Growing up as an illegal immigrant

     I always felt that one of the worst ways I was wronged as a child was by my parents' choice to illegally immigrate to the United States, although I've always been scared to talk about it. I didn't want to get into a highly political topic. I didn't want people looking down on my for my parents' choice. I didn't want to come off like I was passing judgment onto people in a similar situation to us, because I don't know every single illegal immigrant and their reasons for doing what they did... but from my experience, it's usually no good. 

    That being said, a lot of my parents' abuse towards me has been incredibly difficult to describe. Some of it is too disturbing to comfortably write about or even try to put into words, and I feel like some of it is just too unusual and difficult for others to really understand. This issue is in the latter camp, but I have to talk about it. When I made this blog, I made it my mission to record as much of what my parents did to wrong me as I possibly could, to help others understand what abuse can look like and to help myself keep grounded if I ever consider resuming contact or start to miss my mom. And so far, it's helped. When I was tempted to reach out to my mom a couple of weeks ago, I reread a few of my posts, and the feelings went away.

    I was 5 years old when my parents decided to illegally immigrate to the United States. My mom spent months carefully transferring money from account to account, to prove to the US embassy that we had the funds to get a tourist visa. Back then, the bank just printed a receipt with how much money you had, so it was reasonably easy to commit fraud by transferring your money between accounts, to make it seem like you had more than you really did. We weren't actually going to be tourists, but they wanted to illegally work here to make a bit more money for a couple of months, or so they say. My maternal grandma was already in the United States, illegally cleaning stores for money. 

    One night, my parents had someone drive us all to our country's capital city to get on a plane and go to the US. I didn't know what was going on, and I remember sleeping through most of it, until I threw up. I was weirded out by the experience, but I didn't think much of it. When we got to the US, I barely understood that we were in another country, partly because my parents mostly associated with other people from our country here.

    For the first couple of months, we lived with several strange and dodgy roommates. I felt like we moved to a different apartment every month or so. The apartment was always in someone else's name, usually a part of an illegal business scheme involving an American citizen of Eastern European extraction trying to fit as many people as possible in one apartment, so that they could illegally work for him. If you didn't know, that's how these illegal immigration schemes often work. My parents were desperately looking for someone to illegally hire them in the long term and give them a place to live. Eventually, we settled in a major Southern city, where we'd stay for the next 20 years. We lived there with my maternal grandma until she moved back to our country when I was in 3rd grade. For nearly the entirety of those 20 years, we lived in a dingy little one-bedroom apartment, which often made the abuse inescapable, because my parents weren't legally able to get another apartment in their names.

    Anyway, it wasn't until many years later that I figured out that we were here "without papers", and all of the different implications that this had. It scared me a lot to find out that I was literally not legally allowed to be in the place that I've been in since the age of 5. I think I started to figure out how serious this all was by the end of elementary school. Over time, the United States became my home and the only place in the world that I was really comfortable living in. How could they do this to me? Did it not matter to them that I'd grow up to feel like I belonged here, but could be deported to a country that was basically alien to me at any time?

    Whenever I asked her why we came here, she couldn't really give me an answer. Sometimes, she'd say something about how "I read a book about slaves who lived in New Orleans, and I fell in love with America". I always felt like that was just something she thought normal people wanted to hear. It struck me as odd. Who moves to another country because they read one book?

    Around the time that DACA was created and illegal immigration started to really get media attention, my parents really ate up all of the "illegal immigrants are hard-working, wonderful people who sacrificed everything to give their children a better life" narratives. I'm sure that it's true for a few illegal immigrants, but it wasn't true for my parents or any other illegal immigrant that I knew. Out of nowhere, my mom started concocting all sorts of weird stories about my country of birth being a terrible place to live, and how we just had to move here to avoid certain peril... and none of them were true. Our country of birth is one of the most developed in Eastern Europe, offering free healthcare and free university education to all citizens, with a fairly low crime rate.

    One of my mom's strangest ideas was that the American government owed us American citizenship, because they sent secret agents to our country to infiltrate us and instill a democratic government, which lowered the quality of life so severely that we had no choice but to move to the United States. More on my mom's bizarre attachment to communism later, but the important thing is that this isn't true. It never happened. That's not why communism ended in our country, and even if it was, it wouldn't entitle her to American citizenship. Plus, our lives back in our country weren't bad at all - all of our needs were met, my parents just weren't as wealthy as they would have liked. I think that deep down inside, my mom knew that she screwed up, and was trying to come up with anything to make her decision seem justifiable.

    When I was in middle school, my mom was really eating the consequences of her actions. By this point, I was thoroughly integrated into American culture. I'm still Eastern European, and proudly so, but I was very comfortable here. I fluently spoke English, I had many American friends, and the American way of life was my default. Yet, my mom couldn't secure a future for me here. The slightest mistake would mean being sent back to a country I hardly remembered. Of course, this was never her fault. She followed the news surrounding the possible immigration reform religiously, and would have me translate every article she could find about it. I spent my teenage years worried to death about the possibility of being deported, and riding an emotional roller coaster with my mom about the possibility of maybe being here legally one day.

    It felt like every other week that she'd change our plan on which country we were going to live in. "That's it, we're moving back home, I can't take it anymore!" one week, and then "I don't care, I'm staying here, I've earned it!" the next week. The instability was certainly not good for my mental health. I didn't know if I'd be saying goodbye to everything I knew and loved or if I'd be able to stay here and go on like everything was normal. I can't even put into words how much of my time and energy the constant drama around our lack of papers ate up. My mom blamed me for having American friends, crushes on American boys, or any attachments to the United States - "great, that's just what I needed you to do, fall in love with an American so that I can never get you to leave this place". As if that wasn't just part and parcel of growing up somewhere, and as if it wouldn't have been her fault if I was torn from this place. Was I just supposed to stop experiencing life at all, because of her decision to illegally immigrate to the United States?

