Thank you for this silent run. I am coming up on a year of NC with my mother, something I did not undertake lightly. As this article begins it addresses the fact that it is quite taboo in our society to not hold one's mother in high esteem, and if the relationship is frayed there is usually an assumption that the child is at fault.
My mother is a covert narcissist, the most insidious type. The saddest part is that once she decided she was done with my father she launched a 5 year campaign to alienate him from his children, while we were under the same roof. I spent hours at the kitchen table in a cloud of her cigarette smoke while she would drone on about what a horrible person he was. So we not only had no stable relationship with my mother, she alienated us from my father. As one of my brothers put it, we didn't have relationships, we formed alliances.
I feel like I have created in my own life what I missed as a child. My daughter feels safe, not smothered, and I have respected her as her own person since she was young. I own my mistakes and apologize, I keep her secrets, and I am not bitter or punitive.
As my mother ages the fear, obligation and guilt built up. I left home at 18 and never went back. But she was vested in attaching herself to my successes, and for years I felt that I owed her. I not only had to parent her when I was little and she was lying drunk on the kitchen floor, I became responsible for solving all of her problems. I could never give her enough, trips, furnishings, check after check, she always needed more. She played the waif and continued to behave irresponsibly with money, online gambling replaced drinking.
I remember being in middle school and panicked at the mall shopping every Mother's Day and birthday she had. Up until a few years ago I still panicked. This year I sent her a simple bouquet of flowers instead of a 5 figure check, I am sure that made her furious. It is sad that I need to bear gifts to earn her love, and I can't do it anymore. I imagine I will try limited contact at some point but it stings to have someone who told me I was so bad all my life expect so much. It has never occurred to me that I would have a parent to take care of me, I grew up knowing I could only rely on myself and that still affects relationships. And I struggle with feeling faulty over not being more connected to either parent. Somehow becoming a mother helped me understand what I never had.
This morning at my house there was a special breakfast, cards, flowers and gifts. I made sure that my daughter knows that the cards were the best part. I never want her to have that pit in her stomach of knowing she is going to disappoint no matter what she does. I feel lucky that I have managed to sort through a lot of this, I have a long way to go.
Thanks for posting this SR, it really helped today.