Is this abuse?

Well, here we go.

For some reason Sundays can be a bit rough sometimes.
Good ole' Sunday blues I suppose, but today has been especially hard because I have been talking to my stepbrother,
and the topic of my mom came up. I used to blame myself for dating controlling and abusive narcissists for the longest time, until my therapist helped me a bit to dare to question my mother's behavior. The suggestion was that I was unconsciously seeking out abusive and critical men, because that was what I was used to from home.On most days, it's ok. But on days like today, it feels really heavy.


I am asking myself whether or not my mother was and is abusive?


My mother married three times and is currently with my stepfather and her third husband. My biological father was husband No. 2, and he was physically abusive towards my older brother, and he was emotionally and verbally abusive to everyone as well. They separated when I was 10 months old, and I think when I was about 3 years old my father disappeared even from those weekend visits he had every now and then. I only remember he smelled like tobacco, and then I did not hear from him until he called me on the phone one last time - drunk and babbling - when I was about 12 years old.

As long as I can remember though, my mom "confided" in me for hours on end how she is thinking about divorcing her third husband, my stepfather as well, and how she could "get through a third divorce financially if she had to". The last time she talked about this was in 2012, when I was 27 and briefly had to move back in with them after getting master's degree abroad. 

For as long as I can remember, she used to sit down and cry frequently and complain to me about: "How she could not live with this man (my stepfather) in a small house once they retire." Things like that.
They have been together for about 25 years now, despite the nonstop divorce talks. A few things I would like to list, and hear whether or not anyone thinks this is abusive behavior, or if I am just being too sensitive and lost, and maybe something really is wrong with me. 

Hah! Actually just writing this down makes me shake my head. I cannot believe I still ask myself, and others, that question.
Trauma really is a bitch.

So here it is, a couple of behaviors and situations I would like to run by others. There is more, but some situations seem to bother me more than others:

1. When I had an abusive boyfriend while working abroad, I told my parents about it via email and also told them I would have to go to court against him soon.
The entire time my mother never called me. She said it was too difficult for her and too painful for her. She told me to call a psychology professor from my university I had taken a class with sometimes. She said that she had not been trained to deal with situations like this - my abuse experience- and was unable to help me. Not one single call. I remember feeling guilt and shame about the fact I had caused her so much grief by dating an abuser.

When I flew back home after the court date was over, she did not even want to pick me up from the airport, and complained that even the train station 20 minutes from her house was a "a pain to get to and find parking at." I had just experienced domestic violence. Parking was her greatest concern. I was 24 at that time, and had just gotten into a good master's degree program with a full scholarship. My parents barely talked to me on the drive to their house, nor did they express any happiness about that master's degree program. (which was a pattern throughout my life, they would use silent treatment or ignoring whenever I did something or wanted to do something they did not approve of)

We got to my childhood home, the house I grew up in, my mother had decided she needed to sleep in my old bedroom. Out of all the rooms in the house, including a big master bedroom she shared with my stepfather, and a big guest room, etc. I was not allowed to use my childhood room and she gave me an old mattress she put on the floor in an empty work room where the light bulbs were hanging from the ceiling, and there was no closet so I had to hang out my clothes on a little plastic rack she had put in that empty room. During the 4 weeks I was back home, before I moved out to get my master's degree, she went through my things, threw away my favorite t-shirt and lied to me about it, until I dug it out of the garbage bin down by the road. She made me a cake for my birthday, (the first time in my entire life I remember her making a cake at all for my birthday) and then informed me that she would take half of that cake with her to my dying grandfather, who was in a retirement home a few hours away. -- how do you say no to that? But the boundary that she violated was clear. The cake is not really for you, and don't you dare say no to me using your birthday cake as a gift for your dying grandpa. Well....mom....how about you make two fucking cakes for once in your life? Big deal.

Of course I didn't say anything and felt ashamed for feeling anger over this, because my grandpa was a sweet man and of course I would have given him anything he wanted. This was not about him. It was about the fact that at the end of the day she could not even then, after I had experienced abuse, make my birthday about me and give me a cake. This may sound petty, but it wasn't about the cake itself. She had always given me things, like a car when i turned 18, and then taken it back or asked for me to give it back. Gifts did not seem as safe. She once told me to go on a trip with my brother, even though I had told her how expensive it would be and that I really did not need to take this trip, and when we got back she sat me down, cried, and complained about how much that trip had cost. Even though.....that was exactly what I had told her before we left for that trip.