    On a slightly political note (it's unavoidable with this topic), I feel like a lot of the young activists for illegal immigration misplace the blame for their problems. The vast majority of the illegal immigrants I've known, of various ethnicities, weren't running from war or extreme poverty. Most of them just wanted a little bit more money, and were willing to risk their children having to grow up in another country illegally to achieve that, because they didn't care. The sheer amount of instability and uncertainty that they force upon their children is beyond abusive in my eyes. Besides, what opportunities do you have if you're here illegally? It's not like you can go to college or get a real job. And it's quite taboo to blame your parents for anything in most cultures - thus, they blame the terrible American government for not accommodating millions of people who came here illegally to have fancy, nice things. For a long time, I fell for this line of thinking too.

    My parents nearly fell for all sorts of stupid immigration scams. One day, my dad brought home the idea that there was a lawyer in our city that was able to get people green cards if their children attended American schools. My mom was smart enough to shoot that one down quick. There was also a mysterious Russian lawyer whose existence I really doubt, who was supposedly setting people up for green card marriages for a hefty price. Everyone claimed that he existed, but no one had his contact information. One of my mom's affairs lead to her divorcing my dad briefly so that she could marry a serial felon, in hopes of getting a green card. Needless to say, it didn't work out.

    When I was in high school, my grades were really low and I skipped class all of the time. I'd just hang out in the bathroom when I was supposed to be in class. The one I skipped the most was AP European History, approximately 140 times - the class my mom insisted I take because we're proud Europeans. But I just didn't care. If I'm here illegally, why even bother? I can't use these grades to go to college. Not even my high school diploma mattered because it wasn't like I'd ever be able to have a job. My parents didn't see how not providing me with a safe study environment or the ability to do anything with my education was going to make me stop caring, and of course, I was blamed for this. They kept telling me that they wanted me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker, with no regard to what I wanted or whether this was even possible for me. I was expected to try my hardest in AP classes just so I could scrub toilets for $7.50/hr under a stolen social security number for the rest of my life. I didn't see the point, so I didn't do it.

    I spent all of my free time playing video games or acting out on the internet. I barely showered and I ate crappy food. I did all sorts of things for attention. I cut myself and I ran a blog online where I posted purposely inflammatory content. Life felt completely and utterly pointless if my parents put me in a position where the most I could accomplish was illegally cleaning stores for the rest of my life and hoping I didn't get caught. If I ever told my mom that I was depressed, she told me "all of your needs are met, what do you have to be depressed about?", as if merely keeping me alive was enough, and as if I didn't have the right to feel upset by the fact that they put me in this position. I had nothing to look forward to or any hope of this ever getting better.

    Eventually, I became a DACA recipient, around the age of 17. I was happy, because this meant that I could go to college, albeit as an out-of-state student because DACA recipients weren't considered residents, and I could get a driver's license and a job. But suddenly, my parents started pressuring me to put everything in my name. Their utility bills, their cars, their apartment, everything. They tried to convince me that this was for my own good, because "it would build up a history of those things in my name", but really, they were placing an unfair burden on me that I personally think no child should have to take on for their parents, even if they're all citizens of the country they live in. Due to my upbringing, I felt like I didn't really have a choice. Previously, those things were all in my aunt's name, who was just as personality disordered as my parents, and they were tired of her holding it over their heads.

    This part is particularly difficult for me to talk about, but my mom pressured me into an abusive marriage with a man I met online. He waited until my 18th birthday to talk to me, and I didn't see how strange this was at the time. I was aware of many of the difficulties in my family life, and he made me feel really special and listened to me about my problems. He promised me a good life in accordance to our religion and made himself out to be everything I looked for in a man, and as soon as he felt like I didn't have a way out, he became the opposite. Because he had something to gain, he joined my parents in manipulating me into a very swift courtship. Needless to say, the marriage eventually failed, but I did become an American citizen during this time. This isn't how I wanted it to happen. I always believed that marriage was a very special, eternal covenant to be taken very seriously.

    Admittedly, if it wasn't for that situation, I don't know how my life would have turned out. I don't even think I'd be in the United States anymore. My parents insist that despite the extreme abuse, I should be thankful to him for the rest of my life for giving me papers. My mom once said that he should be canonized as a Saint (not something she even believes in), because he indirectly gave her the opportunity to get papers, which is all it took for her to think he was a wonderful person. And they also think I was abusing him by expecting him to stop abusing me - similar logic was always applied to my relationship with them, typical DARVO. You have to keep in mind that they have consistently sided with those who hurt me and hated those who treated me well as long as I've been alive. It was always "what you did to that poor boy", and not "gee, it sure is weird how a much older man moved into our house, didn't pay a dime for years, made you to work 60 hour weeks to pay for his hobbies, and even had his friends threaten your life at one point". Absolutely devoid of any empathy.

    There was a point where I hated my life so much that I lived out of my car to avoid him and my parents. I remember regularly standing on top of the parking garage at my university and contemplating jumping off. I developed the habit of smoking at least one pack of Newport cigarettes every day. When I decided that the relationship got too abusive to continue, my parents shamed me into staying because they had a lot to gain from me being with him. I could go on, but this is one thing I try to keep in the past - I'm in a happy and successful marriage now, and my life did eventually turn around, no thanks to my parents. It still wasn't fair to be set up for failure the way I was, despite the fact that I did end up beating the odds. My parents absolved themselves of any blame because things ended up "working out" in the end.

