Hi,
I feel very weird about all this...but I know telling my story might help me actually confront it, so here goes.

My parents were young and unmarried when I was born. I was the result of an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy...but my mother, being Catholic, decided against abortion. My father at first denied paternity, and I lived with my grandmother until I was nine. At age nine, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome--a condition I share with my father. By that time, my parents had married, but their relationship had very quickly soured. So when I went to live with them, I was moving into an already unstable family environment.

My father was distant but controlling. He had no tolerance for normal childhood behaviours, and was resentful of the fact that I am female. He was strict, but consistent at least, but his attitude of embarrassment toward me, his belief that emotions were a sign of weakness and never, under any circumstances, to be expressed, and various other behaviours were bothersome. Now I've come to believe that they may have damaged me almost as much as my mother's behaviour, though my father was never "abusive." Still, I felt closer to him than to my mother, since he too was on the autism spectrum and was "on the same wavelength," so to speak, as I.

My mother was the polar opposite of my father. Her emotions totally controlled her behaviour. She was inconsistent, irrational, overly-dramatic, and attention-seeking, in ways that were perceptible to me even when I was very young. She was generally more lenient than my father, though less from compassion and more, as I learned later, just to gain my trust and favour. When she did become angry, however, she would completely explode, even throwing me out of the house at age eleven for forgetting to do a chore on time (luckily, my father stopped her).

My parents fought constantly--or rather, my mother just screamed at my father, who would calmly point out her irrational statements, ignorantly provoking her further. I fell asleep every night to the sound of my mother screaming and throwing things. That coupled with my mother's intense spending problem finally got to be enough for my father, and he left one morning just before Christmas when I was fifteen. When he woke me up to say goodbye, he warned me that my mother might turn her rage against me now that he wouldn't be there to take it, but I, half-asleep and not really knowing what was going on, didn't pay it much mind. I was just sad to see him go, but mostly glad that the screaming at night would finally stop.

What my father warned me about came true very quickly, and in unimaginable ways. I have PTSD from the abuse inflicted by my mother, and a lot of the specific things she did are blurry to me because I just can't cope with them. The emotional abuse was more damaging to me than the physical, I think. My self-esteem was utterly destroyed by the constant stream of needlessly cruel vitriol she spewed my way. I did yell back at her, mostly to defend myself--things like "leave me alone," "why are you doing this," etc. But I did scream. And cry. And become hysterical when it became too much to bear. I'm not proud of this. But I was an immature teenaged kid. How much better could any other sixteen-year-old do? My father accused me of being partially at fault, because I reacted emotionally. Maybe this is why I feel guilty and at fault for what happened.

She would "gaslight" me, not only to the point where I constantly doubt my own memories even today, but on several occasions she manipulated me so severely that I became convinced I was deformed, obese, or not even myself at all.

She threw me out of the house in mid-February when I was sixteen--literally threw, I mean. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts I had worn as pyjamas. No socks or shoes, even, and it was snowing. I made it one mile to the nearest grocery store/payphone, where I called my then-boyfriend's parents to come pick me up, explaining the whole terrible situation as mildly as possible to avoid embarrassing myself or my family. Before they could get there, the police picked me up--my mother, after having thrown me out, had called them, claiming that I beat her and ran away from home in some sort of psychosis. They believed her and I spent two miserable weeks in a mental institution being treated for Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Then, two days after returning home, she knocked me out cold with a baseball bat, stuck a kitchen knife in my hand while I was passed out, and called the police. So they took me back--and she laughed about it during our first unsupervised visit. No one believed that my bruises or scars weren't self-inflicted. She was such a good liar that everyone believed her instead. And my recently-remarried father refused to get involved (he let me live with him for a few months on two occasions, but my mom cried and promised to change and guilted/manipulated me into moving back with her...and his new wife resented the fact that he had a child).

My boyfriend and his parents were extremely helpful to me during this time; his parents were the only other people to experience my mother's wrath (she called them in the middle of the night once and screamed at them), but were afraid to get involved while I was a minor for fear that my mother would pull something. I wasn't allowed to see my boyfriend, but, being a teenager in love and desperate for kind, genuine affection, I snuck around. When I was caught, I was beaten, but the hugs, kisses, and kind words from SOMEONE were worth it to me. When I was seventeen, I lost my virginity to my boyfriend. We had been together for three years at the time, and had talked about it extensively and maturely, and both felt ready. My mother refused to allow me to get birth control pills, so I bought condoms instead and hid them in a hole under my mattress until I was ready. When my mother found "contraband" in my room, it would normally disappear. The condoms didn't. So I figured she hadn't found them. I was dead wrong--she'd sabotaged them by poking tiny needle-holes through the package. I didn't notice the holes. Naively, I didn't think she would do such a thing. But I got pregnant. When I told her about it, she beat me, and forced me (using threats against the lives of me, my baby, and my boyfriend) to have an abortion. I wasn't ready to care for a child, but I'd have much preferred adoption...or at least the ability to make the decision on my own terms! This was the last straw.

I turned eighteen, and a month later finished high-school. Despite everything, I graduated with highest honours and several scholarships, including full-ride to a very reputable University about 100 miles away. I moved out immediately after graduating and immersed myself in University life, intent on never speaking to my mother again. I moved in with my boyfriend (the same guy, still), since I was unable to live in campus housing due to needing a vaccine that I can't get for allergy reasons. We broke up last year--and now I'm dating another guy, who is very nice but acts in ways that are at time reminiscent of my mother and thus retraumatizing. But that's for another post.

My father's not really in my life anymore, but my mother is still stalking me--she even hired a private investigator to find out my address, and tricked the Dean's Office at my university into giving her my grades, major, and other personal information. She obtained my passwords and hacked into my email and social networking accounts just a few months ago. I'm afraid I can't escape her, ever. But maybe she's just trying to be a good mom, and I'm the one in the wrong?

I just feel so guilty about everything. Did the abuse even happen? Was it really abuse, or am I just an obstinate, irrational wimp who can't take discipline? Did I hit my mother or did she hit me? Was I wrong to abandon her and cut ties with my family? I logically know I did the right thing by leaving, and I logically know that I WAS abused, that I NEVER hit back (I couldn't even shield my face because she'd call the cops saying that blocking was "assault."), and that no "good" mom does the things she did...but emotionally, I'm still so unsure. I have no self-esteem. I'm living in a haze. I can't even stick up for myself if it means mildly disappointing someone else. I can't be assertive. I can't confront people who've wronged me. But I also can't seem to FACE the trauma. I can talk about it, but I reflexively compartmentalise everything; I can't FEEL things about the trauma anymore other than guilt, confusion, doubt, and shame.

I had to drop out of college a year ago, despite excellent marks, because my emotional state was too unstable and I became too socially-phobic to go to class. But I lost my access to mental health professionals by dropping out. I'm working on getting one with sliding-scale fees, but they can't get me in for an appointment for quite some time. I have a job, but the social interaction involved makes me completely miserable; I loathe it. I just don't know what to do. I want to cry about what happened to me, for once. I want to FEEL SOMETHING. I want to get better. I'm sick of feeling like this. I don't want to waste my life in some post-traumatic avoidant haze just because my mom happened to be a crappy person. And yet...it's like a dark, windowless room I just can't escape.

I need to know that I'm not alone in this. That someone out there has felt this way, too. That I can get better. That I'm not just ruined forever. That I'm not a horrible person.

I really don't know what else to do. I've tried helping myself the best I can...but there's nothing more I can do all by myself.