2. When I was younger, I think 8 or 12, she would tell me in very pornographic details how my stepfather made her climax during sex. She also claimed that her first husband had tried to sleep with her after they had filed for divorce, because she "was the best sex he had ever had". Her and my stepfather asked me to leave our shared hotel room on vacation so that they could have sex. I remember being a young teenager, and feeling ashamed and angry, waiting in some hotel hallway or pool for my parents to be done with their sex, so that I could go back and get to be in my own hotel room. The bed was all messed up and both had this look of "satisfaction and glow" about them, which disgusted me and made me angry - because I had just spent two hours at a hotel pool as the only guest there while they had sex in my room. (middle of winter, small motel on a road trip in Canada)

I wondered if normal parents are able to not have sex for 20 days, or at least spend the money for their own hotel room if they cannot live without sex for 20 days. 


3. My stepfather told my mom in front of me, in 2012, when I was already 27, that he was "scared of her and did not dare to criticize her, because she would always attack back tenfold if you dare to criticize her." I remember thinking "This is crazy. Here are two people in their late 60's, married for almost 25 years, and a grown ass man like my stepfather tells my mom he is scared of her." I brushed it off back then though since I had not been in therapy long-term. I remember my whole life I tried to connect with my mom- usually I'd send her an email and explain my feelings. She would then make me sit down next to her, having printed out my emails, and having highlighted them all, and she went through them meticulously, sentence by sentence, telling me off and letting me know how she disagreed, how things weren't the way I said it etc. She also told me once not too long ago that "there were many good things too, and I was only focusing on the bad memories." I remember as a kid whenever I had asthma attacks, I'd try and hide it from her because I did not want to burden her or make her angry. One time I had an attack in the middle of the night, I must have been 7 or so. She got so angry at me that she drove me all the way back home from vacation to our house, crying and complaining the entire time. It had been such an inconvenience for her, to wake up and have her child not being able to breathe. I always wondered why she didn't drive me to a hospital that night. She said it was because she believed in alternative medicine, and did not want the doctors in the ER to give me meds.

4. She was and is very paranoid. The last time I was them, when I was 27, I decided that since I was unemployed and searching for a job after getting my master's degree, that it would be appropriate if I stayed home and not go out with friends. My thought was that if I don't make money, I need to live like a monk and apply for jobs nonstop, all day every day. My parents flew away for a few days to attend some fancy ball in a bigger city, and I stayed home all alone. Around 11pm I heard loud music from the neighbor's house - and I knew an older lady who had lost her daughter in a car accident lived there by herself. I thought "why not see if she wants to hang out?" And I grabbed a bottle of champagne and went over to her door. She was surprised and happy to see me. We ended up spending the evening together, having a really good time, and she talked a lot about the daughter she had lost. I went home around 1am. My parents came back a few days later, and the first thing my mother said when i told her about my new year's eve was: "Oh yeah??!! So you went there and I bet you told her alllll about how mean and bad your parents are, didn't you??!!"
I never again told them about good things I did. In my mind I was hoping my mother would at least acknowledge that my intention had been to keep an elderly lonely lady company over new year's eve.

5. She triangulates people. A lot. While I was applying for jobs she called my older brother crying all the time, telling him how hard it was that I had not yet found work. In reality I got my master's degree on December 11, and I had my first job offer mid-March. 2 1/2 months later, which was not bad given the economy wasn't the best. She would walk away with the phone, and only one time I dared to follow her. I overheard her through the door saying to my brother all sad "I don't understand why Janine doesn't apply more to jobs. She sits around all day long and i cannot take it anymore. I am having an existential crisis." It broke me, because I had literally not been doing anything other than applying, and if anything I was the first person to be terrified and sad and desperate over the fact that it took a couple of months to find work. 