    Trump got elected when I was about 19 years old, weeks after I married the abuser. I knew it would be hard to avoid politics in this post, but my parents fell for all of the insane fear mongering about how he's trying to deport the millions of hard-working illegal immigrants who are keeping the country together. My mom decided that driving was too risky for her, because she could get deported - and I became her personal driver for the next 5 years of my life. There's a post incoming about that, too, since it was such a lengthy and complex situation - but I really felt like it robbed me of my youth more than most other things that they did. I had to sacrifice jobs, college classes, friendships, and a plethora of other things to placate my mom. If I ever suggested that it was too much for me, she put on a manipulative show about "I guess I'll just buy a car and drive... and if I get deported, oh well...", which worked to put me back in line. She'd brag to people about how her daughter loves her so much that she drives her around everywhere, and how she bets their kids would never do that for them.

    My mom was a huge fan of the Dreamer movement, which was a movement for young people whose parents were illegal immigrants. Their symbol was a monarch butterfly, because it migrates throughout the year. She convinced me to get matching tattoos with her of a monarch butterfly - probably the only tattoo I have that I thoroughly regret. I hate everything that movement stands for, but like I said, my parents really clung to all of the propaganda so that they could feel better about the mess they had created. She made me promise to always fight for illegal immigrants, because they're my people, and we've been wronged so much. Today, she couldn't give a rat's ass about the movement, because she eventually got what she wanted and decided that she hates Hispanics too much to care anymore.

    On a side note, around this time, I read a book by actress Diane Guerrero about her upbringing with illegal immigrant parents. Looking back, her book described extreme levels of abuse at the hands of her highly dysfunctional parents, who were definitely just looking for more money, and not running from certain death like the media would have you believe illegal immigrants are doing. The book was written in a way that really manipulated you to feel bad for them, and not angry that they were willing to do this to their child. My mom loved Jose Antonio Vargas, a Filipino illegal immigrant whose parents set him up for failure by falsifying legal documents to get him into the United States. I feel like even the "best" stories of people who grew up in these circumstances still paint a very grim picture of their parents' morality and ability to raise a child. Much of the "activism" at this time involved things like suicide threats, in the form of "I'll commit suicide if I'm deported" - does that sound familiar to anyone who knows anything about narcissistic abuse?

    Both of my parents would frequently mope about how hard it is to be an illegal immigrant. One time, my dad struggled to find work - because no one in their right mind would hire an illegal immigrant if they can just hire an American citizen and not get in trouble for it. "They just don't want to hire people... like us...", the "like us" being said as if he was a black man living under Jim Crow who was being discriminated against for something outside of his control. Absolutely zero awareness of the fact that the world doesn't owe them anything, and that they brought this situation upon themselves.

    And after I became an American citizen, there was immense pressure on me to sponsor them. I remember one time where I expressed to my mom that I won't maintain contact with my dad once I move out. "What, so you won't even sponsor us? You won't get us green cards? Will you still talk to me?". She didn't care about why I didn't want to talk to him anymore, just about whether or not it would affect her material well-being.

    For context, there are some rules for sponsoring an immigrant, namely that they're an immediate relative and that you're able to financially provide for them so that they don't use welfare services intended for American citizens. This agreement is for 10 years or until the person dies, becomes a citizen, or permanently leaves the country. You agree to pay for all of their expenses if they are in a dire situation where the only other alternative is a welfare program. I couldn't make enough money, so the search for a co-sponsor commenced. Obviously, this is something you should only agree to for a person you know intimately and trust not to abuse it... because you could be on the hook for a lot of money if something goes wrong.

    My parents had no shame. They asked random people they knew through work, and they were deeply offended when these people told them no. My mom had the audacity to ask me to ask my priest if anyone at my church would be willing to sponsor them - a church she detested and made fun of regularly, might I add. One time after picking her up from work, I wanted to get a burger, and she cried in the drive-thru so much about how this is so unfair and everyone is being so mean to her, because "sponsorship is just a signature on a piece of paper, it doesn't mean anything!", that I just pulled out and went back home... I just wanted a damn burger, and I didn't have the energy to explain to her that taking on the responsibility of another person's financial decisions for a decade isn't "just a meaningless signature". I suppose it's meaningless if you're not the one who would owe the government money if a person you hardly know decided to go on food stamps when they weren't supposed to. There were multiple times where she threatened suicide if she didn't get a co-sponsor soon.

    Eventually, a distant relative who was an American citizen bit. I spent months being yelled at that I wasn't filling out the 100+ page packets of immigration paperwork quickly enough - work that a lawyer would charge approximately $5000 for. I was made to schedule unnecessary legal appointments, redo entire packets because she didn't think my handwriting was neat enough, and translate and put together all supporting documentation that was required... and it was mailed off. She asked me to ask my priest to bless the paperwork... which isn't how blessings work, she literally doesn't believe in God, and she looks down on my religion, but I had enough sense to not embarrass myself in front of him about this issue for a second time. And after a couple of months, they got their stupid fucking green cards. To which my mom said, "I thought I'd feel a lot more excited when I finally got a green card".

    My mom eventually admitted that all of this was a mistake... I'm sure it was just another fleeting emotion, though. The woman couldn't hold a consistent opinion for more than a week to save her life. It wasn't a mistake because of how much it hurt me, though. It was a mistake because she was upset at how "American" I turned out. This was around the time I told her that I'm moving out and will not be her personal driver anymore. She convinced herself that the reason I developed a sense of self-respect, started saying "no" to them, and wanted better for myself is because "the Americans brainwashed me". She had pretty much always had negative feelings about Americans. American women weren't domestic enough, American men were useless and not handy, American culture was vapid, Americans didn't eat real food... no shortage of criticism towards the people she believed unequivocally owed her citizenship, money, and luxuries.

