Why I’m NC (no contact)

I’ve not written anything here past my initial introduction post, partly because I try to ignore that I have this in my past. I’m still estranged from my mother although I get a sense that people are trying to “patch things up.” These are people who either know what her issues are and ignore them or refuse to acknowledge that there’s anything wrong. I wonder if I’d been in an abusive romantic relationship and had gotten out, would they encourage me to return to my partner?

So I’ve had the BPD thing on the brain lately and I visited a site with message boards, etc. for people with BPD and those affected by someone else’s BPD. One thread caught my attention: how did your BPD parent drive you away? Many many people have answered and I’d like to answer there but frankly I’m paranoid about being followed. Which is why I’m somewhat anonymous here and why I feel okay C&Ping some of the reasons others have given that I share (with minimal editing for agreement & spelling).

- did not retain significant information about my life, seeing me only as a projection of herself rather than my own person.
- making me a party to [situations with my father]
- [constantly] instigated jealousy and conflict between me and my [brothers]
- exploited me financially
- punished me for refusing to participate in emotional incest
- infantilized me
- criticized me, with a hateful tone of voice and daggers in her eyes
- [was] possessive of me
- acted jealous and angry every time I tried to have relationships with other people in our family [and outside it], so that I felt guilty if I even thought about hanging out with another family member outside her presence
- refused to acknowledge and appreciate me for me-
- resented me for trying new things
- [got rid of] my dog[s]
- assaulted my self-esteem over a period of years, controlling me with shame.
- told me countless times how “X” I am and how I need to “Y” and how she’s saying this “for [my] own good
- going beyond comfortable boundaries [privacy, affection, etc.]
- terrified me / made me afraid of her
- demanded unrealistic behavior [from me]
- demanded unrealistic levels of communication
- used intentionally cruel, button-pushing words
- used silent campaigns
- turning family against me, always painting me as our family’s problem. IDEK how many times I was lectured for “not being able to get along with her” and “always causing so many problems” and “you should try harder to get along with her”
- made me feel incompetent
- raged over trivial/innocent matters
- displayed Jekyll/Hyde behavior / a different face for outsiders
- [was incapable of] emotional support
- told me I’m the one pushing her away

These are ones that are also true but phrased differently:

- Never knowing what to say, so she wouldn’t explode.
- No one I knew could have or would have taken me in, and I had the survival skills of an average twelve-year-old, and very little money… [Familial response was, “Well, I think it would be better for all concerned, if you don’t come back. Your presence is problematic.”
- When the phone rings and I think it MIGHT be her, my blood pressure skyrockets and I’m in full fight or flight mode
- I too get an acute anxiety response at the sound of the phone. I was so relieved when we finally got rid of our house phone because then it couldn’t ring

I admit, I don’t participate in stuff like this much but you’re kind of raised to feel alone, like no one will believe you or that you’re imagining the problems (or making something out of them that they aren’t). So to find so many people who have the same experience in words so accurate it’s useless to change them, is amazing.

Sidestep

For a long time I beleived that my father was a victim of abuse too. That he was simply caught up in a whirlwind of abusive and controlling women. His mother was apparently mentally ill and had even been committed when he was a child. My married my mother who had/has Paranoid Schitzophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder. Then, after he left that relationship, he found a string of other women, that in his words were nuts. I hate to think of what they must have been like given the measuring stick he apparently used for this. They were probaly normal because his own idea of normal seems to be whacked.

Then, he meets my step mother. For many years I tolerated her as she clearly hated me even though she said and did all the right things. She has always been a drama queen. Actually they both have. But it became apparant after I became the target of one of her rages (I had the nerve to want to spend christmas with them!) that she is a poster child for the Borderline Personality Disorder.

Recently though, as I was again trying to figure out what was wrong with me, trying to figure out why my father has done the things that he has done to me over the years it was pointed out to me that most BPDs like to hang out with other BPDs or even narcassists.

Well then! Research ensued. Similarities abounded and for confirmation I consulted a few people who are versed in this particular disorder. Well, it was as if the heavens opened and the Flying Spaghetti Monster lifted that huge weight off my shoulders.  My father is a narcissist. That explains a lot. Also, BPDs and NPDs “get” one another. They team up and forge ahead in the cruel cruel world, battling and raging and just being rotten assholes together! Match made in heaven!