6. Nothing anyone else does is ever good enough. I was no longer allowed to use the washing machine. She checked the shower after I showered because I did not dry it off well enough. I left too many greasy fingerprints on her designer kitchen, so at age 27 I was summoned to the kitchen and walked through the lecture of "how to touch the fridge the right way so it doesn't look all dirty." I remember arriving at my uncle's home after I could not take it anymore, and he cried when he saw me walk through his house, scared to touch anything, like someone who was just released from prison, scared to do or say anything. Him and my aunt had told me to come live with them until I found a job because I was kicked out of my mother's home eventually, when she decided she had had enough of me there. My mother had also said to my face that "she was only allowing me to live there because she was worried about what other people would think if she kicked me out without having a job yet." For the record I should add that there are situations in which parents have to draw the line. I am aware of situations when grown children might become drug addicts and steal and lie to their parents. In those situations I believe parents also have the right to protect themselves. In my case, I had never even looked at a cigarette in my entire life and I had always had a side job in college or worked hard to get scholarships. I tried to be as less of a burden as a child can be. As a young child of maybe 12 years I'd even take the public bus in the middle of winter to the vet when my guinea pigs were sick, just so mom would not get angry because I bothered her with that task. I rode my bike at -16 degrees Celsius to the pharmacy when I was older, because my mother said it "it would be stressful to warm up the car for 20 minutes and it would waste a lot of gas too." I tried to the best of my ability to be independent, hardworking, and considerate of their needs.


7. She is very very critical of everyone, and loves to talk about her own greatness and success over and over again. When she was done telling me how bad my stepfather was, she usually teamed up with him again and then blamed me for everything, including their marriage problems because I had burdened them by moving back in. She also threatened my stepfather one time, holding his favorite vase in her hands, telling him that if he did not stop stonewalling her, she would smash that vase on the floor. Like I said, I was 27 at that time, my parents in their late 60's. Why am I even asking whether or not she is abusive? Why is it so hard to see everything and still....still there is this tiny voice in the back of my mind: "What if.....only you, Janine, had been better....found a job sooner...needed less support from mom.....been less sensitive...."

8. She used physical violence, like for example she would put me fully dressed in the shower and "make me stop having tantrums by showering me with cold water" when I was a toddler. She would pull me off the toilet and spank me when I had done something bad and was in the bathroom. She would slap me so hard in the face, that a corner of my tooth fell off once, and then claim the dentist had not attached it very well in the first place - because that corner had been attached after a swimming accident before. I minimize her abuse by thinking "But she only slapped me a couple of times. Parenting is hard work. I am not a parent yet so I may underestimate how hard it is, and a lot of people hit their kids." Even just writing this, I can see the words, but i cannot believe that I really think that sometimes- just to excuse mom's behavior.



There is more...but if you have read all the way until here, you deserve a medal anyways.
So thanks for anyone who did manage to finish this novel.


It will be ok again. Today is just a hard Sunday. Tomorrow is a new day. Which is odd because trauma really does bubble up at random times.
It's a beautiful sunny but still fresh March Sunday here where I live. My beautiful and kind husband of 3 years and 7 years relationship sits across from me, working away on some stuff for his company. I have a great therapist I will see again in two weeks, and lovely friends, and a couple of family members who see me and believe me and are there. My jobs are not too stressful and I try so hard to NOT fall into that victim mentality and role anymore, even though I understand and see (most of the time) that yes, I was and am the victim of a narcissistic, self-centered mother, but I am safe right now and no longer need her or let her abuse me.

I understand family dynamics, and I get that she too probably had had a rough childhood and mothered me in a similar way she was mothered. I don't want to blame, I want to let go off this false responsibility I heaped upon my shoulders (As in:  "I am bad and make mom sad, I am a failure and burden for mom.") and I want to be more self-compassionate.
I have a reason to be sad and to grieve and to feel. But I am not yet able to really feel that 100% of the time. I am not yet able to let go off the role I learned at home, a role of learned helplessness and a false feeling of powerlessness. 

It is hard to work through trauma, and it takes time.
I guess it is ok to give yourself that time. It's ok to feel up and down along the way. It is ok to grieve.
Her words still echo in my head on some days. She used to say "You are a spoiled princess for who nothing is ever good enough" or "You are a lazy pig."

If only I could believe and feel that 100% of the time that yes, this is abuse, and it was wrong and never my fault. I was just a child -
but I guess it's ok to sometimes talk the walk -- before walking the talk. My inner little scared girl is doing the best she can with the trauma she lived through, and survived.
She will empower herself - and that takes time. I want to be patient with myself. I want to slow down when I shame myself for "not being over it already."

How do you ever get over it anyways?
You heal, you move on eventually, but I don't think you get over abuse. It has less and less power over you, and you can free yourself of it 100%.
But the scars might itch a tiny bit on days like today. Maybe for no reason at all, other than that the traumatized little girl needed an ear and some attention.
I can give her that. As much as she needs, and whenever she needs it.

Thank you for listening.