow.

One of the grossest things I've ever heard her say came out of her mouth in that conversation. "If I bend over and tell you to kiss my ass, you'd damn well better do it, because you're living here." Basically confirming my feelings that she viewed us as servants.

She then called my aunt and told her the same story. She told her we were lazy for not putting a garbage bag in the can that she uses to throw her garbage away. She said, "it's [my husband]'s job, and I'm not going to do it." She then complained that I wash my dishes and not hers. She called us "immature and hateful." Because of a garbage bag and a bowl left in the sink. But, okay, we're the immature ones? We're not servants or slaves, and no matter how much she kicked and screamed, we were not going to be her servants. She claimed she was going to tell us to leave because of that.

I finally felt the need to reach out to my dad about the way she'd been treating us. At this point, I was willing to set aside the feelings my mother had implanted in me about my dad, and seek his advice and comfort. He implored me to forgive, but I had to tearfully explain to him that something was seriously wrong with her. I told him that as I started my self-help journey, I began to realize that nothing in my life with her had actually been normal. I told him that I didn't think she loved me anymore, and that I wondered if she ever had. He said his heart broke for us, but that she was still my mother, and I should try to find a way to make things work.

It didn't work for them. It wasn't going to work for me.

NOVEMBER 24

We went to church after missing the previous two weeks due to illness and me staying up way too late one Saturday. We usually find that whenever we return to church after an absence, we come back to a message we sorely needed to hear. This day was no different.

Earlier this year, Master R invited us to her church, knowing we were looking for a new one. We finally took her up on the offer in August, and were told the story of Caleb and Joshua, and their faith and resilience, a story we needed to hear at the time. We loved the church and its pastors immediately, and made it our new spiritual home. My mother wasn't happy about it. She said we needed to go back to "our" church, the one I grew up in only periodically. The one where I sat alone, where no one greeted me, no one spoke to me, no one wanted to get to know me. I enjoyed the pastor's teachings, but it was a lonely place. R's church has been a warm and welcoming presence in our lives, and brought my husband back into faith, something he confessed to me the night of our tenth anniversary. That gave me so much peace.

This day's sermon was out of Mark, when Jesus was on his way to heal Jairus' daughter. A woman had heard about all Jesus had done, and having suffered for so long, thought that she would be healed if only she could touch His clothes. She believed He could heal, and because she had faith, He did. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace, and be freed from your suffering." I wept as I read it. I felt it so deeply.

The pastor spoke about how seeking other ways to heal our internal suffering didn't make us bad people. It meant that we were perfect candidates for the mercy of God. I felt that personally, too. With all the self-help I'd been doing in trying to heal myself from the wounds inflicted on me in my childhood, I felt like this sermon was for me.

He then said that we serve a powerful and immediate God. Just as the woman in Mark had immediately been helped, so would we if we truly and earnestly believed, and just asked. He said that no problem we had was too insignificant for God's attention. I prayed before we took communion: "God, please, help us get out of this."

My husband's boss, who is also R's husband, was kind enough to sit with us after the service was over and listen to us talk about how we identified with the sermon. He said something to me that I thought would help me come to terms with my mother's issues. I'd mentioned that I'd kept hoping my mother would change, but I just kept getting hurt, and despite that, I still hoped. R's husband said it was as if I was walking up to someone I knew would punch me in the nose every time I saw them. It hurts, not just physically, but emotionally, too, and you don't forget it, but that I need to learn to stay away from it so that I don't get hurt anymore. I'm slowly accepting it, but I think some ancient part of my brain will always hope that my mother will love me.

After church, we had plans to attend a Friendsgiving. On our way there, R called. She asked if we were alone, and my husband put her on speaker so that I could hear her, too. She told us that she was going to give us a large sum of money to add to our savings so that we could get out of my mother's house sooner. I immediately started crying. We tried to thank her, but she told us, "no, thank God. I feel like this is something He wanted me to do." I cried almost the entire way there because I realized that in reaching out earnestly to God and believing He would help, He did. It felt so unreal, but it happened. We serve a powerful and immediate God, indeed.

To think how different, how void, how hopeless our lives would be now if we hadn't walked through the doors of the martial arts studio, if Master L hadn't taken a huge leap of faith in hiring me. These people have given us so much love and hope in the short time we'd known them. Only God could have brought us to where we needed to be and known that's where we needed to be.

Words still can't describe the awe, the thankfulness, the relief, the love, the sense of grace that overwhelmed me. I was a perfect candidate for the mercy of God. I asked. I received. May I always remember the people God has put in my path, the people He has moved through to help me and my husband. Thank God.

NOVEMBER 26

I went to see my half-brother where he worked at the car dealership where I bought my car. I needed a roadtrip check-up because my husband and I were going to see his family for Thanksgiving. I'll never forget what he said to me after I told him that: "Why aren't you going to Thanksgiving at [aunt]'s? Because they don't want you there?"

Now, my half-brother enjoys clowning around, but I think he knew what he'd said was true. And I think that's exactly why he said it. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to cut him out of my life, as well. He was the only one of my siblings I actually liked, and even with as little as I ever saw him, I enjoyed his company. In the rare moments he was serious, I could have a good conversation with him. He was the last link I had to my mother's family, but I knew that if he was going to be one of her flying monkey's I would have to let him go, too.

Spending time with my husband's family was strange and relieving all at the same time. Strange, because everything was peaceful and everyone was so warm and welcoming with one another. Relieving for the same reasons. Their family was normal. It was something I wished I could've had.

One night we were there, I got to talking with my father in-law about all of this, how I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet, and I was scrambling to get back up again. He reminded me that I was in their family, too. That they loved me and were happy to have me in their family. That not all was lost, and I still had them.

I was just sad that I couldn't stay.

JOURNAL: September & October 2019

SEPTEMBER ??

We told my mother that we would have to cancel cable because it would cost too much after my husband quit working for the cable company. We knew she wasn't going to like it, because the only thing she ever did was watch TV all day. She turned it into a conversation about our finances, and said she wondered where all our money was. I don't like talking about money, and I let my husband handle our money so that I'm not stressed about it. I refused to speak during her interrogation, one she claimed came from a "place of love" (when they have to say that, you know it doesn't), which angered her. I told her that she needed to accept the fact that sometimes I had nothing to say and didn't want to talk, and she needed to stop taking it as a personal slight against her.

