Lets begin with my very early childhood. My parents both worked in a factory, they met there and they married when mum got pregnant with me a few months after they started dating (bad idea to marry after a few months of dating, but there you go). While they were working, I was looked after by my grandparents, mums parents. I loved my grandparents loads, they took me shopping and to the park to feed the ducks and stuff, sometimes they'd take me swimming and stuff like that. They'd always give me lots of sweets and chocolate, and ice cream. Not the healthiest of choices really, but Nan really went out of her way to spoil me.
My parents would pick me up in the evening when they finished work, usually they'd be arguing with each other, about money and whatever else. Of course, I'd be sky high on the cocktail of additives and copious amount of sugar I'd consumed throughout the day, and so I'd be hyperactive and misbehave for my parents. Mum was very short tempered, and she would yell at me, call me 'stupid' and other stuff, and if she deemed my behaviour bad enough, I'd get a smack to the back of my head, or she would have dad spank me. Well, one day I told my Nan that I'd get a smack if mum was angry, and she told me to 'take no notice of your mother, she always had a nasty streak'.
For a long time, this is how it was. Then mum got pregnant again with my sister. So when mum was on maternity leave, she looked after me full time and I only went to my grandparents a couple of times a week. Mum got more abusive during this time, like, every little thing I did was just somehow wrong, and sometimes she would hit me and scream unintelligibly and I wasn't even sure what I'd done wrong. I was glad when I started school,although to be honest I was not the best behaved kid there, numerous times being sent to the naughty corner, as they did in those days. Of course, school was the only place I truly felt safe, and I befriended a boy there who is my best friend to this day.
When my sister was born, it was only a couple of days before my 4th birthday, and I remember feeling angry because my birthday had been ruined. I was not allowed to touch my sister or be near her, and I had to be very quiet, all of the time. Mum was convinced I'd deliberately hurt her, and she screamed at me like some kind of banchee the one times I went near the moses basket. It had never even entered my head to hurt her, I was just curious about this small crying addition to the family that soaked up all of the attention. I felt invisible. I never spoke to anyone at school about this stuff, it never occurred to me that things are different in other families, not back then. I became very jealous of my sister, and believed that my mother had had her to replace me because I was a bad girl. That was why she loved her more than me. What else was a 4 year old supposed to think?
The following year, it was repeated yet again, my brother was born on my sisters birthday, and my 5th birthday was once more spent in near silence because of the baby boy. Strangely, although I was still very jealous of my sister, I felt no such feeling towards my little brother. Again, I was not allowed to go near the moses basket, touch him or do anything. I got more love from our pet cat than I did my mother, and my dad was at work the whole time, he worked a lot of overtime. I'd carry the cat around and tell him stories.
As I got a bit older, my mother grew very intense when it came to education. She would only allow and buy 'educational' toys, in the belief that it would make us succeed in life. Her idea of success was academic achievement, and without that you're a nobody and worthless. Could have understood her attitude more if she was a high achiever in life, but she wasn't, or else why would she have ended up working in a factory? She was also a snob and believed herself to be better than normal people. My parents got us an Amiga computer for a Christmas present once, and my mother absolutely hated that I'd use it for playing games, apparently, spending an hour or two on a platform game was wasting my life on rubbish.
I was a socially awkward child at school, I made few but firm friends. I knew I was different from the others, but I did not know how, I assumed it was part of how bad I was. I struggled a lot with social cues, and I'd have meltdowns when I wasn't sure what to do. (At 28 years old, I was given a preliminary working diagnosis of aspergers syndrome... but I never followed through to get the full diagnosis because this answered my questions). Mum did not get me checked out because 'there is nothing wrong with my children' and assumed that my bizarre behaviour was because I was 'difficult' and 'naughty' and she would scream at me and call me a little shit and stuff like that, and hit me. She never noticed any good I did, she only ever criticized me and told me how bad I was.
