Dysfunctional ‘family’!
I attended my first meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families today. I shared my fears; I was told, hopefully you keep coming to meetings and you get stronger. Later I got paranoid: did she mean what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger and my family just might kill me? Meaning, it’s hopeless? I literally believe they are trying to kill me. Is that what is bound to hapoen? I don’t know how to parent myself… it is too exhausting, from here, right now.
I have been feeling like a victim today, like there is no way to succeed, like my inner child is freaked out and doesn’t know how to take care of themselves: back and forth between reading Affirmations for the Inner Child and the 4th Edition of Guerrilla Marketing. The idea of creative marketing in my position made me feel even more a victim than ever. I did say I was afraid my ‘family’ was trying to kill me. There might be another explanation for the horrible dysfunction in her case but more and more it is clearly malicious.
My ‘mother’s’ only goal is to mess with my mind and make me feel horrible and that has not always been the case like it has been lately; but she will never admit that anything that has hurt me has actually happened, and there is no way to heal anything. It is all just games with her. It is worse than ever by a long shot now. Oh, why do I mention her? I was starting to shake and feel completely powerless: like they have stolen everything from me, and I remembered certain ways she messed with my mind while I was in that hospital that I just could not stand. I thought about checking myself into the hospital again because I can’t shake like thst in this shelter. Life felt hopeless. Someone sent me a really nice message this morning, being grateful to me for my vulnerability and sharing (third time in two days I have heard thst) and offering a really thoughtful reflection but I started to feel like I just couldn’t let in anyone’s caring as real. I fear the dysfunction and dishonesty with my mother being mirrored in connections out there and that I’ll never be able to tell what is real. These support groups are helpful in a lot of ways but they *can* be triggering and today I was really triggered especially by someone’s fears of economic insecurity. I realised I am so worn down that I can’t even think of how to express my gifts and talents at all nevermind capitalise on them monetarily though all it would take is a more nurturing situation and it would be so easy. Anyway, I fear the same abuse my ‘mother’ does out at me without admitting it is what other people are doing to me too and I can’t just trust as much as I want to that when someone says they are grateful for me they really are… and I used to be able to, before these last few months of abuse gotvto me and wouldn’t let me go.
Oh, God, what a night. Just as I was finishing that last paragraph my backpack was stolen. One of my favourite staff here said she was on a mission and really really helped me look for it. I said she was a superhero but I didn’t actually expect she’d find it. We looked everywhere and it was nowhere to be found but she said nobody had left here in that little while so I retained a little hope. She magically walked out of the hallway with it. She said someone had it, she pulked it out from under them. Anyway, this happened right after I broke the no contact I felt was absolutely necessary for my survival yesterday. Like I said, I was feeling really, really ised and taken advantage of and I remembered this time, the second time I was in the hospital, when I tried to call her and she acted like someone I loved was in the car with her. She kept messing with me around her constantly despite never being willing to hear any of my true feelings whatsoever at all and I could tell she *wanted* me to throw a tantrum so I started screaming at her on the phone not caring what anyone in the hospital thought… and willing to rosk looking like a total fool in front of someone who meant everything to me if she indeed was in the car with her… but my ‘mother’ messed with me so much even at that point that I just didn’t care… if she saw and liked me for me and understood how dysfunctional my mother was I just hoped she’d somehow understand… my ‘mother’ has messed with my mind around her from the beginning, encouraged me noticing her and encouraged my liking her even, and then she went and used her to tear me apart. I don’t know why, it’s all so confusing. I know my ‘mother’ has intentions other than being there for me; it is more true than ever before and it scares me not knowing what they are.
Anyway, I started feeling so used and I decided what the hell I know she messes with me with the very tone of her voice (more than ever when I was *in* the hospital last time so I cut off contact because I KNEW more than ever she was *trying* to hurt me despite pretending she called the police because she was concerned about me and it so messed with my mind. She won’t take any responsibility, denies now that she even looked in my eyes and screamed that she hated me, denies every bit of the dysfunction like it never happened, but I am supposed to feel guilty for yelling right in her face. And I admit I probably did but will she admit her horrifying behaviour?
Pretending to care but not actually caring and she has never been so vindictive!!! It is absolutely clear she means to mess with my very soul but will never admit it and will always make me feel guilty… but nothing I am able to say right now explains my final realisation that she does not care about my life and just wants to hurt me. How do I explain that I have given up on her actually caring once and for all? I can’t exactly explain it away as just her being extremely dysfunctional, though it is that too. She is ibtentionally malicious or else more messed up than I can say… and yes, I called her, and I hate it, because I know I am powerless and that she hates me but I still want to save her. I’m like, if only someone could mediate, I am sure there must be a way to get something real across to her, but I’ve tried my whole life, it is never going to do anything but hurt… her using things she knows about me against me but being unwilling to be real with me is infuriating.