    Today, we don't speak to each other. I had enough. Every time that I'd try to bring up to them that this maybe wasn't the best course of action to take, I'd be met with all sorts of dismissal and guilt tripping. "Oh, so why don't you just move back if what we did was so wrong?". Because I grew up here, and it wasn't my fault that you made a poor decision. "You don't appreciate what we did for you!". You forced me to grow up in absolute uncertainty of my future because you wanted to be able to buy more fancy, shiny things. No one keeps up with the Joneses like an illegal immigrant. My grandma called it "moving to another country so you could own one more pair of jeans" - which is true. That's why they do it. I've yet to meet an exception. It wasn't the first or last time my parents traded my dignity and my safety for material things.

    A part of why I was always terrified to report the abuse I grew up with was because I knew that I could get deported if I did. There were other reasons, but this was probably the biggest one. Or even my parents could get deported - and then I wouldn't have any way to survive here, as a minor who was dependent on them. I was utterly and completely stuck. By the time I figured out that I was being abused and that something like CPS existed to help people like me, I had also figured out that if I ever reported my parents, my entire life would be uprooted forever. Their immigration status was used to manipulate me into things I would have never considered if the threat of being taken away from everything I knew wasn't constantly looming over my head - and this was not the government's fault, it wasn't the fault of conservative Americans, it was only my parents' fault. They chose this for me, and no one forced them to.

Dear Mom #3

 Dear Mom,

    I find it amusing that you sent me a letter about how much you love me, mere days after sending me verbally abusive texts about made up bank charges intended to manipulate me into speaking to you. You told me you loved me, that I'm the most important person in your life, and that you want to know what went wrong in our relationship.

    The problem is, you know. You're just looking for an easier to digest reason for it. There's a part of you that knows, but just wants to beat me down until I go back to ignoring it and pretending everything is okay. You want to hear something more palatable, that would be fixed with a simple false apology and maybe a gift.

    But you know. We've had many conversations about it in the past. You just don't want to hear it. When I was still a teenager, we had one very long, in-depth conversation about every form of abuse you allowed to happen to me and participated in. During this conversation, you cried with me, and I really believed that we were getting somewhere. The second day, you turned on me and blamed me for all of the abuse. You shamed me for daring to see a problem with the things you two put me through. I cried for days after this and the cruel words you said to me are permanently burned into my brain. That was when I realized that you and I can't ever have a normal relationship - nor have we ever had a normal relationship, no matter how "close" you think we were when I was younger.

    At the time, I thought you were a fellow victim of my terrible dad. It didn't occur to me until much later that you're just as responsible for everything as he was. And it didn't occur to me until very recently that you were there when much of it happened - I pushed a lot of those memories to the back of my mind from a very young age, because it really hurts to have to accept that your own mother let someone abuse you and abused you herself. You stood by and did nothing. You were a co-abuser, you were his partner in crime, you are every bit as rotten as he is. You knew about all of it, and even your brief moment of empathy towards me on that one day was fake.

    You failed me on every possible level that a mother can fail her own child. Nothing that happened can just be left in the past. There aren't excuses for any of it. You were my first bully - your backhanded comments tore down my self-esteem and put nasty ideas about myself in my head from as early as I can remember. You never protected me from evil people - you blamed me for things that a grown man did to me starting from when I was a literal baby. You made me apologize to him because I dared to tell him that I don't want to be touched or spoken to in certain ways. You repeatedly let him endanger my life with his violent behavior and alcoholism. You've told me before that I'm just being difficult, unpleasant, and "playing tough guy" when I stood up for myself - because you didn't think I was worth standing up for. Need I go on? Because I could write for days about everything that you allowed, but I don't need to, because you know.

    You have walked over ever single boundary I've ever tried to establish - what did you think would happen? I've spent the last decade telling you that my dad won't be allowed near me or my children. Yet, when I was pregnant, you kept telling me about how excited he is to be a grandfather. You insisted on him visiting me in the hospital after I had my daughter. And when I told you "no" to this for the last time, you dared to say "well, as long as you and I have a good relationship!". As if you could wash your hands from everything you helped him do to me. As if it was possible to have a good relationship with someone who enabled all of this. You looked at me like I was crazy for telling you that I don't want a man who used to molest me to hold my newborn daughter or be in her life at all.

    Clearly, you don't think any of this is a big deal. You fail to see the severity of what you've allowed to happen and directly participated in, which means that you lack the proper judgment to ever be around a child. I really wish there was a way to convey to you how terrifying it is that there are people in this world who think it's okay for a child to grow up the way I did. Alcoholism, violence, porn addiction, infidelity, verbal abuse, physical abuse, molestation, criminal behavior, manipulation, daily suicide threats... you think this is all fine for a child to witness and experience. That it can all just be left in the past and forgotten about. You think it's normal. Lord have mercy. This alone is proof that you are a lost cause. I don't believe anyone is truly beyond redemption, but you're as close as I've ever seen to it.

    Do you know what real mothers do? Let me tell you a story. I know a woman who had a child in her early 20's. She found out that her husband at the time had a mistress, so she left him. Her second husband raped her in front of her toddler son, so she left him. She worked overtime to be able to provide for him as a single mother. They couldn't afford many toys or luxurious things when he was small, but today, they are both old and have a great relationship, because she did the right thing. Children hardly remember the material things you give them, but they remember how you made them feel. He always knew he could rely on her and that she would protect him. He grew up knowing that he has worth as a human being and that his mother would do anything to ensure his safety. What she did was mothering. Mothering is about more than providing a child with the bare minimum for their survival, which is all you ever did for me. I reckon you'd probably have done even less for me if it was legal to do so.

    Now, I have to do the opposite of what you did. I would rather die than let my daughter experience even one day of my childhood. When she was born, I fell completely in love with her - she looks just like me. I realized that at one point, you held a baby just like her in your arms... and then you let all of this happen. How could you? My love for my daughter quickly turned into disgust towards you. Every shred of sympathy I had for you and every pathetic excuse I conjured up for your behavior was gone. As a mother, I can't forgive you. I can't understand you. I can only leave you in the past, to prevent you from hurting another innocent little girl.

