Uncategorized – The Daughter Diaries: Stories of Toxic Mothering

Traitorous Wretch

“You’re going to have to tell the elders about it.”

TWIM joined the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses right after I was born. A new parent, wife of an abusive addict and former Catholic school girl, she was ripe for the picking. Among the numerous rigid bylaws, cult members were restricted from anything having to do with what they called “this system of things.” They believed Armageddon was imminent, and it was pointless to get too comfortable or invest too much in this world. As such, the rules restricted most normal activity. Members were forbidden to:

Celebrate holidays or birthdays
Have relationships with non-cult members (friends or romantic)
Join groups, clubs, etc.
Play competitive sports or events
Attend parties
Date before you were ready for marriage
Go to college
Participate in politics
Donate or receive blood
Acknowledge or talk to any cult members who left the organization

TWIM used the rules to control my every move. Yet, she had a knack for magically rationalizing when they didn’t apply to her. As mentioned in my earlier post, my mother was a performer. She never had what one would call a real job. She was a clown for an amusement park, a mime for a shopping mall (it was the eighties after all), a stand-up comic for a nightclub and the lead singer in a band … um, where she performed in more nightclubs.

And yet me being on the cheerleading team was something akin to smoking in the girl’s bathroom. I remember sneaking into tryouts and using excuses to stay after school to practice. I was absolutely ecstatic when I made the team – until they told us we had to buy saddle shoes. “How was I going to pull this one off?” my mind raced as I tried to calculate how I might acquire $50 saddle shoes when I didn’t have any money.

After I made the team, TWIM and I were walking around in the mall where I stopped in front of the shoe display and stared.

“Mom, can I get these?” Of course, after she probed and prodded, I finally broke down and confessed. “I need them because I tried out for the cheerleading team and I made it!” I told her, hoping my excitement might soften her enough to let me do it.

“Oh, you can’t do that, absolutely not,” she responded.

I couldn’t be a cheerleader or attend birthday parties, but TWIM could take gigs in nightclubs singing with an all-male band. Go figure. Joining the drama club, on the other hand, was met with her approval. Looking back, I realize now it’s because it was something SHE was interested in, she could relate and be involved. As a kid, I didn’t see the double standard. I was too busy trying to be “good,” and making sure I didn’t get destroyed in Armageddon.

On that long list of behavioral taboos, was hanging with the heathens – lest they corrupt you with all their hedonistic ideas and practices. You know, like going trick-or-treating or attending school dances. Yes, these totally normal milestones of adolescence were treated like poison we could not touch. Making friends was difficult enough for a kid, but when you’re the only one in class not saluting the flag or singing Christmas carols it was pretty easy to stay friendless. That goes for dating, too. Unless you wanted to be married in middle school, you had to hide your crushes.

I was friends with a handful of cult girls with whom I used to chat with after “meetings” – cult lectures that occurred three times per week. We all had crushes on some boys in a different congregation. The parents tolerated that because I suppose they saw potential future husbands and at least they weren’t needle-using, occult worshippers. (This is how the organization made you feel about all non-believers. Everyone uses drugs, worships Satan and exist only to get you to disobey god.)

One weekend, a bunch of cult members organized a camping trip. I was invited along with my girlfriends and all three of the boys we had crushes on also went. At one point, we were aware that the boy I pined for was flirting with one of our other friends. My heart sank. Later that week we learned that the couple had snuck away to have a make-out session. Knowing this was absolutely forbidden, we held onto that bit of gossip for a while.

TWIM used to assure me that I could confide in her and she would be a listening ear. Except what I didn’t realize is that her You Can Tell Me Anything routine was more about getting information on me than about actual emotional support. I didn’t know this at the time, so I decided to tell TWIM about the camping scandal. Perhaps I did it out of jealousy, but mostly it was in the name of being a good little cult girl. “Hey, look at me, aren’t I righteous and pure compared to this harlot?”

I wasn’t prepared for her reaction. In my mission to gain TWIM’s approval, I overlooked her own need for righteousness and approval.

“Well, you’re going to have to tell the elders about it,” she urged.

The elders were the leaders of the congregation. A bunch of men who called the shots and determined everyone’s fates. They are the reason TWIM didn’t leave my father when he was using her as a punching bag. Unless he committed adultery, she wasn’t allowed to divorce him. So sayeth the elders.

She made me rat my friend out to three adult men about her middle school rendezvous. After that, any friends I did have abandoned me in that organization. So now I couldn’t have worldly friends, and the cult friends no longer talked to me.

I was so humiliated and ashamed of myself, I didn’t realize what TWIM was doing to me.

Burdensome Bother

“I wouldn’t think you’d want to come home.”