By the last year of primary school, it was apparent that I excelled at science and maths, although I was near on hopeless at stuff like art. For most subjects I was about medium ability. That just wasn't good enough for my mum though. To her, my failure to get near perfect scores on English proved I 'wasn't trying'. Yes, life was bad and depressing, but I had no idea just how much worse it was going to get.
I started high school, and I had some serious problems fitting in with other kids my age. My best friend went to a different high school because of where his parents lived, and although I was friends with a girl who went to same school as me, she was in different classes to me. I would have meltdowns and make a spectacle of myself. Half the time I didn't even know why I was doing it, it was like a reaction in me. This lead to me being classed as the school freak, and pretty soon I couldn't even walk down a corridoor without someone shouting an insult at me, calling me a freak of nature, asking me questions like 'are your mum and dad related?' or 'are you an alien?' Sometimes the other kids would physically attack me. I was quite strong, so I had little problems fighting them off, then I'd be in trouble for fighting even though I did not start it.
When mum found out what was happening at school, she completely flipped, not at the school for not protecting me, as any normal mother would, she blamed me, told me that I must enjoy it on some level or I wouldn't act out. In my mind, that only confirmed the worst, that I was abnormal. Mum told me that I was very hard to love, that she wished she had never had me..etc. I said I didn't ask to be born, and she called me every name under the sun, ungrateful, horrible, spiteful, an embarassment to the family...etc.
After a couple of years of constant abuse wherever I went, I began to withdraw into myself, I would lock myself in the bedroom I shared with my sister for hours at a time. I felt completely depressed, and it seemed to take all the energy I had just to get through the day. I started cutting myself to try and ease the pain. I found no joy in anything any more, and I constantly thought about ending it all. I planned to kill myself, but mum found a suicide note I had prepared two days before I was planning my exit, and a box of over the counter painkillers I had stolen from the medicine cupboard.
When she confronted me, she wasn't in the least bit sympathetic. Any normal loving parent would be horrified if their child was contemplating suicide, they might do something like take the child to the doctor to get a referral to see a psychiatrist. Not my mother, oh no, she screamed at me for four days straight about how selfish I was, how I bought it all on myself, how I could just choose to 'be normal' and the like. At this point I shut down inside. I felt for the first time in my life... nothing. No joy, no pain, absolutely nothing. I was like an automaton going through the motions of life but never experiencing it. It took several months before I could feel again, but I was not the same person, I had built a massive wall around me, I imagined it being like some kind of impenetrable defence which bounced insults right back at whoever hurled them. I saw the world as a dangerous place full of horrible people I had to protect myself from. I was now determined to not only survive the rest of my adolescence, but ensure I could never be hurt again.
I had spent my whole childhood up to that point trying to please my mother, now the game had changed, I knew she was unpleasable, that she played mind games and stuff. I expected it from her, and so it was like an intermittent hot war between us and a constant cold one. All thing while she tried to give me some 'motherly advice'. Such gems as 'don't make friends based on if you like them or not, think about what they can do for you', and 'you got to learnt to control your friends before they learn to control you' and 'you can get a man to do anything you want him to, but as you get older, you will need to learn when to open your legs and when not to', and even 'when you find a man, be nice as pie until the ring is on your finger, then mould him into what you want him to be'. Here is the absolute kicker 'there has to be a boss in a marriage, when you marry, make sure it's you'. It began to dawn on me what she had done to my father... she had abused him mentally and played mind games, she had tried to fundamentally change who he was. My dad, as a naive young man had fallen for it. During the marriage, he had played away quite a bit, mum was sure of it, and my dad flirts with nearly every woman he meets, and it's SERIOUSLY cringeworthy when he does it, me and my siblings pretend we're not with him when he starts doing that... but that's another story entirely. He cheated on mum many times I am sure of it, but given how abusive she was, I am not suprised. Of course, healthy people would divorce at this point, but they were far from healthy.
