From a Ten Year Old Journal: "Mommy Richest"

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I have kept written and comic journals since the 1990s, and sometimes it's interesting to go back and see what the "you" of ten years ago or in my case even 25 years ago wrote. The oldest journal I have goes back to 1990. I do regret throwing out some journals, though but I remember doing so because they were written some of my depressed times in life, and I felt worried about people reading them one day and thinking bad things about me. It was kind of dumb, because I wish I had kept them though I did rip out many pages from them and keep those in a folder. I do go through my old comic journals to pick the "best of" from my comic journals, and this is one way I see how things panned out. It gave me perspective to know even 15 years ago, my troubles with the family were deep rooted and there was no changing what eventually happened where I had to walk away. These problems were not new things. The ongoing meanness and cruelty was long in standing. It shows the state of mine of someone in the VERY LOW CONTACT mode which I was in for 15 years, not realizing the true nature of narcissism. I gasp to think of what I put up with now.

I wrote this around 2005:

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"Mommy Richest"

What to make of this. I'm 37 years old and still can't relax around her except now instead of yelling and crying like when I was young, it's all tight faced politeness. I learned long ago emotions would be used against me as in the meanest court of law. She thinks I am the dumbest and fattest person on the planet as she last week tells me, "I was watching the Today show and there is a new weight loss surgery out." I actually heard about it three years ago long before the FDA approved it. She ignored this comment. She continued, "I'll pay for it, if you get it.". This brought me back to the time she told me, when I was around 22 years old and at most 60-70lbs overweight, "I'll pay you a thousand dollars to become normal, lose weight and the money is yours!" Yes, she said it that way!

My mother doesn't know me and appearances rule her life with mainstream media informing her on what to think wear and be. In an ironic twist of fat, she is wealthy about to marry an even more well off man who buys her fancy rings, she never lets a new jewel past my notice. Last week she got a new sapphire blue ring and waved it in front of my face. "You'll never own one of these!", she said.

She can be generous on occasion but there is a pound of flesh for every dime. It doesn't make up for the years of abuse either. I would rather have some understanding then money and a family that would not just see my apartment as just a place to stop for ten minutes and unload their old furniture they'd otherwise be taking to the dump. Normal people have their families visit them for dinner. Instead even my husband noticed and said, "They don't come for real visits and never have in seven years" [note at that point we had been married since 1998--basically 7 years]. My mother lives across the socio-economic divide incapable of understanding what life is like free of shopping for recreation and even trying to understand. She insultingly exclaimed to me, "Your husband will never amount to anything!" [note at this time in 2005, my husband worked as a small town newspaper assistant editor, and would be laid off in 2006 from this job] 

She doesn't realize how people have to live. It wouldn't be so bad except she doesnt realize its hard to be perfect when you can't afford new furniture or replace something once it has the smallest stain. I literally horrify my mother just being who I am. As a child, she flinched to hear my third grade teacher tell her I was testing at genius levels, she told a friend early on, "My daughter is weird and not like other children." It goes deeper then just my weight though, my mother who is wealthy, popular and neat, and then gave birth to her complete opposite. Doesn't it make sense I always thought I was adopted. I suppose in my sister she was rewarded by God, the perfect daughter. Even my brother and his wife jokingly call her "Mini-Me". Both keep their houses like museums. I am a couple of hundred thousand dollars short and throw a maid in because I never been able to clean that well.

The worse thing is never being able to share any ideas or thoughts, we don't speak the same language whatsoever. She talks to me like I live in a hole and haven't cracked a book in years. I did sever things with her twice even leaving home and cutting her off for several years. I had to save myself and my rotten self esteem which learned learn the world was even meaner then my mother regarding appearances, weight and money. It is not always easy having a relationship with someone you always feel has you under a microscope and constant reminders of how since time immemorial you have failed miserably in life. These things are unspeakable to even mention but all summed up in a moment acouple months ago as I traveled the only one time ever as an adult, to save gas money to see some relatives after a long time, we stopped at this veggie stand in the southern part of my rural county and this lady and her children who were quite poor, and had dirty clothes and unkept hair, since they obviously had been working out in the fields came out to bag the vegetables and get paid. My mother screamed, "Stay in the car, oh they are disgusting!, I don't want them touching us!" I said as she got back in the car, horrified by her hate of these people, "Don't you understand, they are poor, its not like they woke up today thinking let's be poor!"

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I still remember that day. My husband was at work, so I was dealing with all the narcissists alone. I think for me that was the beginning of the end, watching her pure and utter hatred for those people, who were simple hard working farmers getting help from their children that summer. For some reason it remained another central point for the definition of her character to me. I had gone with her to visit my relatives in another state who lived 100 miles south. This was basically my grandmother's house surrounded by the other houses of relatives. I didn't know it at the time but I would never be back. That would be my last time there. It has been ten years. 

On the way down, she drove like a bat out of hell and used a fuzz-buster to elude police while her average car speed hit 90 miles an hour. I felt fortunate to be alive. This was the time in life when I was "still trying". I wanted to have a family. My sister was coming from her state to visit at my grandmother's house and I wanted to see my nieces and nephews. That was the day the whole family ripped my head off for having a political view they disagree. I invited myself down and talked her into driving me. My rural town was on her way down there, but that was the first time I had been in the car with her for any trip since I had been on my own as an adult. She resented my presence and yelled at me the whole down--in my thirties for fidgeting in the car and for being too fat to barely fit in the seat. 

Aunt Confused once told me, "Your mother cares much more about her siblings then her own children". It's true. She had her family while taking mine away. I don't have one to go visit anymore. I never have one. There's times I think about that trip and how insane it was and how hated I truly was. Why it would take me some years to make the decision to go no contact, I knew at that point things were never going to change and I knew how much without a doubt how much the family hated me. That's one reason I never went back down there.