And things take a turn for the worse...

Today, for the first time in nearly six years, I talked to my mother about what she did to me when I was a kid.

I didn't mean to do it, and it did not go well.

It started because she made a comment about T putting thoughts in my head re. something really benign. I could have just let it go, but I didn't. I felt the need to defend T and to defend myself that I wasn't lying or being manipulative (her labels for me ever since childhood) and also just that I'd been thinking about my childhood stuff recently and it was fresh and hurting.

So naturally I burst into tears. I hate that phrase but that is literally what happened. I told her T didn't put into my head the way she'd kicked me out when I was thirteen and the stuff she'd said to me, that she would "wash her hands of me" and I wasn't her daughter anymore and how she had my stepdad drop me off at my dad's work and he wasn't even there. T didn't tell me she did that. It happened.

And then my stepdad started yelling at me that I was making this up and it never happened and my father had just put these ideas into my head and he started swearing at me. My mom said yes, maybe she hadn't been a perfect parent, but I was the one who had planned this, I was the one who left her, I was the one who refused to go back (true), and I was a grownup and should have known better.

I was thirteen.

I told her this, and she said ever since I was a kid I'd always wanted to be treated like an adult and I'd made the adult decision of leaving her (wrong; I made the "adult decision" of deciding I didn't want to be hit and terrorized anymore) because I didn't want to follow the rules and it was my fault and I can't have it both ways.

I kept saying she was the parent and I was the kid and kids make mistakes and she kept saying, "So do parents," and I shouldn't have held it against her and I shouldn't have said the things I said or behaved the way I did and my stepdad kept yelling at me and finally I just lost it and told her how much pain she'd caused me and how I'd never been able to get her words out of my head, telling me I was manipulative and a liar and that she'd wash her hands of me and I wasn't her daughter anymore and to get out, and how hurt I felt that my own MOTHER said this to me.

And she started crying and said I had no idea what it was like to have your own daughter leave you like that and how hurt she'd felt.

And actually, I do have an idea. It's what I've felt guilty for all these years. I know it must have been so sad and awful for her, especially since she simply didn't have the capacity to see that what she did was wrong. She just didn't. And I never wanted to hurt her. Or make her cry like this.

I don't know how to fix it. I want to call T, but I know T doesn't want me to call her and I've used up my free emergency pass on less dire emergencies than this, and also she wouldn't return my call until Tuesday when I'm seeing her anyway. But ugh, just leaving her a message in her voicemail would help. I mean, I'm calm now; I'm not hysterical anymore. But still...this. I don't know how to fix it.

Yearning,

How did you leave things with your mom? Do you feel relieved that some of this is in the open now, so you don't have to hide your feelings?

It sounds like there's a lot of hurt on both sides. But, your mother was the adult and you were the child, no matter how mature you thought you were are the time.

I hope this leads to a deeper relationship between you and your mom. A reconciliation that is real and based on acknowledging the truth, rather than a relationship that is based on erasing past hurts.

You were brave to bring it up with your mom!

Your mom seems like she is truly sorry, and that she was hurt too and didn't know how to handle it.

It seem like when you get to that age, you will be more emotionally mature than she was.

Thank you for sharing your story. It's very touching.

Reconciliation and healing of old wounds is a journey, in a way. It won't be fixed tonight. Each step, each conversation, lays the framework for, hopefully, a stronger relationship.

No...I wish it could be like this, but no. She's sorry I was hurt, but that doesn't mean she's acknowledged any of the hurt she caused. She refuses to acknowledge it even happened. Like when I brought up specific things, she said they never happened and that was just my dad feeding me lies. It's because she feels too guilty about hurting me so her brain is trying to protect herself by making her forget the stuff she did, and I know that, and I know I can't fix it. But I wish she could just see it.

Your mother didn't even care about how all of this hurt you? She only cared about how it hurt her? She's so incredibly selfish. When do you see your T next? I wish I could give you a big hug and tell you it will all be okay. I am so sorry.

It's not that she doesn't care. It's that she doesn't SEE. And I understand this because I used to be like that too when I was in a really bad place; my own pain was so overwhelming that I couldn't see past it to see other people's pain. I get it. And I feel terrible for the pain I caused her, which I know was real and significant. But she has two children. I only have one mother. She has a husband and a father and an uncle and two brothers and a son and all these other people who took her side in this and supported her. No one supported me. No one. Not even my father. No one believed me. No one listened. No one cared. I was alone.

Seeing T on Tuesday and have no idea how I'm going to get through the next two days functioning like a normal person. And I also am foreseeing some frustration because I have way more to tell her than I can fit into 50 minutes. No clue how I'm going to deal with that...

I'm so sorry.

And I just read some of your other posts on another thread about how your mother behaved when you were little.

She sounds like a ridiculously immature person and it's a miracle that you try to see things from her point of view, and yet she does not do the same for you. Where did you learn to be compassionate? I don't believe it was modeled correctly for you.