Well, of course she took that as a personal slight. She later demanded that I come downstairs and talk to her about my "little outburst," as she called it. I told her she wasn't going to corner me and lecture me like I was a little kid. I should've walked away right then, because she was trying to bait me. She said I was ungrateful, that the last several months had shown me what an "evil" person I was, that she had never done anything wrong to me and that she would never admit to doing anything wrong.

That told me everything I needed to know. I told her if that was the way she felt, we had no more reason to talk. She griped that we already didn't talk, and I asked her why I would talk to her. What did we have to talk about? We had nothing in common, and whenever I did tell her anything, she would immediately turn around and gossip about it with my aunts and half-sister. She then said that she had the "right to vent." That was her justification for all the trash she talked, not just about me, but about anyone who dared cross her. She essentially told me that she was entitled to my unconditional love and attention by virtue of being my mother. She demanded more of me, and she demanded that I do it joyfully. She wanted me to push down everything I felt, and shower her with praise and affection.

I became so angry that I started crying. I hate that I do that. I wish I could just be angry without looking like a baby, because God knows I was furious. Maybe "hurt" is a better word. That's reason enough to cry, I think. I wasn't going to roll over for her. I asked her if it was a requirement for daughters to speak to their mothers, and she was flabbergasted. She couldn't answer. She finally said, "I've never heard anything like that in my life." I told her she should tell my aunt and sister all about it, and left.

OCTOBER 20

My husband upgraded our Hulu account to allow live TV to replace cable. He wrote up a long, detailed guide for my mother so that she could learn how to use it, and she never read it. Instead of trying to familiarize herself with things that are new to her, she makes us explain everything, and even then she complains that she doesn't understand. She always has an attitude when she has to learn how to do something, because she's either easily flustered or just doesn't feel like she should have to do it herself. Maybe it's both. She was the same way when she had to learn to use Uber.

OCTOBER 23

Mine and my husband's tenth anniversary of being together. We never had a ceremony when we first got married because we didn't have the time or money. My mother made us get legally married before we were ready because he was living with us, and my mother was worried that when my dad visited, he would blow up at her for letting us live together before we were wed. She was worried about her image, but my dad never even asked about my husband living with us. Honestly, I don't think he would've cared.

We didn't want our tenth anniversary to pass without finally having a ceremony. It was too last notice to invite his family, and I didn't want mine to come at all. This meant we had to plan in secret. My mother didn't deserve to be there. We had a private ceremony at the new church we'd begun attending, with just the two of us. I was so overwhelmed that these people who barely knew us would go so above and beyond for us. I was crying before the ceremony even started. They gave us a cake and a bouquet, they dressed the church up beautifully, they toasted with us at the end. I guess I just wasn't used to being treated so kindly.

We had to come up with an elaborate lie about what we did that night and why we came home with cake and flowers. It was one of the most monumentally amazing and important days of my life, and I couldn't even share my joy with my mother. Isn't what what we're supposed to do?

JOURNAL: May, June, & August 2019

MAY 14

This was about the time it started to get really hot where I live. My husband and I had to put window units upstairs to give the house AC a break and prevent it from freezing up. It was working double-time because my mother refused to run the AC downstairs. I'd explained to her countless times that heat rises, and the temperature upstairs can get into the high 80's. My cats would suffer tremendously if that happened. She complained to us that the homeowner's association would throw a fit about the window units, and told us to remove them despite the fact that no one could see them from the street.

When we refused, she tried to blame us for how hot it was upstairs. She asked, "do you have blinds in that room? I went outside and looked, your blinds are up!" Yes, the blinds were lifted for the cats to look outside from behind the blackout curtains I bought to make it cooler upstairs. She then asked, "do you shut down your computers?" Of course we did, we weren't stupid.

In all her accusations, she conveniently ignored the fact that, not only did she refuse to turn on the AC downstairs, but she would also leave the back door open, letting in the +90°F air. I think she just wanted to create something else to fight about.

JUNE 28

My mother's cat had to be euthanized. He was constipated again, so badly that he couldn't eat. He was severely dehydrated, his fur was filthy. I took one look at him and knew he was dying. My mother asked me if he could still be okay, but I told her that if she didn't let him go that day, she would be prolonging his suffering. It was his time.

Turns out he had kidney disease. If my mother had just paid for the blood work, we would've known months ago. He could've been treated, lived longer, and wouldn't have died so miserable. I blame her for his suffering, and sometimes, when I think long enough about it, I hate her for it.

In September of 2018, she had to euthanize her other cat. The first time we'd brought her to the vet, she had a serious blood infection, but we also learned that she had hyperthyroidism, which was why she was so skinny all of a sudden. She healed from the infection but the vet also prescribed a high-calorie food and recommended we get a high-calorie additive. I ordered a high-calorie paste, and explained to my mother how to give it to her cat. She stopped giving it to her cat after a week. As a consequence, the cat began to starve to death. Her muscles atrophied until she couldn't hold herself up anymore, and that's when she was euthanized.

I blame my mother for that, too. I feel like her laziness killed her cats. I can't think of anything more selfish.

AUGUST 26

For some reason, and without notice, my mother decided it was mine and my husband's responsibility to take out the garbage and recyclables, something she'd been doing for 30-some-odd years without issue or complaint. It wouldn't have been a problem for us to take it out, and we certainly would have, but we were never asked to do it, and we weren't aware that she was refusing to do it anymore.

The garbage was supposed to go out for collection the next day, but it didn't. The garbage was rancid and maggots were all over the inside of the bin. To make things worse, a hurricane was supposed to make landfall the next week, so garbage collection would be cancelled. My mother sent me a text message that said: "the garbage should've been taken out last night." This was when I figured out that she wasn't going to take the garbage out anymore. I could only read snark and condescension from the text.

She took the bin outside and didn't even try to clean it, demanding I come outside and clean it. She faked struggling with the garbage bags inside the bin for so long that I finally told her to just let me do it, otherwise we would've been there forever.

After the storm, the maggots that were still in the garage had erupted into fully-grown flies. There were so many that they blocked out a large portion of the garage window. Once again, my mother acted helpless and expected me to be the one to clean up her mess, though she still clearly blamed me and my husband for the infestation.