    I think a lot about your relationship with your own mother. Your childhood was even worse than mine, and your mother was a complete monster. Yet, you won't hear a single criticism of her. You're in your 50's and still pathetically obsessed with her validation. You refuse to let yourself accept that your upbringing was terrible and that your parents failed you. And I know that this is what you wanted for me, too. This is why you constantly enabled my relationships with abusive men, and immediately hated my husband as soon as you realized that he truly loved me and cared for me. You wanted me to fall into the same disgusting cycle of abuse and dysfunction that you did. And you're angry at me because I was strong enough to get out and do better.

    I don't think you love me, and I think that the only important person in your life is yourself. Words are cheap. Your actions have always said otherwise. What I have now is real love - you've been very open about how much you resent the people who are in my life now, and you've insulted them plenty. You would get angry if I even mentioned their names. But what they've given me is a part of why I can't ever look back. I am truly, unconditionally loved by imperfect, but morally good people. People who think that I'm valuable, and they treat me accordingly. They don't have to tell me they love me - they show it. The longer I'm with my husband, my daughter, my church family, and my friends... the more I wonder how I even survived my childhood and the more I see what all I missed out on. It breaks my heart that I went almost 25 years without ever really being loved and cared for.

    No one wants to self-orphan. It's not natural. Children are born with an immense sense of love and trust towards their parents, and it takes a lot for these feelings to change. And to be honest, they are still there - I'm still very drawn to you. I miss you every day. But I know that reason must prevail and I can't decide with my feelings. I gave you chance after chance, and you wasted all of them. I couldn't go on like this for the rest of my life. Breaking contact with you was by far the hardest decision I've ever had to make. But I had to make it, because I have a child to protect from evil, malicious people now. No matter how much I just want my mommy some days - I have to recognize that the mommy my heart desires is not real. She never was.

    If you want back into my life, there are a few things that you must do: Take accountability for your actions. Give me a genuine apology where you recognize what you did wrong, and why it was wrong, without blaming me for any of it. Go to therapy. File a police report about my dad molesting me and the other abuse he put me through, as well as his illegal pornography collection. Testify truthfully - even about the things you did to allow these literal crimes to happen. Accept that your actions have consequences - even if you don't like those consequences, and even if they last a lifetime. And maybe then you'll get a phone call or eventually even a supervised visit in a public place. But what you've done truly is so bad that things can never go back to how they used to be, no matter what you do.

    But you won't do any of it. We both know you won't. You want the easy way out, but there is no easy way out. You will have to rot in misery with my dad for the rest of your life. But I want no part in it anymore.

Going No Contact - "Narcissists and Accountability, a Venn Diagram Depicting Two Non-Converging Circles"

     Near the end of my pregnancy, it was starting to look like labor wouldn't happen naturally. The doctor scheduled my induction, and I knew better than to tell my mom. I regret ever having told her about the pregnancy itself, but she knew the due date, and there wasn't anything I could do about that. I dreaded the idea of her showing up to the hospital when I was in labor and possibly with a needle in my back, unable to even get away from her... or even worse, my dad showing up. My husband was there with me the majority of the time, but he had to leave every couple of hours to take care of the dogs.

    For about a week before my daughter was born, my mom spammed my phone constantly. I didn't need the stress so I didn't answer her. Right now, I have another post in my drafts about the extent of their medical abuse towards me - I didn't need to hear about how the labor and childbirth were not that bad, how I'm a drama queen, how I need to suck it up, whatever. The idea of sharing any information with them made my skin crawl. She got increasingly more aggressive as I ignored her phone calls. Then, she started leaving voicemails, which I've still never listened to. I cannot find the words to explain how much I did not want to hear her voice when I was about to give birth to my child.

    Eventually, she sicced my dad on me to spam my phone. This is after I told her, earlier in my pregnancy, that I want absolutely nothing to do with him ever again and that he is not to contact me or speak to me - something I'd been telling her for years, long before I even met the man I'd be having children with in the first place. By this point, I was in a hospital bed hooked up to several IV's and I was 2 cm dilated - I was worried that they'd show up, so I told the nurses about my parents and how I absolutely do not want them to know where I am if they show up.

    Luckily, they didn't show up, but probably the biggest boundary I've ever tried to convey to my mom was crossed. I was done. I was in labor for 40 hours, I was tired, and I developed a new perspective on life. I met my daughter, and that was it - I looked at that girl and every bit of sympathy towards my mom disappeared. I kept going back and forth between being totally in love with this tiny, precious baby and thinking "my mom is actually a horrible, depraved monster for treating a baby just like this one so poorly". It was over. I realized that everything that came so naturally and easily to me in terms of loving my daughter, desiring a good life for her, wanting to protect her... was totally lacking in my mom's brain and heart. This is when I realized I never had a mother to begin with, because being a mother isn't pushing a baby out, but actually mothering the baby.

    After we were home from the hospital, I had no idea what I was doing with a baby. It was amazing, terrible, exciting, and the best thing ever all at once... I loved every second of it but I was exhausted and trying to figure so much out with just my husband there to help. Most people have a loving mom eager to help with her first grandchild, but it was better for us to struggle through it ourselves than to bring either of our moms in to "help". My first "please help me" phone call wasn't to a blood relative, but to a woman from my church who raised three children - I've known her since I was a teenager, and I trust her infinitely more than I trust my own mom.

    A couple of days after my daughter was born, my mom called me. I figured I'd just get it out of the way. It was time to go make my daughter a bottle, and my husband didn't want me to answer the phone... but I wanted to put a stop to the phone calls. So I went into the kitchen and talked to her for a little bit. The most jarring part of the phone call was this exchange:

Mom: "Why didn't you tell me you were in the hospital? I was so worried!"

