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[bunnyrush2112-blog]

My Toxic Mother

A lot has changed in my life over the last year, but recently, I’ve learned a very difficult for me to come to terms with. The fact that my mother is not the most amazing person in the world. No. She is, in fact, a very emotionally immature and co-dependent person with many flaws and insecurities. 

Allow me to give some quick info and background on myself: I am twenty-three years old and learning something new everyday of my life. I work in the healthcare field and I greatly enjoy my job. I live with in an apartment with my sister, who is absolutely wonderful. We’re two years apart in age and we have been through quite a lot together, including dealing with our mother. Now, when I was thirteen and my sister was eleven, my mother divorced our biological father. Now, my mother was not wrong in this: My father is not a good person and had cheated on her and was often abusive towards her. I can say I’ve come to terms with the fact that my father is not a good person and I have no contact with him. For me, this is fine. He has his life, I have mine. But this story isn’t about this.

The divorce, although  difficult and draining for all involved, was necessary to get us out of a very bad situation. Well, that wasn’t the main issue. At this time, my mother was a licensed hair dresser, but was not employed. She preferred the station of stay-at-home mom, which, within itself isn’t bad, but more on that later...

 Now, there are many single mothers out there who are incredible and have found ways to support their children and themselves despite their difficult situations. Well, my mother did not do that. Instead, she immediately moved on to a new man. Instead of taking time to get herself and her three (my sister and I have a little brother who was four at the time) children stabilized, including reaching out for psychological help, perhaps employing the use of her hair stylist license to get a job and even reaching out for government assistance, she played the damsel in distress and fell into the arms of my Stepfather. Now, I want to make it clear I am not trying to vilify or condemn my mother and stepfather in anyway. No one is born bad, but everyone of us is born in perfect and we all make mistakes. Unfortunately, my mother made many mistakes that ended up very negatively affecting her children.  

A little back ground on my Mother as a person: if you were to meet her, you would probably find her to be a very sociable and outgoing individual with a lot of creative passion and this is true, she can be quite vivacious. These are some of her better traits. These are the traits I tended to think of when I thought of my mother and I was very much in denial of her more toxic traits. I admired her vivacity and her willingness to learn and take the lead. Never mind that she was a high school dropout who had distanced herself from her own parents who hadn’t gotten her GED until married and pregnant with my sister with my two-year-old self by her side. I regarded her as a pinnacle of strength and goodness. I was convinced that everything she said and did was right even when it seemed a little off. I was, in all honesty, fully under her control and influence. 

Fast forward some years and my mother and stepfather have been married for a time and they’ve had two more children, two boys whom I absolutely adore. I’m working and making my own money when I suddenly get very sick (I have an autoimmune disorder) and had to leave work. At this time was the only other person in the house working other than my stepdad. My sister was in college and my mom was, again, a stay at home mom to are for my three younger brothers. Well, to make a long story short, I ended up quitting my first job because I had both fallen ill and had my debit card stolen and this place of employment. Well, my mom came to my rescue and suggested that I sign her up on my account so that, if anything ever happened to me again, she could take care of my money for me. It was the stupidest decision I’d ever made. I regret so much. Hind-sights 20-20. 

Well, once a I was better, about five weeks later, I’d gotten a new job and started to bring in money (my very hard earned cash) and I felt very good about this fact. Well, my mother began so spend and take my money often without permission on whatever she deemed necessary. I remember one instance where I came home exhausted from my shift to find a new, wood burning stove in our basement. My mother than told me that it had been bought with my money. It cost about $ 2,000. She jokingly said it was my early anniversary present to her and my stepdad. At the time, I was very naive and thought that, because I was now a legal adult and that they were allowing me to live in their house, that  I owed them. Mind you, their was never any set rent for me: Instead, my mother (and my stepfather) would any amount of money they needed out of my account and not tell me about it until the item(s) had already been purchased. This, my mother had convinced me, was my way of ‘paying rent.’ This went on for about four years. Then, they would tell me they would pay me back what they had taken from me. They never have and never will because my mother is now divorcing my stepfather.

Back tracking again: a couple of years before my mother’s first divorce, I had started getting panic attacks. They weren’t very bad at first, but by the time I was in high school they were absolutely crippling. There were mornings where I couldn’t even leave my room, much less the house. This elicited a lot of anger and yelling from my mother. I, of course, can’t discount my own actions: when I would have a panic attack I would do absolutely  anything in my power  to not have to step out my front door. I was so extremely terrified and suffering and I had no idea why. I just knew that if I stepped out that door, everything would be a lot worse.