I don't mean to make this about me, but I have an estranged relationship with "family" members who raised me. The patriarch had my dog killed. I put family in quotes because their treatment toward me doesn't deserve to be called family.

None of them would acknowledge what they did. I'm sure they'd say I'm making it up, especially because once I brought up former incidents and they accused me of lying.

I think that's a clear sign of emotional abuse, actually, which is saying that someone is lying.

You deserve so many good things and blessings.

I'm sorry you went through that too, PeeJay. And I think when someone says the other person is lying, it's because they are too overwhelmed and too afraid to face the truth of what they did and the pain they caused, because they don't know how to handle it; they just don't have the tools. So you can have compassion for that, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

Compassion is something we all have, I think. Just sometimes our own needs are too overwhelming for us to see past them and be able to look through another person's eyes. This was definitely the case with me. When people are scared, they can just see their own fear, and it clouds their judgement. When people can acknowledge their own feelings and their own pain/guilt and be in touch with themselves and sit with those difficult emotions, then the compassion innate to all of us can shine through.

It's tough. But I have a really wonderful T.

The thing is, she was trying to listen. She really was. She just didn't know how to hear it. She doesn't have the tools.

I want to say a million things but 999,999 can be summed up with a hug if you want one, because you deserve so much support along with applause for your bravery and honesty.

As for the other one thing: it is your mother's fault she does not have the tools. I was not being good enough to my daughter. I got my *** into therapy, and I made a fool of myself, day after day, latching onto my therapist, begging and pleading for the tools to keep my temper and be a better mom. Where there is a will, there is a way. Try not to own responsibility for hurting your mother, just because she is not doing her sacred job of holding the responsibility for not hurting you.

And I think actually I'm less angry at her and more angry at my stepdad. I mean, my mom I can forgive because she's my mom and I love her and she doesn't know any better. But my stepdad does know better. I think he was always the worse one because he had a temper but no guilt after the temper manifested itself, which was always more scary. Also that he works with kids all the time and everyone who meets him thinks he's wonderful and perfect and would never believe me if I said he'd hurt me.

I told about the abuse not after something my mom had done (well, sort of) but after something he'd done. I'd done something pretty bad that I would say deserved some sort of punishment, except that I felt so darned guilty about it already that more punishment wasn't needed, but obviously my parents didn't know that.

So anyway I was twelve at the time, and my mom had told me to go to my room, but I didn't want to go so she was physically trying to put me in my room and she was shoving me really hard and I banged my head on my dresser and got a really nasty cut above my eye. I told her I wasn't going to put up with this anymore, and I started to walk down the stairs, and she grabbed my legs and I was holding onto the railing and I was scared I was going to fall and somehow I ended up on the ground in the hallway with her on top of me and restraining my arms and sitting on my legs.

I was fighting her and trying to get her off me so I could get up and walk out the door and she called my stepdad to help her. My stepdad is a really big guy and he's a karate teacher so he is also really strong. He helped her hold me down but he also took off my pants - so I couldn't run out the door? My mom also threw my shoes out the door, so I don't know...but he took off my pants and threw them in the laundry room and I was crying and screaming and trying to get them back but I couldn't move because they were pinning me down and it was terrifying.

I don't know why he took my clothes; he'd never done that before but it was scary and I couldn't figure out what it meant so I knew I had to get out of that situation and I started planning how I would tell someone. First I told my dad that my mom had given me the cut over my eye. He didn't believe me; nothing happened. So I came up with a more sophisticated way to tell a teacher...that did not turn out too well either, but that beside the point.

That situation was always so confusing to me. My former T thought CSA, but I am 100 000% sure that never happened; it was only that one time and I have no clue why. Maybe not everything has to have a meaning? But it was scary enough, and my mother watched and did nothing. I was twelve. It was bad enough.

I know this is true, but I also have compassion for her. I see that she is just too overwhelmed with her own pain to see it. And I understand. Admitting she hurt me is too scary for her right now, and I get that. I forgive her for it. It's just...ugh...it HURTS!

And the other thing is that I'm not seeing T until Tuesday evening. I'm supposed to be volunteering all day Tuesday and I have no clue how I'm going to keep my head in the game instead of fretting about this whole situation. I'm thinking of backing out of that obligation just because of all the anxiety I'm feeling now...which would be WRONG, but it is definitely what I want to do right now. I want to spend tomorrow and Tuesday being calm and taking it easy instead of running around with kids, even though I LOVE kids. I guess I'll sleep on it and see how I feel tomorrow, but right now I am totally not up for doing anything other than laying in bed, reading a book, doing some schoolwork, or hanging out on here. Definitely not up for being around other people. Ugh...

Yearning, sweetie, you are being so hard on yourself. Oh my god. You can back out of Tuesday's obligations, you can curl up with a book, you can drink hot chocolate all day. You are allowed to have some comfort in all of this. You can call your T if it would help to leave a message, I promise you have not used up all your emergency calls. Just be gentle with yourself. This is awful stuff. There is pretty much no way to work through it without having some terrible times. You deserve comfort and compassion and kindness in those terrible times and in general. Take the time you need to take care of yourself.