Me: "Because in the past, you've been far from comforting when I had medical emergencies, and I didn't need to hear it again this time"

Mom: "But you can't fake a pregnancy and childbirth! This is different!"

Me: "I didn't fake any of the other ones, either. I was constantly sick because my quality of life was terrible when I lived with you. You tried to make me walk off a broken ankle. You've told me that giving me medical care is a waste of time. Why would I have told you?"

    Then, silence followed by a change of topic. During the phone call, my mom cried a lot, pitied herself constantly, and ultimately, she asked for a photo of my daughter. "What guarantee do I have that your husband won't see it?". More silence. I think that's when she realized that the boundary was no joke. I'm sure she still thinks she can figure out a way around it, that I'm just being difficult, that I'm brainwashed against family values, and all of the other things she's accused me of... but she realized I won't budge right then and there. She asked me to call her later, and I just never called her again.

    The projection about how I faked my previous medical events was comical. I didn't even realize how screwed up it was until I told my husband about it, to which he said "that's not a normal thing that normal people say". Last night's post does a good job of illustrating how much she'd lie about and exaggerate medical issues - thus, mine must have been the same. An accusation from a narcissist is actually a confession, after all. Although her medical neglect had several other layers to it besides just thinking I was making stuff up, she also just didn't care that much about me and didn't want to waste precious resources like time and money on my problems.

    An honorable mention from the phone call is her asking when my daughter was born - in a genuine bout of confusion and sleep deprivation, I accidentally told her the wrong date. My baby was born on the 23rd at 6:00pm, and I told my mom that it was the 22nd. "I KNEW it... I could FEEL it... something came over me that evening, I just knew it". My husband later told me that I gave her the wrong date - oops. But yeah, "she KNEW it". She's always been a big believer in Magical Thinking, although I always figured that if she just KNEW and FELT so much of what was going on with me, surely she'd have used those supernatural abilities to figure out how she's made me feel. It's quite comical seeing the most emotionally out of touch and delusional person you've ever met pretend that they have a God-given ability to read people's minds and "sense" when something is different. Truly, she wouldn't be scratching her head about why I'm not speaking to her if she could KNOW and FEEL things like that.

    There have been a few times where she's tried to contact me since then. I've posted about some of them, and I'll post about the others in the near future. I've felt a lot better since cutting her out of my life. For the last couple of weeks of us talking, it was really just me trying to get it over with - I was stuck in this loop of trying to placate my mom at the expense of my own dignity and happiness, with each phone call ruining my mood for the rest of the day, and knowing there was another one the next day.

    That's the story of how I went No Contact. When I was pregnant, I knew the day would come. I expected a big fight, a long explanation, perhaps a letter explaining my reasons... but this was it. One pathetic little phone call where a mean, narcissistic woman cried about the fact that I found her so unpleasant and dismissive of all of my suffering, that I wasn't willing to tell her when I was in the hospital giving birth to her grandchild, and then she cried about the fact that I wasn't willing to send a child molester a picture of my infant.

Two Stories with a Point - "Post-COVID Disorder" and Fake Car Insurance Charges

    About a year ago, my husband and I were in the middle of buying the house we currently live in, and I was most of the way through my month-long struggle with COVID. At the time, I was my mom's personal driver - something that will get it's own post one day, but was essentially a product of years of emotional manipulation, guilt-tripping, and threats. I think she sensed that it was coming to an end if I was in the process of buying a house with my husband, so she panicked and wanted a way out of her job.

    The way a normal human being quits a job is to put in a notice after having a new job lined up. But my mom isn't quite capable of doing things the way normal people do them. At the time, she worked with my equally dysfunctional aunt and they cleaned houses together. Her plan was an elaborate, stupid scheme: Pretend that she's planning a trip to Michigan, with friends who don't even exist. Then, she'd claim that she got COVID on the trip, and that she was diagnosed with "post-COVID disorder" (which is not a real thing - there are long-haul COVID symptoms, but this is not an actual diagnosis). She assumed that I would help her maintain these lies and even help her forge fake medical paperwork, and she even went as far as sending pictures off of Google of places in Michigan to my aunt to help further solidify the lie.

    My aunt didn't buy it, because it was so stupid and ridiculous that it wasn't even worth entertaining. "Hm, I don't think you really went to Michigan", and a general sense of disbelief about the whole COVID and post-COVID disorder thing. My mom was floored - she went as far as crying to me about how "everyone lies, but when I do it, I get in trouble?". She complained for days that this just wasn't fair. But she achieved her goal of no longer working with my aunt. I asked her why she couldn't have just told my aunt that she didn't want to work with her anymore, and she didn't have an answer for me. I suspect it had a bit to do with the fact that this was two narcissists butting heads and it wasn't computing in either of their brains, but she probably wouldn't have been any more honest with an employer that wasn't a mentally ill relative either.

    This is just one example of my mom creating elaborate lies in order to get something from someone. There were so many other times in my life where she'd come into my room and try to coax me into crafting a complex lie with her, usually to get out of doing something or to get something out of someone. Looking back, it's so fascinating how easily she fell into crafting a web of lies in situations where the truth would have been simpler and more sufficient. More blog posts to follow as I remember those individual instances...

    Now, this part will seem like it has no connection to the last part, but bear with me. Before my husband and I were financially stable, my mom offered to pay for my car insurance. Offers of financial help are like catnip to emotionally abusive parents - they literally beam at the idea of having something to hold over your head. There are always strings attached, and no gift is given out of love and a genuine desire to see you happy. I reluctantly accepted her offer, but I made sure to switch the payments back to our card as soon as our finances allowed it. I removed her card from the account and double checked everything. She offered to continue paying, and was upset when I declined.