She sent me another message later about how angry she was in finding a single fly in her bathroom. She knew when garbage was supposed to go out. We didn't. She knew that she was refusing to take it out. We didn't. It aggravated me so much that she couldn't admit responsibility for something so stupid and preventable.

JOURNAL: April 2019

APRIL 8

My mother's cat had been having issues with constipation, and I'd told her several times that he would need a laxative mixed into his water for the rest of his life. He was 17 and his insides couldn't be expected to work the way they used to. She clearly didn't trust my advice, because not only did she take him to the vet and receive the exact same advice, but we ended up at the vet again after that for the same reason.

When the vet tech asked for details, my mother kept emphasizing that she had left her cat alone with me and my husband for four days, implying that we must not have given him the laxative while she was away. She was trying to shift blame when he was likely already impacted before she ever left. She was trying to look good for the vet and ease her conscience.

I was not going to be blamed for neglecting a cat I loved and cared about. When my mother went to the bathroom, I told the tech the truth. She wasn't giving him the laxative. When she came back, they asked if they could do some blood work, but my mother refused because it cost too much. She never liked spending money on her animals. One of our cats lived its life with a fractured leg because she didn't want to do anything about it.

APRIL 17

I had a full load of laundry to wash, and she was using the washer as a hamper, something she knew annoyed me. I took all of her clothes out of the washer so mine could fit, and she came out of the kitchen and griped under her breath, "really?!" I answered her back with, "yes, really!" She argued, "you're doing a load anyway!" and came to look at my laundry. It was a load of whites with a couple of throw pillows which had small sections of light blue on them, so she yelled, "those aren't white! I've washed your clothes with mine before!" So have I, when there was enough room in the washer.

I still don't understand why this was such a big deal to her. Maybe it was because she's lazy and didn't want to have to do her own laundry.

APRIL 23

My mother had recently asked my husband how many guns he owned and, surprised by the question, he asked her why she wanted to know. She took that as my husband giving her attitude, but he told me later that the question made him uncomfortable because he didn't know why she wanted to know, or who she would share that information with. He'd done nothing illegal or wrong, so it seemed like a strange question to ask out of the blue.

She had also asked my husband to do an inventory of my brother's guns, despite having already done an inventory when we moved in. My husband had taken pictures of each gun and taken down their serial numbers, giving them to my mother when he was finished. He'd been too busy to conduct a second, unnecessary inventory.

We kept all our firearms in a gun safe, including my brother's. My mother didn't have access to the safe, and that's the way she wanted it, because she was afraid that if she had another seizure, she may use her gun and unintentionally hurt herself or someone else in her postictal state. My husband and I suggested she sell it since we didn't want it and she didn't want access to it, but that ended up being a reason for her to consider us thieves.

I overheard my mother on the phone with my brother who's in China. She started talking about his guns.  She said, "[my husband] better not have done anything with them. I need to make sure they're still there. Nobody has a right to your stuff. They gave me pictures of them, but they don't mean anything because I haven't seen the guns with my own eyes." She thought, and was putting into my brother's head, that we stole and sold his guns. We were not so hard up for cash that we would risk our rights and freedom to commit a FELONY. The guns were in the safe, where they'd always been.

After that awful exchange, which probably alarmed the hell out of my brother, my mother went on to tell him that I'm "so mean," to her, that me and my husband were "ungrateful and cruel," and then told him that I'd gotten a job. She said, "she finally got a job, some martial arts place, but it's only part time. I guess it pays for their $350 classes, who the hell knows?" The classes were about $300 when we started going, and I'd told her that, but mine were free once I began working there. And that "only part-time" job paid exactly what my last full-time job did, which was a pretty huge step up in my eyes. Ya know, not that she ever bothered to ask my about my work.

She made it crystal clear to my brother that he was not to speak to me. We never talked anyway, him being her golden child and all, but she just wanted to ensure that he wouldn't come looking for answers from someone who would tell him the truth. I knew the game she was playing.

OVERVIEW

In April, my mother continued setting up for my banishment from her family by isolating me from yet another sibling. My brother was easy to turn because of our always-strained relationship.

JOURNAL: March 2019

MARCH 4

My mother said she was leaving for a few days. She pulled my husband aside and told him to take care of her cat, as if I didn't know how or I would deliberately neglect him. I've had cats all my life, and my husband grew up with a dog, but she decided to put the task on him.

I took better care of her pets than she did. When she still had a car and before we moved back in, she would go days without putting litter in the boxes because she was too lazy to go buy the litter. I had to clean and fill the boxes, and even buy the litter on occasion. Her neglect of the boxes was so bad that her female cat chose instead to pee and poop in the upstairs hallway, so much that it ruined the carpet and padding, and warped the floor beneath them.

Aside from the business with her cat, my husband told me that my mother was trying to pry information out of him about me. She was trying to get him to say that I wouldn't go downstairs because of her. He simply told her that I was sick and it had gotten worse, which I was and it did. She asked things like, "how is she eating? How are your cats eating? Where is their food?" I'd brought food upstairs for myself, and the cat food was already upstairs. If my husband was home and I needed anything from downstairs, I asked him to grab it for me. It sounded to me like she was angry that I was successfully avoiding her.

In the face of everything she had said and done, she complained about how I wouldn't come downstairs or do anything with her. I couldn't do anything with her even if I wanted to; we have nothing in common. We don't like any of the same stuff. When I tried to share the things I loved, it either turned into a scolding, a life lesson, or she just made it obvious that I was boring her. But she tried to talk to me all the time about stuff like football, but no matter how many times I outright told her that I don't like sports or know anything about them, she demanded that I listen to her talk about them. In fact, she's the reason I don't like sports. When I was little, she made me dress in a cheerleader outfit and drove my brother and I two hours to a football game for her favorite team. It was scorching hot, there was no shade, and I was so bored that I fell asleep.

MARCH 6

My mother sent my husband a text asking how her cat was, knowing that I was really sick, and didn't ask about me. By then, these deliberate barbs didn't surprise me anymore, but they were no less disappointing.

MARCH 7

My mother came back from my aunt's, where they no doubt spent every waking minute talking trash. While she was away, I remember cleaning up the downstairs floors because she refused to clean anything anymore. We had to wear shoes inside because the floors made our feet so dirty. My mother would let her dirty dishes fester in the sink until they smelled like rotten eggs. She complained to my family that I was the lazy one, that I had nothing else to do, so I should be cleaning everything, even if it wasn't my mess. I'm not a slave or a maid. What an entitled mindset.