I need to say that in my book what your stepdad did is a form of sexual abuse. Ripping someone's pants off in anger, against her will, just to demonstrate your power over her, is a kind of implied sexual threat. It sounds terrifying. Even if it was an isolated incident and nothing like that happened before or since, it is very abusive. Even if there was never any other element of sexual touching, this is a kind of sexual humiliation and it's deeply violating. He was a big strong martial arts guy and he couldn't find a better way to keep a twelve year old girl from leaving the house? The fact that it even occurred to him to rip off your pants suggests a kind of messed up thinking that must have manifested in other ways at other times.

I think that knowing that other people have experienced more extreme and overt sexual abuse might give you (and others like your CAS worker) a tendency to minimize what happened to you. But that isn't fair. What happened to you truly horrible.

It is terribly mean for your mother to turn this around and make this about her hurt. It was and is her job to take care of you, not vice versa. Immature adults often cannot see the huge power differential between themselves and their children. They treat their children as though they were adults with equal power in a fight. As though it was your job, at twelve, to look after their feelings. No, it was their job to look after yours. It sounds like you have internalized that sense of responsibility for your mother and you are trying to excuse what she did by saying she didn't know better. That is the way a parent talks about their child.

It's okay to take a few days off to rest. I have a volunteer job and sometimes I do, too. This stuff is hard and if you need a few days off, there's no reason you should be guilty for taking it.

This makes me so ****ing angry. But that's my stuff. I also have a mother who really struggles to take responsibility for anything she did and anytime i try to speak about it she reflects it back to me, what i could have done better, how i'm making her feel by dragging all this up. I had to give up in the end. I know that she knows fine her failings and i know she's not and probably never will be ready to deal with it.

So for now all i can do is fix me. I know my truth. And with therapy, the stronger i get, the more i win because eventually i won't have those ghosts following me everywhere i go.

You might have to give up on your mother for now. And for sure your step-dad needs to STFU. You might get a better result speaking to your mom alone. None of the excuses she made are valid for her treatment of you. You were always the child, she was always the adult. She never acted out of love, not real love. That's why she can't/won't face it.

You don't need to feel compassion for her, that's not your job. You are allowed your anger, hate, sadness, resentment or anything else. You are not responsible for your parents wellbeing. Stuff them, this is your time, the world is your oyster, you are young and clever and you can do anything. It's great you're in therapy, because it will allow you to drop this heavy baggage you carry.

My advice is concentrate on you, be selfish, do what makes you happy, get yourself away from these people who are abusive and toxic, and surround yourself with people who love you and see your worth.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I DID make all this stuff up in my head, just because it's all so vivid...I know that doesn't make any sense, but when the other people who went through it with you can't/won't admit it happened, and when literally no one ever believed you about it...it's tempting to think that.

And I want to call T, but I also know I'll feel super guilty about it if I do, especially since she told me a few weeks ago not to call. She will be much more proud of me if I go in tomorrow and tell her about this really, really horrible thing and I wanted to call her but I didn't because I was respecting her boundaries. I want to call her, but I also want her to be proud of me. So, that. I can be strong myself, I think. Or at least I can try. Y'all help.

It's called gaslighting when abusers deny your reality. If you google it, you can find a lot of great info on emotional abuse.

Yes, exactly this. But I don't think she's doing it on purpose. I think she genuinely doesn't remember because her mind has tried to block it out to protect her. I just wish she could see it, but I know I can't make her. I mean, they really think that they didn't "kick me out" but I "left" and "people say things in anger [such as 'I'll wash my hands of you' or 'you're not my daughter anymore'] all the time and can be forgiven for it," and it was me who stayed away. Which is true, to a point. But they can't get it through their heads that I was a thirteen year old child and not a grown up adult.

I know that I did hurt them, and I feel awful about that, and maybe there were some things I could have/should have done differently. And I can see how they really would see the situation differently, as a normal thing to take me to my dad's work when they were mad at me and it was my choice to stay away. I can really see that perspective and understand their pain. I just wish they could understand mine.

(((((((( Yearning0723 ))))))))

Read some things on this website. I think your mother is very narcissistic.

Gaslighting - Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

In my opinion, CSA does not HAVE TO include actual S events. The fact that your stepdad removed your pants is quite concerning to me. It put you in a very vulnerable position. But why do you say that your stepdad "knew better," while your mother didn't? They were both responsible, as far as I am concerned, for parenting (and non-parenting) you. Gentle hugs.

Thanks for the link, HazelGirl. Sometimes she fits that to a T. But other times she's absolutely wonderful. That's the hard part.

My mother always got defensive whenever I tried to talk to her about how what she did (or didn't do) affected me. I realized (after many years of therapy) that I could not get her to change her behavior. I could only change my response to her behavior. She's been dead almost 11 years, and I still yearn for the mother I never had.

Part of the website talks about that.

Check this out. Does this sound like the inner conflict you have?

Narcissistic Mothers Being Nice - Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers