Innerzone!,

Ok, but we have a winner: my mother can be quite delusional, but not really bordering on bizarre, just plain wrong. Lot's about my father, me and my sister. Really strange stuff about my sister. Kicked me out when I still lived with her. Put all my stuff on the pavement. She is more like BP-II with some BDP traits. Used to steal a lot. Her depression is severe and masked by somatisation. Hoarding: check. She is always out and about. By necessity or conviction spent very little on our clothes and stuff, when we were young, very frugal, then buying lots of stuff impulsively, much of it also food that eventually had to be thrown away.

But I understand how your mother probably screwed you up more.

The other thing with my father however, was that he trained or taught us to basically always treat my mother as some crazy menace which could be ordered around like a slave, pretty much. My mother is really BP-severe caring (not the fun hypomanic one) and feels a lot of BP-severe guilt a lot of the time, so my father also really screwed her up more. Being children, we kinda went along with it, I am ashamed to admit.

The really screwing me up by my father started when he saw my mother in me. He did everything to stop me becoming as "crazy". His idea of crazy however, went beyond normalcy to some very rigid, suffocating state for me to be in. Someone who he was (and is) comfortable being. His techniques including mild but impressive physical abuse and a lot more of manipulation and stuff. I became a shadow of who I really was at that time.

Since his actions were also given in by this inability to live outside this very conscientious, rational, monotonous frame of mind he felt at ease with but which was suffocating us, he has felt very guilty ever since.

And I have now learned I should never feel guilty for making good use of that. Repaying his debt will last a lifetime. Pretty much all I am willing to help him with is to ease his guilt.

I don't hate him for it.