Garden of Eden
June 17th, 2006, 06:47 PM
I think the whole situation is difficult because it is so hard to pinpoint. I can’t point my finger and just say “That. Look. When that happened. That was it.” It just isn’t possible to do so—the line is fine and very, very grey and blurry round the edges. The problem centres around my family, mainly my mother, and goes back, literally, years. I think it is emotional abuse. But I don’t know, and I don’t like to say that, because I feel I’m dramatising it, and I know my mother would say I am (which kind of adds to my case, but I digress.) It’s difficult also because she’s not like this all the time. Sometimes she’s fine. Around my friends, or other adults, she is genial at all times. She doesn’t lose control during her ‘episodes’; she can switch it right on and off if someone happens to call at the house or phone. She has two very different faces.
I looked up emotional abuse online a few months, and was sure to delete the entire history and turn off auto-form, lest my mother see it (she checks my internet history). Most of the information I found related to couples and abuse within them; but I found a short article and a checklist type thing. Reading about this particular brand of emotional abuse, mother-child, it just… made it clear. I said “yes, yes, yes,” to question after question. For the first time since… ever… I had something I could almost say reflected what happened so regularly and so subtly. She’s good at covering it up. Good at apologising and saying she’s so sorry, but it’s really my fault for making her angry or doing this, or that, or making her worried.
We have arguments. Well. They’re arguments as of the past year or so. Before that, they were simply her screaming at me, cutting me with inane sarcasm and pulling out every mistake I’d ever made in my life—or calling me names. In the last twelve months (approximately), as my confidence outside my home has grown, I’ve tried to stand up to her. Unfortunately, my calm and reasonable responses are regarded as “backchat”, “cheek” or simply “inappropriate”. Silence is also unacceptable. A neutral expression is unacceptable—I’m obviously not taking what she’s telling me to heart. A smile or similar means I’m not taking it seriously. Looking sad? “Oh my, aren’t you just the victim?” she’ll ask nastily. “Save the waterworks, sweetheart.” I’m being melodramatic, she says. If I told her I was depressed (which I often am), she would laugh and tell me I “don’t know what it means to be depressed or stressed,”
Generally speaking, trying to defend myself, etc. is bad. Anything except “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right, mother,” is bad. Even when what she’s saying is wrong (she has a tendency to exaggerate greatly), I am not allowed to “contradict” or act “smart”. When she’s screaming about how it was not acceptable for me to stay out to 2am, I’m not allowed to point out that it was 12.45 when I arrived home. When she’s telling me what an ungrateful drain I am on the family’s finances, I can’t tell her she’s wrong about the prices she’s throwing at me. She knows better, she always knows better. And she’s never wrong. She may be sorry later when she comes to hug me and apologise and tell me how it’s really for my own good, but she wasn’t wrong to begin with—and I daren’t suggest it. In an argument, the last word is always hers. Well, last words. Because she can let nothing go. And I’m not allowed to walk away or leave the room. She just goes on and on and on and repeats everything and I just have to take it. Rarely do I get a sentence in edgeways and she interrupts me every time. I don’t get a chance to defend myself, air my opinion or be taken seriously. If I say something that is dangerously close to making her have to face her own hypocrisy or unreasonableness, she quickly shoots me down by telling me how stupid I am, and how I “don’t know everything” and what I’m saying is “ridiculous”. The silent treatment is a regular thing. She storms past me, banging and making as much noise as is humanly possible, throwing me incredibly nasty looks, but saying nothing at all. It’s almost worse than the incessant screaming. If she has something to hand to me while she’s in this mood, it is thrown at me. I’ve been hit with heavy hardback books etc. “Sorry… didn’t mean to hit you,” she snaps. It’s my fault she throws things at me.
