Mommie Dearest

What is it like to grow up with a parent who is not only abusive but a martyr? Hell. That’s what. I told myself I wouldn’t do it, but today I am going to write about my mother. She has pushed me over the edge. I want to make it clear that I do not have that mommy complex that causes a child to constantly try to win her mother’s love and approval (although my mother actually has this complex, but that’s another story). I gave up on winning my mother’s love and approval years ago because sadly, she is incapable of those emotions. I am not saying this to be snarky, it is true. She has some type of mental and emotional disorder that she refuses to seek treatment for. In addition, my mother is suffering from multiple sclerosis and refuses to take care of herself or her medicine. Instead she prefers to bitch and complain about it all day long, every day, about how much pain she is in- and then refuses to take pain killers too.

She doesn’t want to do anything- she is depressed and this is one of her symptoms. However, she refuses to take medication for her depression. Additionally, over the years she has degraded and knocked me when I took it upon myself to seek counseling for issues I had. She made fun of me and called me crazy- and this is something that has continued into my adult life to this day.

When I was leaving one of my last abusive relationships, a friend had to lock me in his kitchen to keep me from going back. Before he “let me go” the next morning, he sat down with me to make a checklist called “Things Hayley will Do Starting Now!”

One of the things on the checklist was “Stand up for yourself.” At the time I didn’t feel I could. In the midst of making this checklist he asked me why I let my now ex boyfriend swear at me. I paused for a moment to think. “My mother talks to me even worse.” Now mind you- I was 23 years old when this happened and my mother was still talking to me this way! Even at that old age my mother still yelled at me, called me names, and swore at me whenever she felt like it!

“Your mother talks to you like this?” He was astonished. The fact that I was about to leave his house and move back in with my parents did not help the situation. “Well, just don’t let her talk to you like that anymore.”

“What? What do you mean? She will follow me from room to room yelling at me if I try to get away.”

“Hmmm. Next time she swears at you tell her that you will not talk to her until she can speak to you respectfully .”

When I got home it did not take long for me to test this out. Almost immediately the name calling began. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I warned. She snickered, the way only a mentally disturbed person can, and laughed in my face. She continued to swear at me. “Until you can talk to me nicely I am not talking to you at all,” I said and left the room.

It took about three more instances of this to get it to work. She definitely cut down on the swearing and yelling but it was still there, believe me.

My mother never hugged me as a child and in her mind she has warped this scenario into a tale of a small baby (me) who refused to be affectionate to her mother (always the martyr!). That is preposterous. Children are not like that unless they are severely damaged.  I remember as a child the one time I touched her face. Upon my hand brushing up against her cheek her face twisted into something hideous, “Hayley! Don’t touch my face!” She yelled. I recoiled in fear- caught completely off guard, expecting nothing even in the ballpark of that kind of reaction. “I don’t like people touching my face!”  She then gave me, a five year old, a lecture about the oils on your hand and how touching your face causes acne.

What has sparked a rant like this, from me: a person who rarely gets angry? She shit on me today and although I find that term repulsive, there is no better way to describe it. Rather than celebrate my appearance on the Geraldo Rivera Radio Show, she made my day a hellish one. She made the day all about her. She bitched moaned and complained at every opportunity. She trash-talked people over things that happened years ago. She brought up nasty things that people I have since forgiven did to me. Why? Why does she feel the need to try to make me hate them? I am not like that. I forgive. She holds grudges forever. She labels people with horrible names and adjectives that can easily be applied to herself. She has an opinion about everything and it is usually ignorant and hateful.

I am not hurt. I am annoyed. I am very very annoyed.

She was so controlling that when I was younger, she would not let me eat food in the fridgerator and scream at me when I did. As a teenager, I worked in a deli, briefly. One of the women I worked with was one of the sweetest people I ever met. She would tell me about her daughters and how she would make food and leave it in the fridge for them, so they would have something to eat when their friends came over. “Really?” I said, astonished. Just hearing that made me cry. My own mother would’ve ripped my head off for eating anything she was saving in the fridge. What is this woman? How is it that I got a martyr, a monster, and not a mother? All these years why has she treated me more like a pebble in her shoe than a daughter?

The answer is simple. She hates me.