My Mother

My mum makes me so angry and I can't exactly explain why! Every time I have a conversation with her I feel like we are on two different planets. She has a completely illogical way of thinking about everything and thinks she is the ultimate wisdom on any matter. She cant just have a conversation, she has to feel like she is enlightening me somehow. The thing is: half of what she says, everyone knows already and the other half is a load of rubbish.

I think the fact that she works in mental health makes it all so much worse because she feels she knows so much but she's actually pretty fucking clueless. It makes me so angry to hear her going on about her patients with disdain and such a lack of understanding about how it is to have mental health problems. At times like this I remind myself why I have never shared with my family that I have DID.

I so often think: "what happened to the mum I used to have, who I was so close to?". But maybe she was always this way. Maybe I just didnt see it then. There were always a few memories that I couldn't really fit in with my picture of a wonderful mum so I have just always held them in a separate section and the closest I have gotten to explaining them is: "She didn't know how doing those things would have made me feel bad". Like the way she used to force me down and sit on my arms and legs and tickle me until I was crying and screaming and even then not stop. Maybe it wasn't just fun and me being too sensitive. Perhaps, after all, that isn't a very nice thing to do to someone?

Recently I have been questioning my theories about my Mum and coming to doubt as to whether the rosy picture I had of her is realistic. Certainly there are plenty of examples of times she acted in a damaging way towards me.

I see flashes of the insanity of my grandmother who abused my mother and was in and out of mental institutes more times than I had holidays as a child... that's not a good analagy actually as we only went on a couple of family camping trips.

I thought these were new flashes, that only started after my parents broke up in my early twenties. I had feared she was going crazy. But I am beginning to doubt this theory too. I think she has always had that side to her. She has always had that scary streak-like-her-mother in her.

Perhaps my memory is the one to blame here. Or moreso my refusal to acknowledge those times where she hurt me to feel power as just that. Times where she hurt her own child to make herself feel powerful.

Maybe thats why I feel so full of rage when I try to have a normal mother and daughter catch up chat.