I’ve not written in a while. Stories are easy when there’s a clear beginning, middle and end. What I realized about narcissism, though, is that most survivors have little shot of making sense of their world while they were under the spell of their abuser.

We don’t know what’s up or what’s down.

A narcissist’s main objective is to scramble your brain. They know how to take everything you think, say or believe and transmute it into guilt, shame or illusion. What you thought was yours becomes theirs. They swallow large chunks of your identity so you don’t know where you start and they begin. They squeeze you out so there’s no room for you, while simultaneously insisting you go nowhere. They do a perfect job of convincing you that you won’t survive without them. And as a kid, you have to believe that because isn’t this the most important person in the world?

I believed that about TWIM. When I was little, I admired her talents and thought she was beautiful. I was proud when people mistook us for sisters when I was a teenager (and she could barely contain her own pride when it happened.) I wanted to be her before I realized that was by design. Since I wasn’t allowed my own interests or independence, all I knew was her.

And at the same time, she couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.

I moved out of my house when I was 17 because she married another alcoholic. He would tell me horrible things about my father or pick me up from work drunk. I didn’t feel safe and she made it clear there was no room for my needs or voice. She relentlessly defended him like she did the man who beat her on a regular basis. The men were always prioritized over the daughter. Always.

I recruited a friend with a truck to help me move some of my things while my parents were at work. I loaded what I could and moved into housing provided by the hotel I worked for at the time. I was sad, lonely, confused, lost. Instead of offering me comfort or counseling, my parents responded by having a yard sale and putting everything else I owned on the front lawn.

I went back before graduating high school. My stepfather got me into a college, but I had to pay for every dime myself. By the third semester I wanted to be as far away from them as I could get. So I quit, my stepfather took back the car he bought me to get to school, and I was officially on my own.

I moved to the city and once lost everything I owned to a fire. I was legitimately homeless and living in my car. TWIM never once told me to come home.

When I got married, she hugged me and said, “Your his now.” I’ll never forget her words because if she added the word “problem” after “his” it would have sounded the same. I brought this up during one of our last phone conversations, a last ditch effort to find some healing and make sense of the things she did to me. I said to her: “You never said, ‘Come home.'”

She didn’t deny it. She didn’t say I was wrong or that was nonsense (like everything else I would say to her.) Instead, her only response was: “I wouldn’t think you’d want to come home.”

As though I preferred the four doors of my 1987 station wagon parked on the streets of an inner city in the middle of October.

Monster Love

“Yes, but I had it way worse.”

The most debilitating part of therapy for parental, narcissistic abuse is learning your parent might not have loved you. Soul-crushing intel that will bring you to your knees. And before you launch into defense mode explaining away that assertion, let me point out that that’s exactly what a narcissist counts on.

As humans we can’t fathom a parent lacking the genetic predisposition toward loving their child. And if you had a visceral response to what my therapist suggested to me, then congratulations. You’re probably a decent human being. It’s been a few years since I went no-contact with TWIM, but to this day I look at my own children and can’t wrap my mind around doing or saying things to them that she did to me.

The truth is, we don’t realize how many excuses we’re making for a person who chose to love you only when it best suited them. We’re blind to a love that’s conditional only. And when those conditions aren’t met, we’re shamed and blamed and made to believe it’s our fault our abuser didn’t love us. Sprinkle in a large serving of cult bylaws and you have a recipe for total self-esteem obliteration.

Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.

That’s why most survivors (and I use that term loosely, I’m not yet certain I survived it.) struggle with perfectionism, hypervigilance or people-pleasing. We’re constantly striving to be good enough. We’re constantly adapting to our environment to ruffle the fewest feathers and earn the most love.

Be good. Be good. Be good.

I don’t know if TWIM ever loved me. I think back to our time together as she struggled with my father, lived through divorce, loneliness, pain and eventually remarriage. I think back to when I was living on my own, scared, barely keeping my head above water. And all I remember is feeling like everything was my fault.

I could never trust her to choose me.

Her love was performative most of the time. She would only voluntarily hug me in front of company or declare her adoration for me when others could hear. She would tell friends how proud she was of me, but I never heard it direct. She rarely brought herself to say anything complimentary to me, and when she did I always got the sense that it was a real effort for her to do so. Authentic human connection was not in her skill set.

I tried to find that connection before we parted ways. I wrote her a letter detailing the good, the bad and the ugly of what I went through while on my own because I didn’t feel like I could go to her for help. I told her things I was so ashamed of, but I was desperate for empathy. I wanted to hear, “Oh my goodness! I had no idea you went through all of that. I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could come to me.” But her only response was, “Well, that was your choice.”

