In the Beginning...

I am 61...and I am tortured by a demon that is my mother.  As she ages, it grows worse and worse.  I have dug deep into the wells of my soul to find forgiveness but as her behavior grows more and more erratic and her mind twists into plots things that are not even reality, I find I struggle harder against anger, something very near hate, and grief.  The years have been a wasteland of manipulation, deception, long silences meant to punish, fault finding, division, gaslighting and all the other lovely things a narcissist employs to twist their victims in webs.

I have only recently discovered my mother's psychological profile.  I have  come to see that what she is has nothing to do with me.  I have  learned that it really isn't me who is broken or faulty or wrong.   It took me this long to learn that there are many others who have heard the same phrases repeatedly, have dealt with similar situations.  Praise for the internet and psychologists who reach out through YouTube to try to bring healing to many who suffer at the hands of narcissists.

I am here to purge my soul.  To dig out the roots that want to grow into bitter trees clogging my heart and mind.  To quiet the voice that has been screaming at me for as long as I can remember.

As with most things, I want to start at the beginning...

My memory goes far back, as far back as 1 or 2.  I do not recall my mother ever speaking to me with love.  In stories she tells of me as a baby, I hear only of the huge amount of pain she felt in labor with me, her voice filled with bitterness.  I hear of what I know now, having raised my babies, and watched my grandchildren grow, is normal childhood developmental behavior, but in retelling of my first explorations I am described as stubborn, willful, rotten.  No fond memories of first words, first steps nor of cute things said.  "That T....!" she will begin in a tone that leaves no doubt what is about to come will not be a happy memory.

Despite all this, a child has more hope and expectation of being loved than any other age.  I survived in a blissful ignorance.  It was not until I was 5 and in the hospital for a tonsillectomy that things began to become increasingly clear to me.

To say I was unprepared for what was ahead of me with this minor operation would not be an understatement.  I remember crying and calling for Mama as they wheeled me down the hallway.  No reassuring hand, no quiet soothing words were spoken.  Instead the moment I was back in my room, dazed, confused and in pain,  Mama began complaining of how awful I'd behaved.  "I've never been so embarrassed in all my life!  How could you behave like that?!"   It went on and on.  My father was more sympathetic.  He asked if I'd like ice cream?  Would I like for him to rent a tv so I might watch cartoons?   Mama was angered by his attentions to me and his sympathy.  I didn't 'deserve' those things, hadn't I behaved horribly?   He was just wasting money to spend it on me...They began to fight and I was finally left alone, feeling a guilty relief.  And I do mean alone.  There was no adult spending the night at the hospital with me...

At age 6, I went to school.   Each day we were given a nickel to buy a carton of milk for our afternoon snack.  It was something every child in the classroom received.  One day I went forward in the line, holding my hand out for my nickel.  The teacher shook her head.  "I'm sorry, but your Mama said no more milk for you.  She says you are too fat!"  The whole class burst into laughter.  "Fatty fatty" became words that haunted me the rest of my life...Do I blame the teacher?  I do partly.  She might have said it privately, or simply said "I'm sorry, your Mama didn't send any money for you this week."  But instead she repeated the exact words my mother had used.

In looking back at photos I can see that I am a little plump, just slightly heavier than the other girls but not fat.  And yet, that feeling that I was not normal, not as pretty, not up to par in my appearance began to grow.

It was this same year in which my mother began to complain daily over my hair.  It was 'straight as a stick" and 'crawls all over the place'.  I wore a short cut with bangs, something like a short page boy all my growing up years, even in the first picture I was ever allowed to see of myself (about age 1).  It was obvious this was the nature of my hair but this particular year, Mama became dead determined to change it.

What ensued can only be described as a weekly torture.  Every Saturday, I was subjected to pin curls, bristly curlers, the sort of curlers that had snap on covers, foam rollers, rags.  She tried sugar water to stiffen my hair, as well as beer, and Dippity Do, a gel like setting cream, VO5 which made my hair look lank and oily, various shampoos that promised to bring out a wave.  With each session, my hair was pulled, teased, combed out, snatched.  I was/am tender headed.  Naturally I cried out or complained.  And received many a slap and was told to "Shut up!  I'm NOT hurting you...Your hair is horrible.  I'm trying to make you pretty..."   The obvious message at that point being that I was not pretty...My hair was wrong.  I was fat. 

The ultimate hair horror came that year at Easter.  She gave me a home permanent.  Pictures of that time show me looking miserable in a too short Easter dress with a head of curls which my mother said "Looked like a poodle."  She stuck a big green velvet bow in the midst of the mess of hair that matched my dress.

We were living in a house which at that time had no running water.  We used chamber pots and an outhouse for our facilities.  It was my job to empty that chamber pot which was often full to brim as you'd pretty much expect with five people sharing a single vessel.  I would go down the front steps with the thing in hand trying to be very careful not to spill any of the contents.  However, Mama decided this was not a good thing.  She was ashamed for anyone to know the status of our lack of plumbing so she determined that I should carry the chamber pot out the back door.  Here there was a problem.  There were no steps.  The edge of the porch came to about my chest when I was standing on the ground.  I had to lift that filled pot off the porch and not spill it at the same time.  Generally if it did spill, it naturally spilled upon me.  No sympathy for any horror I felt at being splashed with urine and poop, no nor for having to change clothes.  I was reprimanded every single time even though what she asked of a six year old girl was truly a task beyond my capabilities.

The next year, we moved to a new area and a home that had indoor plumbing thank you very much.  We had a babysitter, a person with children of her own, where Mama dropped us off each day that summer.  I recall one day the woman mentioned her daughter Rosemary had helped mop the kitchen and on the way home Mama began to tell me how lazy I was and how selfish.  "Why can't you be more like Rosemary?  You could help at home!  But no, you're just lazy and selfish, never thinking of anyone but yourself."  Until that moment I'd never been allowed to help when asked.

From that moment on, it was my duty to wash the breakfast dishes, make my bed, sweep the kitchen, and reheat the supper she started before leaving for work each morning.  Not horrible tasks by any means but it was the bare tip of the iceberg of what became my duties as the years went on.  I was about 7 at this point.

By age 8 I was at home alone with my younger brothers each afternoon after school. In addition to the other tasks, I was also to mop the floors, dust, and iron a portion of the massive ironing pile each week.  I was  to help with meal prep on weekends.  There was no day off from chores.  Again, I'm not arguing about what a hardship it was...Only wanting to share the slow build up of responsibilities.

I remember at about this time, reaching into a hot oven to remove a cast iron pan of cornbread.  The hot pad slipped and the heel of my hand was badly burned, raising a large blister of 2 inches length.  No sympathy or balm from my mother.  Instead she spanked me for being 'stupid' and sent me outdoors to sob over my burn and threatened to spank me again if I told my father...Daddy was more protective of us than Mama, but that's another part of the story.

These were the first years when I became increasingly aware of my lack of desirability as a daughter and my only worthy role was that of a servant.

And that is the beginning...