MARCH 8

I was sick of being belittled by my mother for being unemployed, and I was sick of her expecting me to be her maid. So, I got a job. At the martial arts studio.

One night, after class, I asked Master R if they needed any help. I'd told her that I just loved being there, that it was an encouraging and healing place for me to be away from my mother, and that I desperately needed to be away from home. She was ecstatic that I had asked, because their manager at the time was getting ready to leave, and they hadn't found a replacement for her yet.

It was so liberating, and I began feeling like I had value in the world. I didn't even tell my mother that I'd gotten a job. I wanted it to be my own private victory. But, of course, it didn't last long.

MARCH 12

My mother was waiting for my husband in the driveway when he got home from work. She demanded to know where I was, and he told her that I was at the martial arts studio. She asked, "what's she doing there?" and he said, "helping out." She asked, "oh, she works there now?"

The dynamic of what few conversations we had after that seemed to change. I'd already known about all the trash she talked about me being "lazy" and unemployed. She was obsessed with knowing my schedule because, with a job, her schedule was suddenly at the mercy of mine. I heard her whining on the phone once that her life had to revolve around mine and my husband's schedules now.

I'm unemployed, she's mad. I get a job, she's mad. She wasn't happy for me or proud. She was determined to be upset. I was re-establishing independence and it annoyed her.

OVERVIEW

I think this was about the time my mother realized she was beginning to lose her grasp on me, but at the same time, she got her kicks by pushing me away. She was a miserable person who wanted a punching bag, someone who would just lay down and take it, and I decided that I was no longer going to be her object of derision. And that pissed her off more than anything.

JOURNAL: February 2019

This was the month that would change everything, for better and worse. This was the month God put good people in my path, and the month my relationship with my mother became damaged beyond repair.

FEBRUARY 7

My husband and I joined a martial arts school so that we could get in shape. It had been a bit of a New Year's resolution for us that we hadn't been able to act on in the previous month. Not just that, but we felt terrible physically, needed an outlet for our frustrations, and seeing the condition my mother was in because of her sedentary lifestyle, we didn't want to end up like her.

I don't know why I felt like I needed to ask her permission to sign up, but I told her what we were planning to do. She tried to guilt us out of signing up, saying although she "couldn't tell us how to spend our money," we were supposed to be paying down our outstanding debts. We had already budgeted, and even with our debts, we knew we could afford classes now that we were no longer paying to rent an apartment.

I wouldn't know until much, much later that this would be one of the best decisions we ever made.

FEBRUARY 13

My husband and I paid for a new washer. The one my mother had been holding onto would make the most atrocious noises and jump around, occasionally ending up in a spot that would block the laundry room door. She refused to get it fixed and she refused to buy a new one, so we ended up having to do it. Same story with the oven, but I won't get into that.

This new washer was slightly smaller than the old one, but not by too much. It had just been delivered and set up, and I decided to put in a load of laundry. I could hear my mother talking to no one in particular downstairs, but she was making sure to speak loud enough for me to hear her. "Yeah, I think this washer is smaller than the other one." I came downstairs with my laundry and she repeated, "this washer is smaller than the other one. I guess we have to put less in it," as if I couldn't deduce that myself.

Not only has my mother had a long-lived habit of making obvious statements to me, but she has, ever since I began doing my own laundry at fourteen, always nagged me to make sure I'm not overloading the washer. More than a decade later, she still spoke to me as though I was stupid or ignorant of how something as simple as loading a washer worked.

She hovered over me as I began putting clothes in the washer, something that bothers me in every situation, regardless of who's doing it. Whether I'm answering a phone, drawing, writing--I do not like being watched. I turned to look at my mother to see what she wanted, and she just said, "what? I'm just looking at it!" No, she wasn't. She had just nagged me about minding how much I put in the washer and was watching to make sure I didn't overload it because she thinks I'm an idiot.

She walked away, pulled a U-turn, and asked "do y'all not like living here?"

Blindsided by such a weird question, I said, "what?"

She repeated, "do y'all not like living here? It's a simple yes or no."

Still confused, I asked, "How did that come up?"

She refused to answer and became combative. "Don't answer my question with a question! Answer me!"

In my mind, I started thinking about how unreasonable she'd been for the past month or so, how unnecessarily combative she'd been, how she seemed to be trying to create drama in the house, and I thought, "yes! Yes! I hate it here! I hate living with you! I don't know who you are anymore!" But I just shrugged and kept loading the washer, giving her an answer that was far more gentle than she deserved. "There are things we miss about being alone."

My mother started pacing up and down the hall, only saying something when she passed by me. "You basically are alone... We don't have any contact... Even when you're here." I just finished loading the clothes in the washer and went back upstairs.

FEBRUARY 17

My husband and I went out for a belated Valentine's Day. He gave me a beautiful bouquet, we played mini-golf (something of a tradition for us), and had a delicious, romantic dinner at a restaurant that we'd never been to. At this point, we'd been together for nine Valentine's Days! It was such a good night, and it took my mind away from all the trouble at home. My mother had even taken our picture before we left because she thought we looked so nice. At the time, I hadn't realized that she was just putting on an act.

FEBRUARY 23

My husband took me to see a movie that I'd wanted to see for our Valentine's Day date, but it hadn't released at the time. We hadn't been to the movies in a really long time because of our finances, and he said that he just wanted to do something nice for me. I wish I had known then that sharing the details of those last two outings to social media my mother had access to would be a means for her to talk badly about me to the family.

FEBRUARY 24

My mother wanted the siding on the house cleaned of the mold/moss/whatever was growing on it. She couldn't do it herself, so I had to do it. I got up on the roof and cleaned the second story siding. She had told me not to spray at the base where the wood was rotting, which I knew already not to, so I did my best to be careful.

When I finished, I went inside, took a shower, and started to head downstairs to help my husband make dinner. Before I could even make it to the stairs, my mother started yelling, demanding I come speak to her. She began interrogating me about my cleaning of the siding, and was very nearly accusing me of deliberately trying to damage it. She even said that she'd gone outside with binoculars to look at it. She never thanked me, just criticized me and cast suspicion, as though I was deliberately trying to destroy the house, or I was too stupid to follow instructions.