    Since I don't know how insurance works in other places, I'll give some context: It's legally required where I live, and it's in six month premiums. Every six months, your premium is recalculated and your monthly payments are 1/6 of the premium. At the time my mom paid for my car insurance, the monthly payment was $57. It is no longer $57, and hasn't been for many months.

    Last night, I got a barrage of text messages, the most important of which was this one:

"Your silence is pathetic/embarrassing. I fully respect that you are disconnecting us from your life. In that case, I don't understand why you take $57 from us each month. If you think that the car insurance company is making a mistake, I will cancel it. And if you think we owe you some sort of money, for what and how much?"

    Admittedly - it made me panic. I hate seeing her name pop up on my phone screen. I immediately suspected that something was off. I went to check my car insurance app, and I double checked that the amount was $48 now, that it was taken out of my account, and that her card was nowhere in the account information. I checked my bank account to confirm that the money was taken out of my account, and everything seemed to point to the fact that she's lying. Just to triple check, I'm calling the car insurance company tomorrow - but I already know she's lying.

    A couple of years ago, it would have worked. Her goal is to get any kind of attention from me - whether it's a phone call where I'm curious about how this happened, accusations of her lying, begging for her forgiveness, anything. She created another lie, albeit not as elaborate and stupid as her previous lies, in order to get something out of someone. If I responded in any way, she would have used it as an opportunity to try to emotionally ensnare me again.

    And if you read it really carefully, the last line is quite telling - she appears to think that my "silence" (which is "pathetic") is a power play or an attempt to get something from her. Because she only ever does things with the intention of personal gain, and she loves to dish out silent treatments and emotional manipulation, everyone else must always be doing that too. In reality, all I want from her is peace of mind and for her to leave me alone. She appears to think that there's a price tag on my dignity, where she can throw money at me so I'd be her personal jester again. To her, access to me is something I'm unfairly withholding, but because I'm just an object for her to use, she can buy that access back.

    The general rug sweeping, whiny, self-victimizing tone of the text - as if I was just "disconnecting them from my life" for no reason at all, and as if I hadn't spent the past decade or so explaining to her over and over and over again that I don't want my dad in my life... and closer to the end of the decade, explaining to her that she's next on that list if she doesn't respect me. As if she didn't violate a boundary I had repeated all of those years when I was in the hospital giving birth to my child (I still haven't written about how I went NC... I'm sure many of you know how it is with a newborn, so busy!). I could go on and on. She said so much in so few words and she didn't even realize she was saying it.

    It's really rich to see this come from the same person who would come to me on a regular basis for help in crafting lies and manipulating people. It's as if she doesn't remember that she's outright admitted to me that this is her game probably dozens of times before in my life. I always knew she was a manipulative person who would cross any line she could to get her way, even before I had the words to express the general discomfort I felt when she behaved this way, it just didn't occur to me that she'd do it to me - after all, I'm her daughter, she loves me, "we have a bond like no other", the whole thing. 

    Well, I've known for a while now that I'm no different in her eyes than any other person she's done this to. They don't even stop to think about their behavior when they treat their own children this way. Just like that - all of the feelings of missing her and wanting to reach out have disappeared. They'll resurface, and I'll always know better than to act on them.

    As of my writing this, it's my dad's birthday - the first one I've been alive for where I'm not being coerced into giving a gift and wishing a happy birthday to a man who spent my entire childhood molesting and abusing me with my mom's help in doing so. Perhaps that's why the drama started almost 10 days after the supposed car insurance payment would have been taken out. Most people handle those kinds of discrepancies as they occur, not in the middle of the month right before a day on which they want your attention.

Random Memory #2 - The Obscene Extramarital Affairs

     My last blog post brought back a lot of memories. Among those memories were all of the different affairs that my parents both had, and how they tried to involve me in them to various degrees.

    When I was about 10 years old, I was using the family computer and accidentally stumbled upon my dad's accounts on websites for people to find affair partners. I was horrified and told my mom. When she talked to him about it, he came up with a ridiculous excuse - "my friend has me run his accounts on those websites so his girlfriend doesn't find out about them". Somehow, my mom claimed to believe this nonsensical excuse, and it was thrown into the bin of "things that are not to be brought up unless you want to get dirty looks".

    I had one big problem with this excuse - if it was true, which it wasn't, why wouldn't it be alarming that her husband is participating in such an evil scheme? My husband would never do such a thing, but if I was married to someone who did, I'd be absolutely horrified. I don't think I could ever trust them after finding out that they were willing to cover up someone else's infidelity. However, in the world of mentally ill abusers, this is all normal. Everything goes as long as the wrong people don't find out about it.

    My dad also had a severe addiction to extreme forms of pornography, another thing I'd repeatedly stumble upon when I tried to play games or check my children's cartoon websites on the family computer. I'm not talking "curious young man looks up pretty naked ladies" stuff, I mean really depraved fetish content which was often outright illegal. To me, this is a form of infidelity, and goes to show just how bad of a person he was. It obviously bothered my mom, but it was another "you're the bad guy if you bring it up" situation. I was always at fault for accidentally stumbling upon it, and he didn't really have any shame storing illegal rape and torture videos out in the open on the computer that was for all of us to use. I'm omitting a lot of more direct abuse towards me related to his pornography addiction, just to stay on the topic of their infidelity to each other.

    I have a specific memory of my mom's infidelity. On my first day of 6th grade, which was at an arts themed middle and high school across town, I came home feeling absolutely miserable and drained. I just wanted to talk about it with my mom. However, she was out with her boyfriend, who she called Boney M, because he was Jamaican and there's a song by the group Boney M called "Jamaica". I remember calling her crying that I just wanted her to come home and be with me. She called me needy, and was obviously frustrated that I dared to interrupt her time with this man.