Well, no matter how bad I felt or what I was experiencing, or how much I begged my mother for help, she didn’t bring me to a psychiatrist until I was nineteen and my work life was suffering. That is when, she told me, she knew something was really wrong. So, all of the fighting and panic attacks and crying and fear all through high school years wasn’t proof enough that I needed some actual help. Nope, it wasn’t until my job and income were in jeopardy that she got me help. Even then, from my high school years and into my work life, any negative emotions I had were immediately shut down or disregarded as trivial by both my mother and stepfather. For example, I once mentioned to my stepfather that I was rather tired after a particularly grueling shift. Instead of sympathizing or empathizing or answering in like as some people might, his immediate response was, “Well, I’m exhausted! I was up all night with your brothers and I’m up everyday at five and I sat in traffic for hours on the way home,” and so and so forth. It was very much the same with my mother. Anytime I mentioned that I was pretty tired (fatigue is common with autoimmune issues as is general malaise) or didn’t feel well, they made sure that I didn’t forget that they had it worse than I did and that my problems were minuscule compared to theirs. This has instilled in me many feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing whenever I feel guilty or anxious or unwell because I feel that I shouldn’t feel these ways because so many people are so much worse off than I am. I eventually just stopped trying to talk to them about my emotions or how I was feeling unless they asked. 

A prime example was of this was when I would try to tell my mother of my feeling of unhappiness at one point. Her answer was that I simply needed to stop living in my own fantasy world and go out with friends and be social. Its true, I can be quite the homebody at times and I enjoy writing stories and drawing. It is my own form of therapy. Well, whenever I did go out with a friend or friends, meaning if I made my own plans without her input, I would come home to her reply as follows: “Why did you go out? I needed you here. I needed to take care of the boys (my brothers) while I did xyz...” One moment she wanted to go out and be social, the next she wanted back in the house. This had made me feel guilty about having friends and making plans, she has also instilled in me a feeling that if I somehow got friends or (god forbid) found myself a significant other, that somehow they wouldn’t want to deal with me or love me because of my anxiety issues. It felt hopeless. 

My world in my mother’s and stepfather’s household was chaotic and filled in extremes. There was no structure or guidance to be had. I was naive and stupid enough to allow myself to be used and manipulated by my own mother, to the point where she continuously siphoned my funds without my input, denied my feelings without empathy and often seemed impulsive in her decisions and actions. My sister and I became, not my mother’s and stepdad’s daughters, but their live-in (unpaid) babysitter and their second income respectively.  

I was in constant state of stress in that house hold which had become my norm. No wonder I felt so crappy and anxious all of the time! I was exhausted, felt like a failure and actually feared, yes feared, my mother and stepfather. You see, my anxiety and panic attacks were an incredibly big issue because they were so crippling and made it so difficult for me to do everyday things that people do, like actually leaving their bedroom! Well, my mother made me feel so guilty, so shameful about it that it made it all the harder to deal with. I would frequently call out of work or resist going to high school because of these attacks. Instead o replying with sympathy and helpfulness, my mother would threaten to throw me out or tell me that I was faking it for attention or that I was a terrible, ungrateful brat. There were times where she wouldn’t talk to me for days at a time.Now, if anyone here has had an actual panic you know they are extremely disabling and unsettling. Its like being caught in a nightmare that you just an’t wake up from and you’re terrified of something, but you don’t know what. Its absolutely horrible. I tried to explain this to my mother on multiple occasions, but she never really listened. She always me that I never listened and that I was hypocrite (about what I don’t know) and that I should never have kids and many other rather hurtful things because she was angry at me for having panic attacks. She believed they weren’t real. She made feel like I was crazy.

I could never have a normal, typical conversation with her. It would always end in an argument and if I cried, she’d tell things like “Oh stop it! You’re such a crybaby!” or my personal fave: “Oh, stop crying, I don’t have time to deal with this today.” Then later on, she’d turn around and ask “Why don’t you ever talk to me anymore? You know you can tell me anything, right?” to which I replied “I just feel like you never have anytime for me...” To which her answer was, “Well, whenever I make the time you never want to talk.” See the problem here? It wasn’t about  my feelings and emotions, it was about what was convenient for her.