I brought some dishes downstairs and my mother immediately came into the kitchen, nagging us about how we should bring our dishes down every night. I didn't say anything, just kept washing the dishes. I guess that wasn't the reaction she wanted, so she decided to dig her claws in a little more. She started going through a mess of papers on the kitchen counter and came across an old business card of mine that was for a cleaning business that never took off. She held it up and said, "oh, I wonder what this girl is doing now," and laughed in my face. I didn't think it was very funny. My failing to launch my business and being unemployed with no prospects or opportunities for ever having a respectable career wasn't funny to me. She laughed as though I hadn't given all of that up to make sure she had someone to take care of her.

It upset me so much that I had to leave the kitchen, hide in my room, and cry. This was when I made a conscious decision not to speak to her anymore unless I absolutely had to. I didn't even want to look at her anymore. I was so hurt and disgusted that my own mother could revel in my failure. It kept me up late into the night, and I finally decided to make my feelings public.

I made a post on Facebook that dripped with sarcasm but still accurately expressed how I was feeling, because I deal with my feelings by employing sarcasm. I'm always saying that if I don't laugh about my misfortunes, I'll cry instead. The post said: "Mid-2000's angsty teenager post of the day. Sometimes I wish I could disappear. Most times, it feels like everyone wishes I would."

My mistake for ever adding my mother on Facebook.

FEBRUARY 25

My mother sent me a message on Facebook that said, "so, what was that midnight Facebook post about?" I could just hear her snark and smugness through the screen of my phone, so I ignored her and stayed upstairs. When my husband informed me that he received the same message from her, I told him to ignore it. He did, but that made it worse.

She came upstairs in the afternoon and stood at the end of the hall with one hand against the wall and the other on her hip. She said with an attitude, "so, what's your problem?"

I was astonished, and immediately reminded of how angry she was with me when she had to pick me up from high school after I'd told my friend that I was suicidal. Just seeing her body language, I knew she was itching for a fight. I was determined to remain calm and collected, and I answered her with, "with that attitude, we have nothing to discuss."

In the same tone, she feigned concern for my well-being, saying that my husband and I had been ignoring her all day, so she didn't know whether I was dead or alive upstairs. I wondered to myself why, if she was so concerned, she waited until two in the afternoon to walk fourteen steps and find out? And from her mouth came the answer I'd been looking for, the truth being dragged kicking and screaming into the light for me to finally see. She said: "Is that how you treat your mother?"

It hit me like a train. Everything had always been about her. In my mind, I was suddenly transported back to the office of the only therapist I'd ever seen, the one session we ever had. He had asked me to draw my family in their normal routines. I drew myself, alone and listening to music. I drew my brother angrily playing video games as he always did. I had to imagine my father's routine since I didn't know it, and drew him at a tow yard where he worked. I drew my mother driving, digging through her purse, and talking on the phone simultaneously.

My therapist told me I was lonely. He told me that I viewed my brother as an aggressor. He told me that my father, whose finger I'd incidentally drawn pointing at me, was a tremendous source of contention and grief for me, that his accusing finger was me believing that something was wrong with me, which was perhaps why I felt like he left us. And my mother. He said that my mother was "self-involved." In remembering his words, things began making sense and falling apart all at once.

And the words just fell out of my mouth: "It's always about you."

That only made her angrier. She tried to turn it back around on me, saying, "I came up here to ask about you!" I knew better. She had come upstairs to ask me about a Facebook post that her terrible treatment of me prompted, one that never specifically mentioned her, but she knew was about her and made her look bad in front of other people in her own mind. She'd come upstairs to salvage her image. It was nothing more than a PR campaign.

I don't know how I suddenly had the courage or just the right words to say to her, but thank God I did. I answered, "no, you came to pick a fight. I know how you talk to people and try to shift blame on them, and I'm not gonna play your game."

She said, "I'm not playing games! You're the one who's got all these people on Facebook like, 'aww, poor you.'" She said this in a mocking, condescending tone. When I told her it would be better for her to leave it alone, she said, "oh, I guess I should send you a message and see if you wanna talk about it over coffee sometime, huh?" This was her making fun of a response I'd received on the Facebook post from a high school teacher I'd kept in touch with, who was offering encouragement and a shoulder to lean on.

I was tired of her running her mouth, so I turned up the volume on my headset to drown her out, and she yelled, "oh, that's really mature!" I thought so, too! Knowing the difference between a discussion and an argument requires some wisdom, in my own experience. Eventually, she gave up and stomped away.

Her coldness shocked me. She'd shown me a side of her that day I hadn't imagined was possible for a mother. I realized then that how I felt meant nothing to her if it reflected badly on her.

FEBRUARY 26

A feral cat spooked one of my cats so badly that he attacked my husband. My husband put my cat in the shower (he did NOT turn the water on!), closing the door to give him a low-stimuli environment to calm down. He's a very easily stimulated cat, and gets aggressive when too much is going on. It took us a very long time to understand how fragile his boundaries are and how to respect them so that he would feel safe with us. My mother came upstairs, yelling at my husband, "what room is he in?!" She tried to barge into the bathroom while my husband was still naked.

When I got out of bed a few hours later, my mother heard me walking over a creaky floorboard and came back upstairs. She never came upstairs since we moved back in with her in December, and hadn't had a reason to, so I felt like this was her inserting herself unnecessarily. My cat was with me in my room at the time, and my mother walked in to start talking to him. She asked my cat repeatedly, "aww, are you okay?" She said, "I feel so bad for you. Are you finally dry? Did [husband] kick your ass this morning? Oh, yes, I heard it!"

I think she was trying to use my love of my cats to make me angry with my husband, but I was awake when the incident happened. My husband didn't hurt my cat or turn the shower on him. She was lying and trying to provoke me into responding to her. When I wouldn't even look at her, she stomped back downstairs.

She cooed and fawned over imaginary abuse of my cat, but her response to my feeling unloved and unwanted got me a "so, what's your problem?" What kind of mother acts like that?

FEBRUARY 28

I felt like I was starting to cool off, and then, while scrolling through Facebook, I saw that my mother posted something that said, "people pretend like you're a bad person so they don't feel guilty about the things they've done to you." It pissed me off and confused me because I hadn't done anything to her. I didn't want to let her posts on a stupid social media site be a reason for me to be upset. That would've made me no better than her. I unfollowed her so that I wouldn't see her posts anymore.