When I left school, I started college, I was doing okay in my studies, but I had just started drinking... I found that after a couple of pints of beer, I felt great, confident for the first time ever. I learned to play pool from a friend. I could RELAX in a pub environment and would find just about any excuse for a visit to the pub. I was underage for drinking at that point in time, but back then in the late 90s there was a 'don't ask don't tell' unofficial policy that everyone seemed to obey, and as long as I wore a bit of make-up I looked older. I'd have never gotten away with it had it been nowadays, they're far stricter now. I was also trying to learn to relax more, I was realizing that school wasn't like the rest of life, and that maybe I was going to be okay, the world was not as hostile as I had believed.
After a couple of years, I got my A-levels and went to university. I was out of the abusive home enviorment for the first time in my life... then I went completely off the rails. I'd go on week-long benders and sometimes ended up so drunk I didn't even remember how I got home. I found my first boyfriend, stupidly got myself pregnant, and had to go back home. My mother forced me to go for an abortion, the reason... the boyfriend was black and she was afraid of how my grandfather was going to react. I personally can't see how a mixed race child would be a problem. Worst of it was this: my sister was also pregnant with her bf, but because mum approved of that relationship, she not only got to keep her baby, but mum was doing stuff like knitting jumpers for him! Two weeks after my abortion, she was dragging me around mothercare to select baby stuff for my sisters baby. I ran outside and started crying and my mum told me to pull myself together and stop being such a baby!
Mum was at this time also very obsessed about my sister and her bf, she had been since they started dating and she was micro-managing them. She was also asking my sister all kinds of inappropriate questions about her sex life (presumably because she and dad had none and dad was getting his elsewhere), like if she was getting an orgasm and stuff like that. She would then talk to me for hours about it... and I said 'none of my business mum, I don't want to hear about it (especially not at one in the morning when I wanted to go to bed), she will tell me what she wants to when she wants to and IF she wants to' and mum said this was me being selfish and not caring about my sister. I cared about her of course, but I really didn't need to hear all of the details.
Mum them played a really shitty piece of mind games. She broke them up, by telling him that she didn't want to be with her, then came home and told her that he said he didn't want to be with her any more. I knew, but I was not allowed to say anything or I'd be put on the streets. All this while saying that the drama in our house was more entertaining than Coronation Street! Yes, she compared causing havoc to my pregnant sister with ENTERTAINMENT. This is how sick she was in the head.
At this point, it's also important to mention that my brother and sister were very musically talented, so mum forced them to take extra classes and practice all the time when they were in high school. It sucked the joy out of it for both of them when they were growing up, and now neither of them can play just for fun!
Mum was also very ill physically, and I suspect mentally too. She passed away eight weeks after my nephew was born, my dad became emotionally absent and spent most of his time at work as he had always done. He had a string of girlfriends only interested in his money but no serious ones. Sister moved out to be with her bf, and I told her the truth about what had happened. I had very mixed feelings about my mothers death, she was my mother and I loved her for that, but I hated what she did to me and other members of the family, I wish I could forgive her, but I can't.
Over the years, it's been a whirlwind of mixed up emotions numbed by copious amounts of beer. I've been in and out of relationships through my 20s. I met a man in my late 20s who was much older than me, he seemed nice enough at first but later on turned out to be an abuser. He was very micro-managing and ultimately turned violent when our daughter was a few months old. I ended it of course, and the police were involved. He is still in my life as my daughters father, but he will never again be with me romantically. He's been a good dad to her and that is all I ask.
I do wonder though, why did I do this to myself? Why did I attract someone with the same disgraceful characteristics as my mother? Am I so broken that all I can attract is other broken fucked up people? I don't want to do this any more. I am tired of the beer, tired of the stupidity, tired of a lot of things. I am trying to be the best mother I can be. I feel so exhausted, so numb at times, like I'm constantly trying to run on empty power, but I do not know how to recharge, I do not know how to heal from this shit. I have been avoiding it all for years, but I am ready now to start facing it and healing my wounds, I just need a little guidance.
Thank you for listening