I always wondered why I never rated anywhere in my dads life. Unless of course it somehow made him look good.  I wasn’t invited to his wedding. He couldn’t be bothered to tell me my grandfather had died until several months after the fact, I asked him how my grandpa was and the reply was “6 feet under”. I never know what is going on with them or his little family. He left me in the care of my mentally ill mother, who attempted to kill me more than once. I did live with him for a short time, after she came after me with a knife. But he kicked me out 6 months later because he was making a “choice” between his girlfriend of 8 months and me. I was 12. He had a hissy fit that I was getting married on the other side of the country, where 95% of the family invited lived and threatened not to come (after trying to bribe me to move it to toronto).  There is much more dysfunction but I’ve just stuck to the highlights here.

It’s almost refreshing to know that I’m not fucked up, abhorrent, evil or inheriently wicked afterall. Phew. Nice to know I won’t be burning in hell (if I beleived in that) like I’ve been told my whole life.

Apparently I just lost the parental lotto and got myself a pair of fucked up whackadoos.

Thankfully the whackadooishness didn’t completely carry over to me. Don’t get me wrong, I was one fucked up teenager and young adult. The ONLY thing going for me was that I met my now husband as a teenager and he proved to be my one and only rock. Without his constant positive influence in my life, I shudder to think of how I would have turned out.

Moving forward or sideways, at least its movement.

Hi there

Jennifer was kind enough to invite me to part of this blog and I want to thank her publicly before introducing myself: Thanks!

My adoptive mother has BPD. Sometimes she would lose control but never in public, rarely in front of anyone outside the family. But within the family, her “problem” is well-known but unspoken. She’s written nasty letters to people, she’s wished detailed, horrible deaths on her own friends and family, she’s taken a hammer to household objects when no one would listen to her and has been violent with me and likely my father as well (although I don’t remember seeing it, which isn’t to say I didn’t).

When people have asked me, “What’s BPD?” I answer, “Have you seen Mommy Dearest? It’s like that.” I know there’s a cult of people who think it’s funny — and to the outside observer, it probably is b/c the behavior is beyond ridiculous — but for me, it’s like a documentary. “Christina! Bring me the axe!” just makes me nod along.

I knew something wasn’t quite right probably when I was around 10 years old but didn’t have a name for it until I was about 23: borderline personality disorder. You could go down the BPD symptom checklist and just tic off all the boxes and that would be her.

I don’t have BPD. I have generalized anxiety disorder, which can be exacerbated by living in a household with someone who has BPD. You never know what you’re going to come home to. You never know what the next hour will bring. You never know what innocent comment will set off a verbal or physical tirade.

I’ve read lots of books and message boards about BPD but the best help I’ve found was having people to talk to: professional medical people and friends, some of whom (like Jennifer) have experienced BPD as well, although many haven’t even heard of it.

So maybe I’ll share a story soon. Or just navel-gaze. But you should know that if you’ve survived a BPD parent, this is a safe place to come.

Off kilter.

My father called tonight, out of the blue to tell me that they were going to Cuba for a week for a recovery vacation. I haven’t talked to him since Christmas day. Apparently there is no more cancer in his wife, I am very happy for them, very happy that she is on the road to recovery.

I’m not sure what to make of his call though.

He knew about the letter that his wife sent to me. He had to of because the letter was not in an envelope, and it was in the same bubble pack as her returned presents and the bracelet I sent him for Christmas that needs to be enlarged.

In the conversation, he never asked me if I got the parcel he sent that contained it. Was he fishing? Was he gauging how I reacted to it, how I was feeling? Did he even care? I know that he’s been reading my other blog, so I’ve been very careful to only post happy/shiny general posts about life on there. No link at all to here. I wouldn’t want him reading this. I don’t think that he’s ready to hear half of it. I’m not really sure he’d care anyway, except that I’m “airing” the dirty laundry.

He sounded….strained. Almost nervous.  I wonder if she knew he was calling, it was quite late, much later than he would normally call.

I was pleasant through the call, I asked after her, and I asked after his own health. I worry about him a lot, he has a lot on his plate, working taking care of her, his worry for her, and the stress.

I promised myself that I would not be like every other woman in his life. I will love him regardless of what he has done in the past, or hasn’t done. I will be polite, I will be civil. I will stand by him as he loves this difficult woman and let him know that I won’t be like them (his mother, my mother and now his wife).