But I had to take it a step further. She was clearly using Facebook as a vehicle for perpetuating and creating drama, so I put her and everyone who was a mutual friend with her on my "restricted" list, meaning we were still friends, but they could no longer see any of my posts. I wanted to remove Facebook from the equation for my mother so that it couldn't be a talking point for her anymore. I thought it was the right thing to do, but even that became drama to her.

My half-sister immediately "unfriended" me on Facebook. At the exact same time, my mother's phone was blowing up with messages. She got a call and started speaking in a low voice. She was trying to figure out why she couldn't see my posts anymore, probably with my half-sister.

Facebook won't tell people if you "restrict" them. The only way my mother would've found out is if she went to my profile and noticed no posts. Same goes for my half-sister. And the only reason my half-sister, who rarely speaks to me, would have to visit my profile was if our mother told her to go look at it for her.

I went downstairs to get a drink and my mother was whispering on the phone, and once I entered the room, she would only say "uh-huh" or "yes." I went back upstairs and stood on the balcony to listen, because I figured she was talking to my half-sister about me. I was right. I heard her say, "I didn't do anything wrong, look what they're doing to my house, every time I ask for something, they get nasty, it's so stupid that they just sit up there." She was turning my half-sister against me by lying to her.

OVERVIEW

In February, I learned what my mother was truly capable of. I'd always known that she could be vicious, but that she could turn that fury on one of her own children had taken me completely by surprise. And not only that, but that she decided to isolate me from the rest of my family and play up her pity party. No one would believe me then if I'd tried to tell them what kind of person she was.

JOURNAL: January 2019

In December 2018, after two years of living on our own, my husband and I had to move back in with my mother. It was a symbiotic arrangement. We had no money, and she couldn't work or drive, and needed someone to be home with her in case she had another seizure. We would work on the house to get it ready to sell, and whatever came of the sale, we would get a newer house that we could all live in together. My mother could live her sunset years in comfort, and my husband and I could get a much-needed jump start in beginning our adult lives together. Everything was perfect.

Until it wasn't.

These are my journal entries for the month of January 2019.

 

JANUARY 2

That morning, the landscapers were working on the lawn. One of them was using an edger and it sent some debris flying into a sidelight on the front door, causing the glass pane to crack into a million pieces. The glass never fell out of the frame, but it was very clearly shattered. I told my husband about it, and he was understandably upset. When he came home from work, he spoke with my mother about it, saying that the landscapers should have to pay to fix it. My mother said she wasn't going to pursue it, and my husband said, "that's not gonna cut it with me."

This one sentence was going to set into motion something that had been long coming.

JANUARY 3

My mother sat me down in the TV room and said we needed to talk. Confused and a little concerned, I naturally agreed, and I immediately regretted it when she told me what it was about. She repeated their conversation from the day before, telling me that my husband had disrespected her by saying "that's not gonna cut it with me."

I immediately stopped her. The way she imitated my husband speaking sounded nothing like him. She was trying to make him sound snotty and mean, and that's not how he speaks. So, I told her that. She instantly went on the defense, accusing me of implying that she's a liar. I answered, "I'm sure that's what he said, but I know how my husband speaks, and that's not it." She was being dramatic and didn't like being told so. My husband was upset with the landscaper, but my mother managed to make the issue about her.

JANUARY 4

My mother got up early to gripe at my husband while he got ready for work about my conversation with her the previous day. She told him that I didn't trust her. It made her angry. When my husband told me about this encounter when he came home, I began to question whether or not all her dramatic stories about things that supposedly happened in her life happened the way she said they did. Was she as honest as she wanted everyone to think she was? For the first time in my life, I was doubting my own mother's sincerity in her interactions with me.

For a while after this incident, my mother made a point of telling me every time my husband did something that made her mad, but it was always dumb, minor things like him being too loud in the morning while he's getting ready for work. I think she told me this stuff because she wanted to make herself appear more sympathetic to me, and turn my husband into an antagonistic figure in the house. My mother is a game-player, and the queen of petty. I wasn't going to allow her to wedge herself between me and my husband.

JANUARY 8

It was about this time I started to figure out that because my mother couldn't find drama at a workplace anymore, she had to create it at home because she's bored without it. Conflict energized her and gave her purpose.

At this time, my cats were confined to the second floor of the house by a tall baby gate which they would become upset by any time they heard people downstairs, especially me and my husband. They wanted to be down there, too, but the presence of my mom's cat meant they had to stay upstairs because they would fight if they saw one another.

She asked me a question that morning from the first floor, and I walked out to the stairs to answer her. I didn't want to stay outside of the baby gate for too long, else my cats would start getting upset, so once I gave her an answer, I went back in, but she was still asking me questions. Hearing her downstairs, one of my cats started meowing loudly, and I said "oh my gosh!"

Suddenly, I hear my mother yell at the top of her lungs, "I was just asking a question!" I said, "whoa, why are you yelling at me?!" She answered, "I don't need your 'oh my God' when I'm just asking you a question!" Baffled, I told her, "I didn't say that to you, I said that to my cat!" I know she heard my cat whining. And I think after this, she felt stupid, because then she tried to make it about something else, saying, "well, you need to answer my questions in front of my face." She refused to own the fact that she overreacted.

Later that day, when she told me what her plans were for the week and where I would need to take her, she spoke to me with a very matter-of-fact tone and didn't make eye contact. It felt like she was speaking to me as if I were a servant.

OVERVIEW

January was an extremely confusing month for me. After spending two years away from my mother and coming back, it was like she was a totally different person. I started keeping more to myself upstairs as a means of preventing any accidental provocation, but as it would turn out, that would only make things worse. So much worse than I could ever imagine.

NOTES: "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?"

I didn't come to the conclusion that my mother is a narcissist on my own. This book, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? by Karyl McBride, served as an excellent affirmation tool, which is exactly what I needed to start me down the journey of self-healing. It offered some healing strategies for each stage of this journey, some of which I'm still not ready for, but when I am, I'm glad I'll have it handy. If you are an Adult Child of a Narcissist (ACoN) in need of validation of your experiences, I can't recommend this book enough!

