Just had a row with my mum like two days ago. Spoke to her about some shit from when I was at infants school. Being literally forced to play kiss-chase. Girls following me into the toilet out of "curiosity". This is stuff she knew about and told me I'd wish was still happening in 10 years, 25 years later and I've still never willingly taken my clothes off in front of anyone, I don't brush my teeth and I don't bathe because I learned to make myself as undesirable as possible. "This is why you'll never get a grandchild from me mum, etc" was a bit harsh but ffs.
The conversation turned to my dad beating me like an animal and stopping me from wearing glasses because "opticians is all liars". She didn't divorce him. Even back then she would have won in court if he actually got up and explained his actual beliefs about how glasses are a scam and he doesn't want his 6-year-old to wear them.
She goes quiet. Tries to change the subject. I don't let her. I explicitly tell her I forgive her for not being able to protect me but I can't stand it if she's still trying to rewrite history. She politely excuses herself and hangs up. I sit up drinking for two days and two nights.
In another two days I will get a vague "Are you feeling better today?" call/text. If I mention the previous conversation in any way she will disappear again for another few days. I'm sick of it.
Op, my situation isn't exactly like yours but I do relate. I love my mother dearly but I basically can't be in the same room more sober than she is for more than fifteen minutes without a blazing row breaking out.
The reason for this is that a lot of awful, terrible, things that she did to me during my childhood she's managed to blank out. A lot of other things that she did or allowed others to do she remembers her own version of events while I remember something quite different.
She has this vision in her head of being a perfect, loving mother. While what I remember was a fucking banshee who still scared me shitless smashing through my bedroom window with an axe when I was a teenager / almost grown man.
I have no idea how much she's forgotten because she's in her 70s now, and how much she never remembered because she was blackout drunk when she did those things.
I feel for you, op, I really do. I wish people took better stock of their lives before becoming parents.
Mate, a lot of parents from our generation were incredibly unhealthy and clueless, your case seems exceptionally so. For your mother, it is probably coming across as re-traumatising. This is how they work; fall out, forget about it, try again a few days later and keep their head in the sand.
It doesn’t really matter how safe you make it for her (forgiveness, etc.) because she does not want to go there. It’s like trying to get someone that hates France to go to France— even if you promise fried breakfasts and brits as far as the eye can see, most won’t go.
I can’t imagine the weight of my mother’s guilt about what I endured, and I feel like even admitting that it was all her fault would destroy her. Uninspiring as it is, it’s been more fruitful for me to accept that she isn’t going to change and to stop forcing it.
I’m sure mine will never change and I’m not putting my affairs on hold waiting for her.
>>29322 >It’s like trying to get someone that hates France to go to France— even if you promise fried breakfasts and brits as far as the eye can see, most won’t go.
What.
I have seen some courtroom trials. Common criminals tend to be proud of their crimes, or to tell some bullcrap story. Child abusers and abusive parents, instead, deny their crimes with the utmost vehemence. When presented with solid proofs, they usually pretend to faint or to have an heart attack, only to be taken to the hospital and having their sentence read to them later. Later, they claim that they were set up and that the proofs did not exist or were falsified.
Memory is a survival tool, not just a recording. If some of your memories will imply that you are a total piece of shit that deserves to be flayed alive, you will delete those memories. On the contrary, painful memories of abuse will never be forgotten: imagine to eat some yellow and red round berry, and spending all the night with horrible stomach cramps. Forgetting about that berry is NOT conductive to survival. Remembering that kind of berries and the cramps IS conductive to survival, since you will never eat thoe berries again.
On a personal note, my mother was more or less like OP's mom. She spent several months vomiting and shitting black clumps before going to the doctors. They found a mandarin sized tumor in her bowels, and they spent a couple of years torturing her with useless therapies and cutting away pieces of her before she died. Maybe she wanted to die, maybe she felt that she deserved to suffer. I will never know. No one of her sons ever went to visit her.
