The abuse began with my mother

From as far back as I can remember, the abuse in my life began with my mother. She was an insecure very dominating woman who tried to come across to family and friends as being a “mom of the year” type of character. No one ever believed me she had an entirely different side to her other than my father. Whenever she was angry at her life, or at my father, I was the one who got the abuse. Screaming, beatings, hair pulling was quite commonplace, but she also double abused. Once she would beat on me it didn’t stop there, she took quite the pride in making sure when my father came home I got the belt as she would stand there smug and in laughter proud of watching me in pain. She tried to control everything in my life from who I was friends with, where I went, what I said to people, what I wore and how I wore my hair, she needed control and perfection, standards set that no matter what I did, I would “never live up to”.

At the age of 12, as I started entering Jr. High and going through all of those awkward phases, I was being molested in swimming class, teased and hair pulled on the school bus, and also other scary altercations involving a gal holding razor blades and threatening to cut me. No matter what abuse I took at the school, my mother would not defend me, she always told me “It’s you, what are you doing that people would want to do this to you”. It seriously took until I was in my 30’s and my abusers apologised to my mother about how they treated me before she finally “believed” what I had said as a child. Unfortunately never feeling safe and protected by your mother and never feeling your words are true, took a heavy toll on me. By the time I reached age 15, I was in full rebellion from her abuse, I became to a degree abusive myself throwing punches at things in my bedroom every time I needed to vent frustrations; it was a learned behavior.

When I got pregnant at age 18 out of HS and in my own apartment, my mother flew into a rage, she called me every horrible name in the book, stating I ruined the “family name”, and her 1950’s growing up image came into being. She verbally abused me so badly that one night I laid in the bathtub which a razor blade planned my suicide and reached out to God one final time and asked him that if anyone on this earth loved me to please have them call me or I was going to die that night, and then my father called me up. I didn’t tell him until many years later that he saved my life that night.

Over the years and I am now age 51 her toxicity and abuse has remained, of course it’s not physical anymore, it’s verbal puns, digs, and painful things she does. I’ve never been able to make her happy, make her proud, make her love me. She enjoys and relishes in tormenting me emotionally. For example, recently, she gave my sister in law flowers and a gift card for accomplishing “management position”, however, after going through LPN school, I didn’t even get a congratulations from her. Why do I even keep looking for something that will never happen from her? I don’t get it. Even at this age, I keep looking for something that will never happen.

Because of all of this abuse, I made really bad decisions in my early years and hooked up with abusive alcoholic men, I never felt I deserved to be treated better in my life. I endured marital physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, guns to be head, threatened, dominated. I broke away from most of this by age 30 recognizing that I deserved better than a life that made me want to die each and every day. I still cry every time I see happy parents because in my life I will never know what it’s like to have a child with a supportive man, all I know is being alone, pregnant, and being tormented emotionally and physically.

What makes things so very difficult to deal with is that my alcoholic exe’s take no accountability, no responsibilities for the things that they did, rather instead, they blame “me” for their failed lives, for “ruining their lives” as they call it. Likewise, my mother takes no responsibility for all she did either, claiming “she was the best mom”. My mother’s friends and other family that don’t know the underside of her “mother-daughter jealousy syndrome”, thinks that she is the best person in the world, she keeps her dark side well hidden away from society, so when I have approached other family about the “side” of her I know, they all make me feel like I’m “insane”. Both of my brothers are alcoholics and my mother will do everything in her power to protect them rather than try to help them deal with their addictions, both have been in trouble with the law on numerous occasions, one in and out of psych wards and in and out of jail. When that brother attacked me and tried to strangle me while he was drunk, I put him in jail and my mother wouldn’t speak to me for over 8 months, made me feel that I did something very bad, even though my brother beat her and my father very badly. She has forgiven all of that in her life.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t blessed with any good mother-in-laws either, my first one was an alcoholic who did everything to provide the “sickness” to her son, and not wanting him to get better in life, she had a strange relationship to him, like watching him standing in the shower when he was in his 20’s, she wanted to keep him ill and baby him and make anyone who was with him believe that “they were the problem”, he is now close to the end of his life, perhaps a chapter of pain I will soon be able to put behind me. My second mother in law was a cultist Christian, a dangerous woman who took only certain chapters of the Bible out and the rest was disgarded. She had no love for her son, the one I married, and didn’t believe in accepting people into her life that were not “blood”, so she wasn’t ever going to accept me or my children into her life. She passed away now about 3 years ago and my husband was able to start bonding with his dad but the pain caused by her will never be forgotten.