Before I began reading, I knew I would want to keep a journal, and I'm so happy I got one. I identified with so many passages, and felt the urge to write them down so that I wouldn't forget them, along with why they were so important to me. These are my reading notes:

The Ten "Stingers" of Maternal Narcissism

• #2: Your mother emphasizes the importance of how it looks to her rather than how it feels to you.
  
  My mother has always been obsessed with how she looks to others, not just physically, but "reputationally," as well. When I was a kid, she was very controlling about what I wore and how I styled my hair. I specifically remember one school picture day, I hated the way she had parted my hair, and she threatened to punish me if I changed it once I got to school. If memory serves, I'm pretty sure I cried about it at school because I thought I looked so stupid.
  
  When I was ten, I was tired of my long hair because it was too hot and got in my way when I wanted to play. I begged to cut it, and when she finally let me, she cried while the hairdresser cut it. I was so relieved, but I think she was just sad that I didn't look like a little Barbie doll anymore.
  
  When I was old enough to start picking my own clothes, I still wasn't allowed to choose which stores I wanted those clothes from. If something was too dark or too baggy, I was shamed for liking it. The things I liked weren't bright or form-fitting enough to satisfy my mother.
  
  I think she was most worried about looking bad in front of my dad. She's said many times before that it must really bother my dad that me and my brother turned out so well under her care.
  
   
• #3: Your mother is jealous of you.
  
  I have a hard time believing this, but I realize that could be a product of my low self-esteem. My mom has made many comments about my weight in the past, and her own weight has been a major focus in her life. When I was in middle school, I put on a little weight, but was not unhealthy. When she pointed it out, I did my best to lose it, and going into high school, I became depressed and lost even more, at which point she became critical again.
  
  I also have to wonder if her three failed marriages are the reason she despises my husband so much, and why she's tried to turn me against him.
  
   
• #4: Your mother does not support your healthy expressions of self, especially when they conflict with her own needs or threaten her.
  
  One thing my mother prided herself on was her musical abilities. She could sing and play piano, and sometimes I would sit at the top of the stairs just to listen to her. I used to really love to sing. Sometimes, I still do, but I don't think I'm very good at it anymore. I joined choir in middle school, and my second year in, I was placed in the advanced choir. My third year, I made the school's all-state team to sing competitively. All-state met in the mornings before school started. I don't think my mom ever told me she was happy for me or proud, but I do remember her saying that it was a huge hassle for her to drive me to school in the morning. I dropped out after three practices because I didn't want to be a burden on her. I didn't sign up for choir in high school.
  
   
• #5: In your family, it's all about mom.
  
  When I was in high school, I had told a friend that I wanted to die. My friend had the common sense and decency to tell a teacher, and I was pulled out of class to sit in the counselor's office. The counselor called my mother to come pick me up. I can still remember, on the way home, exactly what I was looking at outside the car window when she complained that she was having to miss work because of me. She wasn't sad or upset that I felt like my life wasn't worth living; she was annoyed that she was missing work. She made me and my feelings seem like such a burden on her, that I actually apologized to her for the way I was feeling. I never realized before reading this book how horrible a thing that was for her to say.
  
   
• #7: Your mother can't deal with her own feelings.
  
  In the book, a woman offered a story about how her mother was always upset and always blaming everyone else for everything.
  
  My mother had suffered a stress-related stroke in 2017. She blames the work environment she'd been working in, one that I had worked in with her, and the people who worked there for causing her stroke. Thing is, she was just as guilty as they were in fostering combative attitudes in the office. She was mentally incapable of just minding her own business, or letting things go, no matter how small and stupid they were.
  
  In 2018, she took a job at a place she used to work a long time ago. Many of the old faces in that place had gone away, replaced by younger people she'd never met. That was immediately a point of contention for her. I don't think she's fond of younger people being in positions of authority above her. She started butting heads with a co-worker, one of her superiors, who she believed had slighted her. My mother started trying to listen very hard to everything the co-worker was saying in the office, and even though she would only pick up bits and pieces of any given conversation, she insisted that her co-worker was conspiring against her or speaking poorly of her.
  
  One day, I got a call from her, saying I had to pick her up because she was so upset after hearing the co-worker allegedly talking about her. When I got there, she was breathing fast and crying, convinced she was about to have another stroke. On the drive home, I told her that she can choose not to care about what someone says about her. I must have told her that a thousand times, but she never listened. She was determined to be upset. She wanted her co-worker reprimanded or fired for talking about her. I remember talking to my half-sister on the phone, asking her what I should say or do, and she told me that our mother is her own worst enemy, and that there was no talking her out of being a victim. Not her words exactly, but that's how I interpreted our conversation. I think this was the very first time I really began to think that something was off.
  
   
• #9: Your mother treats you like a friend, not a daughter.
  
  In the book, it says: "A narcissistic mother who constantly confides in her daughter about difficulties in her relationship with her husband, for example, does not understand how painful this can be for her child. The daughter knows that she shares traits with her father as well as her mother, so criticizing a young child's father is like criticizing the daughter, too... She also feels guilty about not being able to fix the parental marriage problem..."
  
  As an adult, I learned one thing you never do to a child is saddle them with adult issues. My mother became comfortable with criticizing my father in conversations with my brother and I fairly early on in my life. She could go on for hours about how he treated her, his leaving, and how he valued his drinking buddies over us.
  
  I don't know if this was her being my "friend," or her trying to sabotage any chance of developing deeper or more meaningful feelings towards my father. I have always wanted so very badly to be able to love my father, but our relationship was poisoned from the very beginning. Not that he hasn't played any part in hurting our relationship, but everything bad I've ever heard about him came from my mother. I wasn't mature enough to deal with the information I was given. It wasn't fair for my mother to divulge it, not before I was ready.
  
   
• #10: You have no boundaries or privacy with your mother.
  
  I've never been allowed a private life or my own secrets with my mother. When I was younger, she would steal my journals, and go through my room and belongings. No matter where I stashed things, especially when I would leave for two months during the summer to visit my father, she would find them and take them.
  
  As I started coming into puberty, I began to value privacy. One night, I was taking a bath, and my mother burst into the bathroom without knocking. I hid myself behind the wall of the tub and she freaked out, assuming something was wrong or that I was hiding something. I told her several times to get out, and when she finally left, I locked the door behind her. Over the years, she has repeatedly made comments about how I don't let her see my bare body.
  