Going farther back, to my very early adolescence, there were times where my mother couldn’t get out of bed due to her depression (which she does have and has struggled with  for many years) that she’d let my sister and I stay home from school. But it wasn’t really fun for us. We’d end up taking care of my little brother. My sister would play with him while I made us food and then we’d watch movies and cartoons together. My mother never came out of her room. I didn’t really think anything of it then, but looking back, there was something wrong. 

Now, my mother has also told me, on multiple occasions, that when my sister and I were born, we saved her life because she was so depressed and so lonely because my biological father was a marine at the time and was god knows where. But somehow her becoming a mother made it all better. Her children filled her need to have a purpose and to be needed. She hung her self esteem and self confidence and sense of self accomplishment on being a mother. That is a lot of pressure to put on her own children, because, as we grew, if ever we misbehaved or acted out of turn, that was a slight against her as a mother. If we didn’t act or do what or wear what or present ourselves the way she saw was right, she felt it tarnished her reputation as a mother.

She likes to use the age old “I carried you in my body for nine months etc...’ argument whenever she feels we owe anything from respect to help. This brings us up to the present: Lats year, our whole family moved from the east coast to the west coast. A lot has changed over this past year: My sister and I are living on our own and are fairing much better both mentally, emotionally and physically. Ironically, it was mother and stepfather that planned it so we’d have our own place to live. However, as the year went one, my mother’s behavior became increasingly erratic and her relationship with my stepfather  continued to become extremely strained. Eventually, my sister came to a very important realization and fought to have my mother taken off out bank accounts before the shit hit the fan. Then we find out that she is divorcing my stepfather for reasons I don’t feel like explaining while trying to get her real estate license and still having three sons to raise. Then she goes out and starts making big, impulsive purchases with what money I don’t know. Then she began showing up at my sister and my apartment to drop off my brothers so we could watch them while she went out with another guy and was gone until ten at night and then she decide “oh, we’ll just sleep over with you guys.” Situations like this happened several more times, and she never asked to come over. Nope, she would just tell us before dropping our poor brothers on us and running off again until late at night. This stopped a few weeks ago when she through a huge tantrum towards myself, my sister and my grandma (her own mother) and we have cut our contact with her to a bare minimum. Now, I truly believe we can start healing.

My mother is not an inherently bad or evil person, but she is a toxic one. I don’t think she knows she is. She has the emotional maturity and impulsiveness of a horny teenage girl and has been very co dependent. She truly did not want my sister and I to be grown up to she tried in whatever way she could to control us anyway she could from taking out money to preventing us from learning how to drive. I promise you, none of this is exaggeration, but all of it is truth. This has been my life for the past two decades and I’m very ready for a change. 

I wrote this post, not only because I really needed to get this out, but also to those people who might be experiencing similar situations. Especially teenagers. If you’ve had to grow up and give up being an actual child because you’re parent/guardian is immature/codependent, then please don’t do what I did and make excuses for them. Call them out and if that doesn’t work, find a person you trust and get help. Just because they’re your family doesn’t mean you owe them anything. Remember, abuse isn’t only physical and neither is neglect: I had a house to live in, clothes to wear and food to eat, but a critical part of my well being was missing: the emotional part. Also, there’s financial abuse as well. Never let any one take your hard earned money without your permission, I don’t care if its your parents. Please, take care of yourselves and know that you matter and are worth loving.

[bunnyrush2112-blog]

Adolescence

The new school year began ushering in a new era of humiliation and awkwardness for Stanley and Stanford Pines. They had turned thirteen over the summer, resulting in the complete onset of the abomination known as Puberty.

               For Stanley this included the addition of braces to fix a gap in his teeth at his mother’s insistence. Zits have become a mainstay including a near constant sheen of grease on his forehead. He still boxes, resulting in his shoulders being broader and his arms thicker than his twin’s. Stan remains pudgier than Ford, but continues to be the stronger and more physically confident of the two. His voice has developed a raspy tone to it, which he considers better than the slight nasal twinge that Ford’s has developed.

               Stanford remains the smaller and shyer of the two brothers. He doesn’t have the same cocky confidence or blue sky optimism as Stan does. He prefers reading to going out and succeeding in school remains a central focus for him. Despite being smaller than Stan, he’s also developed a squishy layer of fat beneath his skin; an occurrence that their mother assures them they’ll grow out of.