I realized at a young age that I do have a “caregiver” and “co dependant” personality and this combination has attracted not only exes that have had addiction problems, but friends that have many issues as I found myself over the years always trying to “fix” people, when really the person who needed help was me. As I aged, I used this “caregiver” side of me to my advantage and became a worker in the home care system to help elderly and disabled adults, it’s proven to be a good thing aside from a few bad eggs here and there I’ve had to deal with that sell their meds for drugs, or don’t take their meds like they should, etc. I’ve longed felt that I have a heart that is “too big for this cruel world” that I have dealt with during the years of my life.

My second husband and I struggled with raising 5 kids from two different families, both other parents being alcoholics ourselves and the children struggled with abuse; the courts didn’t seem interested in trying to protect the kids but we did everything we could. Still, we have adult children now who struggle with addiction and one particular son is very abusive to us to the point we had to take out an OFP against him which of course has raised complications into an already complex family situation. That particular son has been through everything from pot, ten years of mentally tormenting us with a meth addiction, causing us almost 50,000 loss, and now hes a drunk just like his biological dad who is dying and he married a woman who is a drunk who came from a drunk who is dying as well.

I am lost, I truly am, I feel depressed many times and I try to hide all of the things that go through my mind. I am damaged from the years and years and years and years all of these things have gone on and on in my life. A part of me wants it all over with, wants all of these people just to be gone off this planet so that they cannot do anything more. A part of me wants to pack up and move out of this area so I don’t have to hear from nor deal with any of these people anymore just so I can start fresh but there are family and grandkids here that do not cause me pain that I don’t want to leave. I can’t begin to tell you just how much I am tired of people making me feel that “I am to blame” or making me feel that “I’m insane” or that I should just “be the bigger, better person” and deal. At age 51, I just want to work on me, I want to heal and don’t know where to even begin at this age. Perhaps just writing my story was the first step in ackowledging my life situation and where to begin. I am so tired and beat down by all of these addicts in my life.
I have survived all of it, I’m still here, and I never succumbed to becoming an addict over all of it, but I have deep huge pain inside of me from all of it that I can only hold in so long before I fall into a few days of crying to work through it until the next time it comes out. It’s been a long painful life.

(((Feelinglostinlife))))

Hi, welcome to Psych Central. I am so sorry you faced so much abuse in your life and so many dysfunctional people that used you to take their anger out on.

I am sorry that you could not find an individual you could trust and instead ended up experiencing one dysfunctional partner after another. The disease of alcoholism and addiction is extremely difficult to deal with be it in a spouse or a child. I know this well myself in that when someone struggles with this challenge it consumes them even if they are trying to stay sober. I married a binge alcoholic and that was hell and even though I put my foot down and he got sober, he is still very wrapped up in staying sober and being with others who are also working on that constantly. Truth is, I have always been lonely in my relationship that revolves around this problem.

The good thing I am seeing you beginning with this post you have written is how you are finally deciding to look at yourself and have this desire to finally heal and find help for yourself. You need to find your way towards giving yourself permission to break free of these dysfunctional individuals. You need to come to a level where you can accept that your mother is NEVER going to see all her faults and how she constantly took HER problems out on you.

It is probably both triggering and potentially healing to talk about all these painful things. You are a VERY strong person to survive it all and live to see your grandkids. Young children are so sweet and provide joyful moments when we least expect it. As time goes on--I hope you feel a little less lost though I know some troubles never completely go away. I encourage you to continue to post because I think it helps.

I can relate to what you are saying about your mom, FeelingLost. Ditto. Me too. And all the other terms associated with it.
Last time my Ma hit me, I knocked her on her hiney and her wig flew off. Told her that was the last time she would ever touch me. That was...oh...50 years ago, give or take. She is dead now. No loss.

Your mom was the beginning. She does not have to be your end.

Anyway...like me, you will have to come to terms that your mom was/is mentally ill. Once you do that...maybe you can move on like I did.

Thank you. I guess I should have stated that in my second marriage I did find a wonderful man, we've been married 25 years and he is not an addict, it was the relationships prior to him that were spent with addicts. My husband is a very supportive person in my life and is a rock I need to get through all of these things. I had to reach a point in my life to be able to say that "it's OK" for me to walk away from toxic individuals, even if they are family to be able to break the stigma of socially accepted "make the best of things" even if it means get yourself beat down. I know I will find my sense of freedom once I get beyond all of the tears but it's a start, a start I've long needed.

They say "sharing your story and owning it" is the first step to the healing process...or so I've heard it said that way. I've never shared all of this stuff and of course there is much more I've seen and dealt with but this post gives people the just of it in a smaller much less condensed version. My grandchildren give me more joy than anything on this earth and I love every moment I get to spend with them.

I'm sorry you also experienced the damaging effects of what mothers can do to their children. Once I get over my initial pain and as time goes on and the freedom from her takes effect, it will become easier I'm sure of that, just as it was when I walked away from my very abusive alcoholic first spouse, life does get better. I have hope and I will not allow her to "be my end".