I continued trying to connect with her during another conversation. I wanted to show her I had compassion for her own childhood abuse. Like we were two souls cut from the same traumatic cloth. I tried to demonstrate understanding for some of her choices or even her behavior toward me. When I detailed all the nightmares that I remembered experiencing as a child, once again hoping for any shred of compassion or empathy, she paused and said in a low, angry growl:

“Yes, but I had it way worse.”

As though I had a lot of nerve comparing my life experience to hers. Like she was trauma-competing. I was so stunned by her response, it felt like I ran stomach-first into the corner of a kitchen counter. It took the literal wind right out of me.

How? How can you claim to love someone while pretending their pain doesn’t exist?

Hard to fathom.

Confessions of a Narcissist

“The reason I never gave you much affection when you were younger is because I was jealous of you.”

The Woman I Called Mother (TWIM) was never a big drinker.

My Father had that department covered, not to mention her own parents – my Grandparents – were also raging alcoholics. So when she did drink, she became one of those cringe-y, middle-aged, drunk women who thinks she’s funny and radiant but completely clueless to the tone of the rest of the room.

Tone deaf, one might say.

Which is ironic considering she was a professional vocalist. And actress. And comedienne. And whatever else entailed her being in the spotlight, including a last-ditch attempt to claw her way to stardom with an “America’s Got Talent” audition. Frankly, she didn’t know how to read a room even without booze. As long as she was center stage, she didn’t need to know how she was making everyone else feel.

But I digress.

One way in which TWIM commanded that spotlight offstage was by publicly humiliating me. She loved to point out things about my appearance that I guess I was supposed to be embarrassed about. Like the night we spent Christmas dinner with her friends and she started talking about how ugly my Father’s feet were. She pointed toward me.

“She has them, too. Take off your socks and show them,” she says laughing hysterically.

And just to demonstrate how under TWIM’s spell I still was – even in my 20s -I did what she asked. Smiling behind my teeth, trying to be good-natured, I peeled off one sock .

“OH MY GOD YOU HAVE A HAMMER TOE??” she rocks back in her seat, cackling.

My favorite was the time we were visiting her friend’s home when I was 12. Her friend’s kids were all around my own age and the subject of nicknames came up.

Let’s just say I’ve always had a prominent posterior, which is great as an adult, but the elementary and middle school kids were relentless. I was teased mercilessly.

As soon as the subject of nicknames came up, I immediately shot my head toward my mother. Her eyes were lit up and her jaw was opened like a kid with a secret they can’t keep.

“Don’t.” I begged her.

“Vanessa has a nickname!” she offers, grinning from ear to ear.

“Mom. Please don’t,” I pleaded, holding back tears.

“Bubble Butt!” TWIM exclaimed, and the kids at the table roared with laughter.

Those laughs, each one felt like a steel-toed boot kick to the head. I felt my face hot with embarrassment, and I ran away to the next room where one of the kids followed behind me repeating the name in various accents. I could hear TWIM still laughing in the next room.

Mean Girl

Fast forward to a New York City trip with TWIM while I was in my 20s. She made her own jewelry and decided to try selling it to high-end boutiques. She also planned to visit her biological brother whom she discovered existed less than a decade before this. She invited me on the trip, and we were in a good place so I said Yes.

We shopped and had lunch while she networked. Shopping was one thing we could do that didn’t cause friction or make me feel like running away. Watching ghostly horror films was another. So it was actually panning out to be a lovely day. Right up until dinner with her brother.

TWIM was adopted. And at some point in my childhood I remember she went on pursuit of her biological family. She discovered an aunt who led her to her brother who was an awesome human. A talented writer with a gut-busting sense of humor. I was excited to spend time with him.

After entrees and over coffee, the wine that TWIM had at dinner was taking effect. And just as she began her usual habit of publicly humiliating me, my Uncle shut it down.

He fucking saw it. He saw how she never let me finish a sentence. He saw how she spoke for me when I was asked a question. He saw her diminishing me.

“Why don’t you let her talk?” he snapped.

There was only one other time in my life when someone noticed how TWIM tried to make me invisible. It was the first time in my entire life that someone stood up for me. And this so-called friend of TWIM’s said almost the same thing my Uncle did:

“Why do you keep shutting her down? Every time she opens her mouth, you slam it shut!”

When we got back to the hotel that night, I remember doing my nightly routine of push-ups and sit-ups. She didn’t like that very much.

“Do you need to do that right now?”

I didn’t fully understand it back then. But my feminine senses were tingling. Like in that way when you walk into a school cafeteria as a teen and notice the Mean Girls staring at you right away?

Like that.

I roll my eyes at her and climb into bed. We’re both laying there in separate beds with the television on. Keeping her head straight with her eyes on the television, TWIM says to me:

“You know, the reason I never gave you much affection when you were younger is because I was jealous of you.”