She compares me to my peers and relatives regularly, asking me why I can’t be as helpful around the house as my cousin is. And why don’t I have the same respect for her as my friends do for their parents? Everything I say, no matter how measured or careful on my part (and I’m very good at keeping my temper in check) is “not the correct tone” in which to address my mother—disrespectful. She often complains of how much she “puts up with” from me. I wouldn’t dare ask for examples of this, even though I really can’t image what she’s talking about. A mistake is something “stupid” I’ve done. She tells me I’m doing things “wrong” or “strangely” whenever they aren’t done her way. Just about everything I do is not good enough for her. I could always “have done it better”—there’s never a genuine congratulations or reward. She buys me things she knows I won’t like, cheap things, and then calls me ungrateful, though I don’t usually say anything about what I’m given. She rewards my younger siblings regularly for the most ridiculous things, and judges them far less harshly. Last week my brother I were sitting in the living room—he playing the playstation and I reading (I’m an A-level English student, so I try to do as much reading as possible). She comes storming in, her mood not looking promising, looks at me expectantly and angrily and sarcastically says “Oh, now don’t feel you have to help out, Ellen, just you sit right there, lazy bitch. Relax yourself now; you’d need it after all the hard work you’ve done.” If I don’t get up and start cleaning or something, then she’ll come back a few minutes later and continue her biting comments. My brother? Well, apparently the playstation is a worthy way to spend your time, why should he do anything around the house? The inequality is so clear before my eyes that I can do nothing but register my amazement.
She loves to win one over on me, and if something goes wrong it’s always “I told you so,” or “Well… serves you right.” Things always have to be done her way. The floor which needs swept, in my mind, can wait for ten minutes when I’ve just begun to do something—but for her it has to happen right now, her argument being I won’t do it at all unless I do it RIGHT NOW. If something is broken, etc, I will lie rather than tell her the truth, because her reaction is going to be over the top and unreasonable. I’m scared of her a lot actually. Sometimes I wander around town after school to avoid having to go home (though I know I’ll be in trouble if I’m out too late) or stay in my room for hours because I can hear her banging about downstairs and know she’s in a bad mood (and I’d rather not put myself in her path).
My mother loves to pry into my affairs. Open my letters, read my messages, riffle through my things claiming she’s looking for what I’ve “stolen” from her. She knocks on my door sharply and barges in, not caring whether I’m dressed or sleeping. There was a lock on the bedroom door when we first moved in, and she used to get really angry when I locked it. She reads my internet history and checks the google autoform to check what I’m searching. She does the same thing to my father, reads his emails and messages whenever he isn’t looking. Paranoia doesn’t cover it. She lies all the time about money, about what she has done in certain situations etc… and uses my problems or issues as funny stories to tell her friends, twisting them so she looks like the most caring mother. My religion, my tastes, my habits are all ammunition for her to use. “Oh, Ellen thinks she’s a witch… don’t you, sweetheart?” she’ll laugh. She found out recently that I told my boyfriend something she’d said to me in her anger, and was furious. How dare I carry tales like that? As it was, he couldn’t believe my mother had actually said such things to me and was difficult to convince.
She accuses me of being a liar, a thief, whatever comes into her head. She never believes I am going where I say I’m going and she overreacts to minor incidences, believing I’ve done things deliberately. Once I was told to buy a candle for my sister to use at school, but had a meeting to go to after school. It ran over, and by the time I got out all the shops were closed. I rang home to tell them, but when I got home, my mother began screaming at me about how I was so selfish, and why didn’t I just go and get it? It’s as if my explanations don’t exist or matter. She just doesn’t acknowledge them. I get blamed for ridiculous things. The computer crashes. Must be my fault. I recall once being punished as a child for something a neighbour had done (she removed a key that was being used to hold a lock in place, thinking the owner had forgotten it). But I’d been present, so I must have had a hand in it. And I was shouted at and punished for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My father is bit strange in the situation. Sometimes, he tries to defend me a little. Usually this makes him the focus of her anger for a while, and I understand why he doesn’t do it often. Very occasionally he joins in with her and calls me names. “Lazy, useless bitch.”
Often my parents talk about me in the third person when I am present. They complain about how lazy, ungrateful and cheeky I am when I’m sitting right in front of them, or behind them, or a room away. It’s as if I’m not actually there. Or a person. Or worth talking to, rather than about. Saying anything generally earns me a glare and “You can keep your smart-arsed comments to yourself.”