               Their sense of style has changed as well. Stan has started wearing white tee-shirts rolled at the sleeves, jeans folded up at the hems, and a pair of red sneakers. He has a black leather jacket he wears when the weather grows cold, a generous gift from Uncle Eugene, his mother’s brother.  Stanford, on the other hand, prefers collared shirts typically with longer sleeves, slacks and a pair of blue sneakers. He has a red winter jacket that is a hand-me-down from his older brother, Sherman.

               Then comes the sudden shift in their emotional landscapes; small issues now elicit large responses and frustration and confusion have become constant mainstays. Gone are the simple days of childhood where if you were sad, you knew why. Now it seemed the two boys could feel any plethora of emotions, sometimes many at once, and not know why. And of course, there’s the opposite sex.

               Girls: these cootie carrying, bow wearing, doll toting nuisances had suddenly become something all together different. They grew, too. Breasts rose on their chests, pushing through their blouses and sweaters. Hips widened as thighs filled out. They spoke in pretty, giggling voices and always seemed to smell of soap. Some wore make up, some didn’t. They often traveled in packs, giggling and conversing amongst themselves about things only known to girls. Every one of these burgeoning beauties became a continuous distraction, every interaction with them a cause for alarm and excitement.

               For Stan, girls are a field of new opportunities. He attempts to flirt (and often fails) with them as well as taking any chance he’s given to show off in front of them or drop a couple of cheesy, often lewd, one-liners. These antics elicit either one of two reactions from the girls: giggling or outright annoyance. He still tries to impress them, though, being an outgoing show-off by nature.

               For Stanford, the fairer sex remains an unknown quantity. After all, the only woman he is most familiar with is his mother, but she isn’t the most reliable source for comparison. It seems that, no matter what he reads or studies, nothing can help him understand exactly how girls work or why they are so distracting. Why were they suddenly so attractive? Why were they hard to ignore? Why did they giggle so much? Why was it so hard not to stare at their chests? These seem to be questions with no clear answers. Then there’s Cathy.

               A pretty girl with big green eyes, light brown hair and a dusting of freckles across her nose, Cathy caught Ford’s attention in particular. She’s nice and studious as well as pretty, always eager to answer questions and almost always getting them right. Her smile is bright and she has a wonderful laugh. Ford likes her very much.

               Ford has decided to approach Cathy, hoping that, if all things go well, he might be able to ask her to the coming dance. With some encouragement from Stan, he attempts to get her attention by grabbing her hand.  

Cathy turns on him, a look of utter disgust twisting her expression. “Don’t touch me! FREAK!” She screams at the top of her lungs, ripping her hand from his grasp. Ford reels back and freezes in place, a hundred eyes staring at him. When he is able to move again, he runs off, desperate to find a place to hide. He finds it with in an unlocked janitor’s closet. He shuts the door tight behind him.

               He breathes hard, heart thumping wildly in his chest as a thick lump forms in his throat. His nose stings as he feels tears gather on the edges of his eyes, blurring his vision. He wrings his hands, shoulders hunched as he tries not to cry, without success.

               “Sixer?” Stan peeks inside before entering the cluttered closet. Stanford looks up, face tear streaked with snot running from his nose. Stan moves forward, hugging his brother tightly. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”

               Ford leans into the hug, not quite trusting his brother’s words. How could it be okay if it hurt so much? No girl wants to be with a six-fingered freak. No one would love him, and he knows it. Who’d want to have kids with him anyways? What if they’re born with the same physical aberration? Would these hypothetical off-spring suffer the same humiliation as he does? A sick feeling twists up his insides at these thoughts.

               “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Stan says, pulling his brother out of the dark, dank hole of a closet.

               “T-there’s still two hours of school left,” Ford points out, wiping his eyes and nose off with his shirt sleeves.

               “So what? This place is a shithole anyways. I’ve got some change on me; maybe we can get some ice cream?”

               “Okay…” Ford replies, figuring being anywhere would be better than being here.

They head out towards the back door of the school, making an easy escape. They walk in silence together for a few minutes before Stan looks up.

“Hey, that Cathy girl’s not so great anyways. I mean, one day you’re gonna find a gorgeous girl who’s gonna love you and your big brain and six fingers and all that. Forget Cathy! You deserve better than her, anyways,” Stan says, sure of his words.

Ford cheers up a little, trying to hold on to the thought, “Thank you, Stanley.”

“Anytime, Sixer.”

[bunnyrush2112-blog]

Some drawings of mine that are my favorites because I feel the capture the true essence of the characters through their expressions.