I *was* upset over the whole Christmas debacle, but I understood. I was angry at the situation, I was angry because there were other, not so nice things going on, but I held my tongue between my teeth. Now I’m angry because his wife has taken the event and reinvented the facts to make me look like a horrible monster. Nothing makes me angrier than having people lie about me and twist the facts. My mother did that to me my WHOLE life.

I don’t put up with people like that in my current life anymore.  I don’t put up with that from the woman that gave BIRTH to me, I sure as hell won’t put up with it from a woman who married my father.

So, I am not responding to her. I am not addressing the lovely letter she sent, and I am not showing my father how it has hurt me. Mostly because I don’t know if he is HOPING that it upsets me so that he can go report to his wife….or if he is hoping that I won’t decide to cut him out of our lives.

I’d like to think it was the latter. The first one? Honestly from what I’ve seen him do in the past, it may just be the former. He so desperately wants her approval, which is tied up in the love and abuse she doles out on his head. He laps up and believes everything she says, and from what I have read about men that are emeshed in relationships like that, they allow their own sense of reality to become warped like theirs.

I just don’t know what goes on in his head.

I suppose it doesn’t matter what his motivation is either way.  I shouldn’t worry about what he is thinking, I should just be there for him. No matter what, be a rock for him that says, I’m here, we’re all here, we’re trying to be part of your life.

I look at my kids and I’m sad for them. I barely knew my paternal grandparents. They were never in my life growing up, and when they were, they were very hands off, arms length type of people it was a formal almost business like relationship. My maternal grandfather was probably the only real grandparent I had in the true sense of the word, he was a Dishrag dad too. I have so many wonderful memories of time spent with him hanging out in the back yard, going for hikes, telling me stories.  I’m glad that my husbands parents will be like that for my kids, but you have no idea how much I’d like my own dad to be doing those things too. Instead I think he’s going to be relegating himself to that business like grandparent. And it makes me really sad.

The cycle? It stops here.

That Look

You never get used to the “look”.

People often talk to me about their mothers. They tell me the lovely, heartwarming stories, about how they can’t go the day without calling her, cute little anecdotes about the sweet thing she just did last week. I hear about their family vacations, their traditions and how their mother is always there for them. I never hear stories of horror, pain or heartache.

Well, I do hear some heartache stories, but those stories are usually of early motherloss and the grief that flows from that.

I’m not sure which is worse. Growing up with a mother that hates you and tries to kill you or growing up with a loving, wonderful mother, only to loose her. To live out the remainder of your days missing that presence in your life.

For me, I ache with the wanting of that love, wanting that relationship, those memories. Every day. I’ll likely die with that ache in my chest. I mourn for it.

I do have a few surrogate mothers, one of which is my Mother in law, a beautiful woman who recognized early on that I needed a mother. She is probably the closest thing to a mother that I do have. The other surrogate mothers have usually been other women who have taught me things through life, maybe I only knew them for a few days, but they imparted something to me during that time.

It becomes difficult though, when new friends or acquaintances ask where my parents are. I give a vague answer. Sometimes they dig a bit, wanting to know more about me. When I get to the part where I say that I don’t talk to my mother anymore because she’s mentally ill, I get the “look”.

This can go two ways. The first is disgust in that I could abandon my mother when she needed me to take care of her, much like they beleive she took care of me as a child. The second of course is the “look”.

The majority of people think of mental illness in terms of depression or maybe addiction. They don’t tend to think of some of the darker aspects.

People can’t wrap their heads around the idea that a woman, even with a mental illness, can be capable of hurting her children. Statistically if a woman is convicted of killing her child, she will receive a harsher sentence than a man convicted of the same crime.  We have this notion that women come packed full of “maternal instinct” and therefore her crime is more heinous than the mans.  It’s bullshit.

The “look” comes when I start to talk about some of my experiences, when people start really asking questions.

Their face goes from being interested, to a blank expression and then usually turns incredulous. I never know how far I should go. Most of the time, I simply say that my mother is mentally ill, and it’s safer for everyone if we just didn’t have contact with her. Some people just seem to take the hint and leave it at that. But others? I get the look.

It makes me feel like I have something wrong with me.

Dish Rag Dads

This is the term used for the men or fathers that fall in love, and stay with women who have a borderline personality (BPD).