I sometimes think I’d like to leave. But it’s not really possible. I’m 17 and don’t have the means to escape. I have to live another year or more here. I often go into school with my eyes red from crying during the car journey there (can't escape when I'm in a car with her), spend evenings hiding in my room and freezing when I hear her footsteps outside. There’s so much advice about identifying abuse, but nothing about dealing with it, unless you can remove yourself. I worry a lot about the future, and how I'm going to handle this all coming back from university (because I still want to see my siblings) and if I have children of my own (firstly, worried about exposing them to her, and secondly, about repeating what was done to me...)
Thoughts?
I looked up emotional abuse online a few months, and was sure to delete the entire history and turn off auto-form, lest my mother see it (she checks my internet history). Most of the information I found related to couples and abuse within them; but I found a short article and a checklist type thing. Reading about this particular brand of emotional abuse, mother-child, it just… made it clear. I said “yes, yes, yes,” to question after question. For the first time since… ever… I had something I could almost say reflected what happened so regularly and so subtly. She’s good at covering it up. Good at apologising and saying she’s so sorry, but it’s really my fault for making her angry or doing this, or that, or making her worried.
We have arguments. Well. They’re arguments as of the past year or so. Before that, they were simply her screaming at me, cutting me with inane sarcasm and pulling out every mistake I’d ever made in my life—or calling me names. In the last twelve months (approximately), as my confidence outside my home has grown, I’ve tried to stand up to her. Unfortunately, my calm and reasonable responses are regarded as “backchat”, “cheek” or simply “inappropriate”. Silence is also unacceptable. A neutral expression is unacceptable—I’m obviously not taking what she’s telling me to heart. A smile or similar means I’m not taking it seriously. Looking sad? “Oh my, aren’t you just the victim?” she’ll ask nastily. “Save the waterworks, sweetheart.” I’m being melodramatic, she says. If I told her I was depressed (which I often am), she would laugh and tell me I “don’t know what it means to be depressed or stressed,”
Generally speaking, trying to defend myself, etc. is bad. Anything except “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right, mother,” is bad. Even when what she’s saying is wrong (she has a tendency to exaggerate greatly), I am not allowed to “contradict” or act “smart”. When she’s screaming about how it was not acceptable for me to stay out to 2am, I’m not allowed to point out that it was 12.45 when I arrived home. When she’s telling me what an ungrateful drain I am on the family’s finances, I can’t tell her she’s wrong about the prices she’s throwing at me. She knows better, she always knows better. And she’s never wrong. She may be sorry later when she comes to hug me and apologise and tell me how it’s really for my own good, but she wasn’t wrong to begin with—and I daren’t suggest it. In an argument, the last word is always hers. Well, last words. Because she can let nothing go. And I’m not allowed to walk away or leave the room. She just goes on and on and on and repeats everything and I just have to take it. Rarely do I get a sentence in edgeways and she interrupts me every time. I don’t get a chance to defend myself, air my opinion or be taken seriously. If I say something that is dangerously close to making her have to face her own hypocrisy or unreasonableness, she quickly shoots me down by telling me how stupid I am, and how I “don’t know everything” and what I’m saying is “ridiculous”. The silent treatment is a regular thing. She storms past me, banging and making as much noise as is humanly possible, throwing me incredibly nasty looks, but saying nothing at all. It’s almost worse than the incessant screaming. If she has something to hand to me while she’s in this mood, it is thrown at me. I’ve been hit with heavy hardback books etc. “Sorry… didn’t mean to hit you,” she snaps. It’s my fault she throws things at me.
She compares me to my peers and relatives regularly, asking me why I can’t be as helpful around the house as my cousin is. And why don’t I have the same respect for her as my friends do for their parents? Everything I say, no matter how measured or careful on my part (and I’m very good at keeping my temper in check) is “not the correct tone” in which to address my mother—disrespectful. She often complains of how much she “puts up with” from me. I wouldn’t dare ask for examples of this, even though I really can’t image what she’s talking about. A mistake is something “stupid” I’ve done. She tells me I’m doing things “wrong” or “strangely” whenever they aren’t done her way. Just about everything I do is not good enough for her. I could always “have done it better”—there’s never a genuine congratulations or reward. She buys me things she knows I won’t like, cheap things, and then calls me ungrateful, though I don’t usually say anything about what I’m given. She rewards my younger siblings regularly for the most ridiculous things, and judges them far less harshly. Last week my brother I were sitting in the living room—he playing the playstation and I reading (I’m an A-level English student, so I try to do as much reading as possible). She comes storming in, her mood not looking promising, looks at me expectantly and angrily and sarcastically says “Oh, now don’t feel you have to help out, Ellen, just you sit right there, lazy bitch. Relax yourself now; you’d need it after all the hard work you’ve done.” If I don’t get up and start cleaning or something, then she’ll come back a few minutes later and continue her biting comments. My brother? Well, apparently the playstation is a worthy way to spend your time, why should he do anything around the house? The inequality is so clear before my eyes that I can do nothing but register my amazement.