  She has always gossiped about me to my family, and even when confronted about it, she justifies her trash-talking by saying that she has the right to "vent." Knowing her gossip habits, even as a child, I didn't tell her for two years that I'd had my first period because I was embarrassed.

Those are some of the "Stingers" of maternal narcissism. If you want the full list, you'll need to get the book for yourself! The author moves on to identifying different dynamics of the relationships of your family, and what kind of daughter you turned out to be as a result.

The Engulfing vs. The Ignoring Mother

I don't know definitively what kind of mother mine was given these two choices, but at the mention in the book of child beauty pageants, I'm inclined to say "engulfing." My mother enrolled me in child beauty pageants before I was ever old enough to know what was going on. As an adult, I tried to throw away the trophies I'd won at those pageants, only for my mother to dig them out of the garbage bin. Not the can in the kitchen, the bin in the garage. None of them were even first place trophies. They were all second runner-up or just said "photogenic." They didn't even have my name on them! They were utterly worthless to me, and I could never figure out why they meant so much to her until I realized she was a narcissist.

What About The Brothers?

I have three siblings: a brother, a half-sister, and a half-brother, all by my mother. My father made it painfully obvious that my brother was his favorite, but my mom was more subtle. I can't ever remember a time that he was ever really in trouble. She coddled him for most of his life.

When kids at school were cruel to him, she was at his side, raising hell with teachers, coaches, and administrators. When anyone in the family pointed out that he was lazy, unhygienic, or messy, she defended him to the death. No one was allowed to criticize him, even legitimately. He once called me a whore in front of our mother, and she did nothing.

My mother couldn't wait for me to leave home. As soon as my husband and I moved, she gleefully got to work painting our room and dressing it up how she wanted it.

When my brother tried to join the Marines, our mother begged him to stay, but he went away. He failed at boot camp and came home to be a lazy slob again. Weeks of dirty dishes, tissues, beer cans, and garbage piled up in his room, making it impossible to see the floor or walk around. She did absolutely nothing but enable him, but if I left a dish or two in the sink, I was "lazy." When I asked her why she was so critical of me and not my brother, she nonchalantly told me that he always offered her money. Then, my brother suddenly decided to move to China, and our mother acted like her life was over, and that she had no one and nothing to live for.

My half-siblings are Gen Xers while my brother and I are Millennials. I wasn't around to see how my half-siblings were treated and raised by our mother. The way I understand it, my half-brother was a star athlete with perfect attendance, and my half-sister was a rebellious trouble-maker. As it stands now, my half-sister is one of our mom's best gossip pals, and my half-brother is emotionally distant from everyone.

Over-Achieving vs. Self-Sabotaging Daughters

I have definitely never been an over-achiever. I don't take risks because I fear vulnerability and failure. I went a year without applying for jobs which ultimately ended with my husband and I losing our apartment, in part because I didn't think I could do anything right, or even at all. I felt like no one would hire someone who was just a receptionist for five years, so why try? I don't draw anymore because I can't do everything right the first time I try. I realize how unreasonable that is, but I can't shake it. I always feel incapable and inadequate, not matter how hard I try. Even when I manage to do a lot of things correctly, I'm dragged down by one minor failure or mistake, and I feel worthless. I don't feel deserving of love, and I constantly ask myself how my husband has managed to stand me and still love me for ten years. I've been told that I'm a doormat, and I feel like one. I can't set healthy boundaries or stand up for myself, ever. I had to cry to one of my co-workers about my boss treating me like dirt instead of telling him in the moment that he couldn't treat me that way. I have problems telling people "no," even when they make me extremely uncomfortable.

Both of my parents are responsible to some degree for the person I've become. They've rejected me in their own ways, so I think I just want people to like me, and I'm willing to forgo my self-respect to get that approval, usually from people who don't care about me beyond what I can do for them.

I feel like I can't truly begin to live my life the way I want until my mother is dead. It sounds awful, but not having to be reminded of the anguish she has caused me feels like the only way I can be free of how she makes me feel.

Review

As I said at the beginning of my notes, I highly recommend this book for any Daughter of a Narcissistic Mother (DoNM). Affirmation is the first step to healing, and this book can provide it. You are not crazy. You are not the only one. You are not alone.

Introduction

It's very likely that 2019 will go on my record as the absolute worst and best year of my adult life.

I took a job that turned my world right-side-up.

I realized that my mother is a full-blown narcissist.

Where I once had only acquaintances, I now have friends.

My entire family disowned me.

I grew in my faith and brought my husband back to his.

All my plans for the future have to be rewritten.

I am now free to make the plans I want, not the ones I must.

In the span of just 12 months, my once relatively mundane life became a hellish roller coaster of exhilarating highs, soul-crushing lows, and vomit-inducing corkscrews, mostly at the behest of my mother. As I have immersed myself in my faith, I've learned that this isn't a feeling or relationship I'm meant to be stuck in. I have the choice to get off the roller coaster, and while my earthly family has chosen to shun me for it, I know that I'm surrounded by the arms of my Heavenly Father.

When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the LORD will take me up.
Psalm 27:10, KJV

I have now stepped into the new world of No Contact. It's liberating, frightening, infuriating, joyous, and heartbreaking all at the same time. This week, the last of my belongings were moved out of my mother's house. I walked out of my childhood home with the intention of never seeing it or her ever again. The woman who birthed me and raised me, whom I always believed would be there for me until her dying breath, has neither the capacity nor the will to love me. And in light of what I've learned about her, I'm given cause to wonder if she ever truly has.

I used to think I was crazy. That I was the problem. That I was the only one with a weird mom who only seemed interested in herself. While I'm thankful that I'm wrong and that there are people in the world whose similar experiences I can relate to, I'm deeply saddened that my troubles are, in fact, widely shared by so many. Narcissism is a plague on society, and its victims aren't even the sufferers.

In this new era of my life, one without my family of origin, my hope for journaling my experiences is that I am able to gain some clarity, and perhaps even some closure. I want to be at peace with my decision to sever all ties. I never, ever want to forget what I've been through. In moments of doubt, I want to be able to return to this journal and say, no, I'm not overreacting, no, I'm not crazy. This happened to me, and it was wrong.