It’s sadly appropriate. My own father, who will be 60 next month was the child of a BPD, he married a woman with low functioning  BPD (my mother, who was also diagnosed with paranoid schitzophrenia) and then proceeded to marry another woman with higher functioning BPD.

I have watched him disappear. I have watched his joy being taken from his life, all the things that make him who he is. He used to be an avid motorcycle rider. She made him sell it.  He used to be involved with his side of the family, she has cut those people from his life. He is now standing by as my children and I are shoved out of his life.

But just watching, because that is all he is allowed to do. She keeps him on a short leash. Her needs are vast, she is waited on hand and foot. He does the dishes, laundry, cleaning, shopping and takes her to her many appointments. He commutes three hours a day to work (because she forced him to pick up and move to a retirement community), he works all day and does it all over again the next day.  He is her slave. She holds him bound to her with her illness using threats of her death, and loosing her love if he “misbehaves” or has a thought of his own. Just like all of the women in his life.

Except me that is. I hope one day he will see that. That I continue to love him, my father, no matter how much he has hurt me, how he has never been “there” for me because he has chosen her over me. I see his role as a victim, and like a victim, he is focused on survival. I cannot imagine the inner turmoil he may feel having his wife, his abuser make him choose once again to cut out the things that he loves. He likely does not see himself as a victim of abuse, as all of his needs and wants become reflected by his abuser. He ceases to exist.

Maybe he doesn’t mourn. Maybe he gets so wrapped up in the “drama” he convinces himself that her version of reality is the right one. This is what happens in abusive relationships, the abuser isolates their victim and fills their life with falsehoods and fear.

As a child grows up in a dysfunctional family, their world view is shaped by the reality that they see around them. If their mother is paranoid, this translates into a normal way of being to the kid. If they grew up with a mother who flew into violent rages, verbally abused them and threatened to take their “love” away unless they did what they told them to do, then that is their norm, their reality.It’s comfortable for them.

I grew up with this as my reality too, but I’ve grown from that. I learned through being involved with a loving man, and his family that this is NOT the norm, that I deserved more, that I don’t have to be like that in order to be happy. In fact, I’ve learned the opposite. I was NOT happy until I understood this disorder and distanced myself from family members that do have it. They create drama, conflict and heartbreak. I don’t want to put my own children through that.

It breaks my heart.

Punished for standing up for myself

After having grown up with a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder and/or Schizophrenia, it’s taken me a very long time to recover my sense of self worth, and develop my own personality. Sounds odd doesn’t it?  It’s not like I’m a teenager, still wading through all those hormones and discovering who I am. I’m 36.

However, when you grow up in a situation that can change from being pleasant and loving one moment to being potentially deadly in the next, you become what that person wants, a chameleon. Adapting to every topsy turvy situation in order to survive. You loose yourself in that, you become what other people want you to become because you are so desperate to be accepted.

How does one get their sense of self back?  It took me years of not only therapy, but strong loving support from other people even though I thought that there was nothing loveable about me.

I’ve been married for 17 years to a wonderfull man who grew up in a loving and supportive family. Even though they consider me part of their family, and love me as one of their own. I still have trouble with the fact that they do. I am constantly afraid of “being a burden”, I’m afraid of conflict.  Holy crap am I ever afraid of conflict. I love them. I don’t want them to “turn on me” so, I try not to rock the boat. When they get into one of their famous bellowing matches, I cower and try to pretend that I don’t exisit. For them, this is normal, they blow off steam and go on like nothing happened. They worked through their “issue” and moved on, surprisingly, still loving one another. There is no verbal abuse among them, they’re just really loud.

Things like this never happened in my house. There was always the threat of love being taken away, turned into absolute hatred and wishing for your death. It was done quietly, threateningly.

In healthy parental relationships, they watch their children grow into their own skin. They watch their individual personalities develop with joy, knowing that their children are unique.  I see this now in my own children. The very idea of holding my love for them hostage so they comply to my will sickens me. I look at them, and think, how could a mother try to kill her child? How could a mother use manipulation, threats of suicide and horrible horrible verbal lashings against their child? How could she tell her child she wished she’d just kill herself and get it over with?

