"Don't talk about it."

Last night I spoke to one of my aunts who commented on how I make allusions to my mother in public forums. She asked me not to do this, as this was “not me”. I paid her lip service, but I am honestly growing weary of this idea that just because the woman reluctantly (and I do mean reluctantly) gave birth to me, I am supposed to hide her sins against me.

Since when did a child not have the basic rights to being loved and treated decently? Everyone has that right, but it seems that few have that privilege.

I find it ironic that my mother and her sisters could treat their mother abhorrently for years, not to mention continue to lie about their actions towards her (even though the kids remember), yet expect nothing short of silence from their children on the subject of how said children were abused. I’m tired of the denial. My mother is a narcissist, she has borderline tendencies, and she has forcefully and deliberately messed up my life for years. So I’m living with her for a few months. So what? If she had signed my damn financial aid forms so I could go to college right out of high school, I’d be on a completely different path, and I would never have set foot back here.

She knows what she’s doing with her little offers of “help”. “Helping” me makes her look good to others right now, you can be for damned sure that every person whose opinion matters to her knows about her “wayward” daughter who, despite all of the tireless efforts from my mother, has not been able to get her life together. Notice that the truth does not come into play here.

How do you explain to someone who knows what the love of a parent means, not to mention feels like, what it’s like to be so badly abused and manipulated that your life has been practically undone? Most people hear the word “mother”, and think “nurturer”. Yeah, in an ideal world. But the truth is, some mothers are awful. They should not have had kids. They abuse their kids, they seek to use their kids for their own pleasure, and they blur the lines between themselves and their children…all of these things with disastrous results.

I’m sorry, but I am not going to keep quiet anymore. I truly feel that denial will cost me my life, or worse, the future of my son. Holding all this in has created something toxic within me. It is not healthy. It is not healthy to be around me when I’m suppressing this. I have to deal with it, get it out.

And unfortunately for Mom and her ardent supporters, that means telling the truth about her.

So the woman has money and an outward appearance of respectability. To me she was a monster. Who is anyone to tell me that I should not speak of that? Or that speaking of that is “not me”? You mean it’s not the aspect of my character that you are used to. Well, I’m sorry. Things change. And if I ever want my life to change, I have to be truthful about that which is not working.

I was abused. Severely. Physically, emotionally and psychologically. Ignoring this will only continue the cycle, and perhaps my son means more to me than I meant to my mother. I mean, at least I was happy he was on the way. I grew up hearing how pissed my mother was when she found out she was pregnant with me. Am I the only one who finds that significant? 

Don’t talk about it, indeed.