So the first thing she said was she wanted to clarify why she only sent so much money. Though since I do not want contact with her (at least until I fix *myself* enough to handle this) I want it all. She said she would send money daily and it will add up to… as much money as I had last time I had money in Mexico, or maybe more, minus a car. And I still think it is barely half of what I am actually owed…
She will yell at me and be horrible to me and then argue that she does love me without doing anything to actually show it which is infuriating and I’m sure she says it because she knows I know it is fake. But she told me, if I didn’t love you I could have turned off your phone, and that is true, she hasn’t done that, but that doesn’t imply love, nor does modest financial support, if it comes with nothing else to show for it. It’s not what I need; I need a mother who is emotionally present and she is the furthest thing from it.
As soon as I am able I am so getting my own phone plan, too: of course I know she might have less than loving reasons for not cutting off my phone. A while ago they said they would lease me a car or something and I don’t get that either: now, if I am in contact (gah) if she’s using me why not use them for money when. I need it? So if they are going to help me with a car, which I don’t trust their motivations for either (and they suggest they know what is going on with my old car but will not actually tell me), why does it have to be a lease and why can’t they just give me some cash and I can go down to a ysed car dealership and viola I’ll have a car? I do not want to lease, it feels like it takes too much time, costs too much to drive as many miles as I might need to to get away from this place… and I do not understand what the motive is, and it can’t be good, though I can’t figure out exactly why or how, for being willing to help me lease but not to buy a used car… and if I *could* get a reliable used car, I’d be… maybe okay again, in a wY, but not emotionally, not as far as knowing my connection with my ‘family’ is secered forever, not in terms of all gbe ways this abuse has destroyed ny trust in tbe world.
Please God do not let me get all wrapped up in this again. No contact with that entire family still feels like the best idea but somehow calling her and arguing for a little while helped me stop shaking and ferling like I should check myself into tbe hospital. Despite knowing she doesn’t carw about me anymore if she ever did I still found myself arguing with her to somehow show me she does, and getting my heart entangled in that mess again I guess… it feels like I was going through withdrawal and fighting about it sonehow felt better but ended my sobriety…
Oh, I tried for months to express that I just wanted some sense she appreciates me and cares about who I am as a person. I asked her to truly ask me about things she was curious about me and she knows full well what my triggers are, that I just wanted my mother to make me feel a little loved and cared for, like she cared about getting to know me. Instead she freaked me out as she had increasingly veen doing, horrifyingly triggering my sexual abuse triggers intentionally all the more when I told ger she was scaring me. I no longer believe that her own abuse of me as q child was not sonehow sexual in nature though I have no memories if it exactly. But at the very least she is covering thibgs up and shows no respect for my boundaries around what brings up my sexual abuse traumas. She would do that on *purpose* which is horrifying.
But anyway, she couldn’t find anything real to be curious about which felt bad in itself. She asked how many puercings I had, and I told her honestly just one: and she knew full well I had taken most of them out at a time that was very traumatising to me (and the question implies being curious about hidden piercings which at a time I express feeling sexually unsafe is an ivcky boundary  violation, especially when she already knows I am private about this stuff anyway.)
This is not curiousity, just prying. Then she asks about certain articles of clothing in my closet that she knows I don’t talk about and if I like to wear black and dress up with friends or something. She was ‘curious’ about these boots and wanted to know if they would be described as ‘gothic’ or something and I told her honestly they were more like steampunk boots and I have no idea what her thing is around ‘gothic’ like she has some kibd lnd of issues there. Prying again, never meant to make me feel good or loved!
It wasn’t the *most* offensive question but again and again simple things she could have easily said or done to help me feel just a little loved were willfully denied to me and I got feel bad questions like this instead. You might think she was just oblivious or something but her necxt question is sonething about cutting off my pubic hair and putting it in tbe trash… and this is maybe the day after I ask for to be sensitive about sexual abuse triggers coming up?
Like, do I like to do that or sonething. I’m like, um, I was asking for love, not for you to ve so creepy… and that is the least if tve ways she was mad creepy and crossed so many sexual boundaries in those weeks on purpose. When she knew that scared me she went down thise libes even more, making sooo many inappropriate and scary comments ehen I was in the bathroom, for example. Whether she ever lived me or not, I don’t know, but something is seriously wrong with her, and I can’t scratch the surface of what I mean by that. It feels willful, malicious, not like some kibd if dysfunction that could somehow through working the steps be fixed… though if I stay in contact I’m going to jeep trying to fix it. It’s not good for me. I just don’t get what the point is, what is the point for her, why is she like this? I can’t get over never knowing… I could call it a dysfunctional family but I choose now to call it a dysfunctional ‘family’ because I can’t believe it ever was one… and it’s going to take a lot of processing to figure out why I can’t accept it as a totally horribly dysfunctional family but have to put quotes around ‘family’ because the ‘family’ isn’t even real…