She loves to win one over on me, and if something goes wrong it’s always “I told you so,” or “Well… serves you right.” Things always have to be done her way. The floor which needs swept, in my mind, can wait for ten minutes when I’ve just begun to do something—but for her it has to happen right now, her argument being I won’t do it at all unless I do it RIGHT NOW. If something is broken, etc, I will lie rather than tell her the truth, because her reaction is going to be over the top and unreasonable. I’m scared of her a lot actually. Sometimes I wander around town after school to avoid having to go home (though I know I’ll be in trouble if I’m out too late) or stay in my room for hours because I can hear her banging about downstairs and know she’s in a bad mood (and I’d rather not put myself in her path).
My mother loves to pry into my affairs. Open my letters, read my messages, riffle through my things claiming she’s looking for what I’ve “stolen” from her. She knocks on my door sharply and barges in, not caring whether I’m dressed or sleeping. There was a lock on the bedroom door when we first moved in, and she used to get really angry when I locked it. She reads my internet history and checks the google autoform to check what I’m searching. She does the same thing to my father, reads his emails and messages whenever he isn’t looking. Paranoia doesn’t cover it. She lies all the time about money, about what she has done in certain situations etc… and uses my problems or issues as funny stories to tell her friends, twisting them so she looks like the most caring mother. My religion, my tastes, my habits are all ammunition for her to use. “Oh, Ellen thinks she’s a witch… don’t you, sweetheart?” she’ll laugh. She found out recently that I told my boyfriend something she’d said to me in her anger, and was furious. How dare I carry tales like that? As it was, he couldn’t believe my mother had actually said such things to me and was difficult to convince.
She accuses me of being a liar, a thief, whatever comes into her head. She never believes I am going where I say I’m going and she overreacts to minor incidences, believing I’ve done things deliberately. Once I was told to buy a candle for my sister to use at school, but had a meeting to go to after school. It ran over, and by the time I got out all the shops were closed. I rang home to tell them, but when I got home, my mother began screaming at me about how I was so selfish, and why didn’t I just go and get it? It’s as if my explanations don’t exist or matter. She just doesn’t acknowledge them. I get blamed for ridiculous things. The computer crashes. Must be my fault. I recall once being punished as a child for something a neighbour had done (she removed a key that was being used to hold a lock in place, thinking the owner had forgotten it). But I’d been present, so I must have had a hand in it. And I was shouted at and punished for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My father is bit strange in the situation. Sometimes, he tries to defend me a little. Usually this makes him the focus of her anger for a while, and I understand why he doesn’t do it often. Very occasionally he joins in with her and calls me names. “Lazy, useless bitch.”
Often my parents talk about me in the third person when I am present. They complain about how lazy, ungrateful and cheeky I am when I’m sitting right in front of them, or behind them, or a room away. It’s as if I’m not actually there. Or a person. Or worth talking to, rather than about. Saying anything generally earns me a glare and “You can keep your smart-arsed comments to yourself.”
I sometimes think I’d like to leave. But it’s not really possible. I’m 17 and don’t have the means to escape. I have to live another year or more here. I often go into school with my eyes red from crying during the car journey there (can't escape when I'm in a car with her), spend evenings hiding in my room and freezing when I hear her footsteps outside. There’s so much advice about identifying abuse, but nothing about dealing with it, unless you can remove yourself. I worry a lot about the future, and how I'm going to handle this all coming back from university (because I still want to see my siblings) and if I have children of my own (firstly, worried about exposing them to her, and secondly, about repeating what was done to me...)
Thoughts?