I struggle with these things daily. I’d love to be one of those strong people that could just “write someone off” in my life. But even though I think about cutting off contact, there will always be that part of me that longs for those normal healthy relationships. The unconditional love of a mother and father. The acceptance, the pride, the joy. All the things that I deserved but never had growing up. The happy memories. Instead, I have HUGE voids of memory growing up, I remember the traumatic events, the horrible things done and said.

I’ve had no contact with my mother for three and a half years now, she decided to cut off contact with us.  It started with me, and moved to her sisters and mother. I find it rather ironic though. For YEARS I’ve begged for help from my aunts and grandmother in dealing with her. However she’s very high functioning in her illness, so she can hide it very well. For a lot of years, they thought that “I” was the problem child. Now that this has happened to them, they have turned to me for answers.

Lately though, I have been standing up for myself when it comes to my BPD step mother. My father enables her behavior to the tenth degree. Which makes things hard. Because my mother was also ill, it’s easy for them to say “Oh, well, she’s just like her mother”. The funny thing, is that I have soo many healthy relationships, I’ve been to psychologists, I’ve gotten a degree in Psychology…so I *know* that I’m not the crazy one.  The only people I have trouble with is my own parents (mother, step mother and father). Everyone else in my life? Normal relationships, in fact they are surprised with how much I *have* accomplished in my life given what I have been through.

Over the summer, my step mother sat in my home and lied to me, she harassed and humiliated my father in front of me and she insulted my family. I drew the line at the insults directed at my husband and children. I did not fire the first “shot”, but I certainly ended it.Or I thought I had. Apparently, I declared war.

After they left our home, they returned to their home to discover she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m sure that this sent her into spasms of joy. She as been “dying” of something or another since I’ve known her and has more than once declared that she was “saying goodbye” because her time is near. It’s been 20 years.

I sent her a care package, asked after her frequently and tried to be supportive from 2000 kilometers away. Previously, plans had been made for them to come to our home for Christmas. I inquired about these plans given the situation, I never got a straight answer from them, so I continued to ask when I did talk to them. This was construed as nagging and badgering. Had they said “NO” plans have been cancelled to come for christmas, I would have stopped asking and made other arrangements. This was tricky, as had “I” cancelled the plans, it would have looked like I was heartless, “abandoning” her in her time of need. I even suggested that we come to their home for Christmas.  Instead, this was seen as a horribly selfish act on my part. Now, considering that my husband is overseas for 6 months, and I wanted to ensure that my kids were with family for Christmas, yeah, I was going to get things sorted out so alternative arrangements could be made. But of course, no one considers that.

She accused me of thinking that she developed cancer to spite me and ruin my Christmas. The logic in that statement is absurd, and I made the mistake of pointing that out.  I was told that I had crossed a line, and communication ended there for the time being. I left it because if she was angry, she could tell me why in her own time, I didn’t feel comfortable in contacting her if she was so angry, I didn’t want to stress her out further given the situation.

I recently received a three page letter from her that can only be described as hateful and mean. I sent a scanned copy of the letter to several friends and have gotten a lot of eye opening feedback. One friend of mine who is a survivor of a BPD parent, relates completely to both the letter and the situation at hand. You have no idea how hard it is to try and relate stories like mine to people who are relatively normal. My husband gets it, but at the same time doesn’t. He has no idea what its like to grow up with a mother that would be absolutely thrilled if you DID off yourself for the attention it would bring her.

So, now I’m being punished for standing up to her, and I guess I have to decide where to go from here. While I do truly beleive that this is the end of that relationship, I have a hard time letting go of my father. I am so sad for him, I want him to be part of our lives. I want my kids to know him.   She has said that she won’t force him to choose, but indicating that she will stay somewhere else if we come to visit in her letter *is* basically forcing him to choose. I mean, who would force a person out of their home? She’s forcing ME to choose, which she knows that I will, forcing her out of her own home would be reprehensible.

So, because I called her out on her lies, refused to listen to her insult my husband and children and had the nerve to stand up for myself and ASK for something from her (a straight answer to their presence at Christmas), I am being made to suffer. I am having my father taken away from me because she has that power. She has over the years reminded me over and over again that it is only because of her that he and I even HAVE a relationship.

As I talked to my estranged aunts over the weekend about this, one of them (they’re twins and I was talking to them both on the phone, and yes I suck for not being able to tell them apart) asked me if he had really BEEN a father to me while I was growing up.

The answer was a very painful “NO”.

So really, that leads me to ask what am I holding onto?