    I remember spending a couple of years very resentful of this Boney M character. I really hated him. I knew that what my mom was doing was wrong, but I also felt like he was just another man that my mom put ahead of me in her list of priorities. He was pretty mentally ill in his own right, and my mom could never quite figure out if he was married or not. She wanted him to be my step-dad, and also wanted to obtain a green card by marrying him. I think that he was probably just a player who was more than likely married, but had a few women like my mom around for entertainment. She was always really upset if her boyfriends were married or had girlfriends, despite, you know, being married herself.

    Without getting into my dad's sexual abuse towards me too much in this post, there was another incident where she was out with a boyfriend (I don't even remember which one at this point), and my dad came into my room, drunk to the point of slurring his words, and tried to talk to me about sex and porn, and how I'm supposed to sexually please men. I could have been about 12 years old at the time. I remember crying, asking him to leave, and ultimately calling my mom for help. She made it clear that I was bothering her, she half-assedly asked my dad to stop on speakerphone, and there was no obvious sense of urgency for her. She came home many hours later and acted like she did everything she could have done to stop what happened. It took my dad hours to leave my room. I remember feeling an immense sense of dread and panic the entire time.

    When I was a bit older, maybe about 14 years old, she got another boyfriend. We called him Sweatpants, because her code for going to visit him around my dad was "I'm going to go to the store and buy some sweatpants". She used to take me to visit him all of the time. I was uncomfortable with it, but it wasn't until I remembered it as an adult that I realized just how screwed up it was for her to repeatedly bring me around an affair partner. She was never quite sure if Sweatpants was married or not, either, but his story was that he lived in our city because his wife kicked him out and divorced him for cheating on her. This one didn't last as long as Boney M, although her time with Sweatpants overlapped with Boney M to a large degree - go figure.

    Her last noteworthy "boyfriend" was a man whom I'll call Herbert. We never really had a nickname for him, and I don't feel comfortable using any real legal names on this blog. Herbert was the least "boyfriendy" of the boyfriends, although their relationship was the most complex and weird to me. He and my mom met at a store she cleaned when we had just moved to the United States. So he was in my life from my early childhood to my late teen years. They had a strange co-dependent relationship which I believed was partly romantic and sexual. Herbert was definitely married, and when his wife found out about my mom, he wanted my mom to lie about her identity over the phone. Him and his wife were very on-and-off, and he strung my mom along a lot, claiming that he'd divorce his wife and marry my mom for papers. She'd tell me about how he'd pester her for sex.

    Herbert was the only one that actually bothered my dad, and I'm pretty sure this was because he was the only one my dad actually knew enough about to suspect something. My mom would invite Herbert over when my dad wasn't home and serve him lunch, and they would often be on the phone for hours almost every day, for over a decade. Eventually, Herbert found someone for my mom to marry for papers. She divorced my dad and married this man, and I'm not sure of the extent of the actual marriage. He ended up being a serial felon who was ineligible to sponsor an immigrant, so they divorced, and my mom married my dad again several years later. I'll write a whole post about that saga, one day...

    With most of my mom's boyfriends, I was instructed to not tell my dad about them. Perhaps, if I felt that my dad was a good person who deserved better, I would have told on her. For a very long time, I empathized with my mom and I wasn't fully aware of the extent of her immorality and mental issues, and I felt like she was definitely the better of my two parents, so I often told her about my dad's infidelity. This is a common theme with people that grow up in dysfunctional homes, where both parents are essentially as bad as each other - the mother is given more lenience and sympathy for her actions, and the father is automatically seen as the worse one.

    Each time that one of these situations came up, it caused a little bit of drama for a couple of days at most, but then it died down and you were the bad guy if you ever brought it up. I remember being a preteen and my mom crying in my room about how human beings aren't monogamous, and how a woman's "true love" is supposed to be her child. She told me that men are only for giving a woman a child, and then the child was supposed to be the center of her universe. We don't talk anymore - what a "true love" and "center of her universe" I was. Not that I'd ever want to be those things to her, but it just goes to show how fleeting and shallow everything they say is.

    When I was in middle school, two boys liked me. My mom told me to date both of them, as long as they didn't find out about each other. She saw no problem with this, and I thought it was pretty gross even as a mush-brained teenager. Many years later, I had my first long-term relationship, with a man I didn't know had a severe pornography addiction and even cheated on me. "Ha, so you didn't know?" was her only response - there are several layers to this, from the obvious malice and lack of care towards her own child, to the normalization of infidelity in what's supposed to be a monogamous relationship. I also think there was some bitterness about the fact that I always said "if a man ever did those things to me, it's an automatic divorce". She wanted me to eat my words - and I didn't, I left. For years after, she resented me for leaving him instead of staying like a good, traditional Slavic woman is supposed to in her eyes.

    My mom grew up seeing infidelity in her parents' marriage, but I don't know about my dad's parents. I don't play "abloobloobloo, they had a rough childhood too!" - it doesn't matter, everyone needs to do better and break harmful cycles, it's no excuse. Instead of reflecting on her parents' decisions and choosing a better life for herself, she chose to pretend that it's all good and normal. My paternal grandpa was a severe alcoholic, and would regularly kick my mom and my maternal grandma out of the house so he could bring home prostitutes. My mom told me stories of hearing him have sex with prostitutes through the walls when she was trying to sleep in her room. He even fathered a bastard child with one of his mistresses - my mom and maternal grandma chose to hate the mistress and child, instead of the man who sought out an affair. 

    My maternal grandma would travel to Yugoslavia to have affairs of her own. When my mom was small, one of my grandma's affair partners sent her a postcard in the mail. My mom tried to show it to my grandpa to warn him of what was going on, and instead of him directing his anger at his adult spouse who made a decision to be unfaithful to him, he got aggressive with my mom. She clearly got the message of "this behavior is fine as long as I don't know about it". My grandma would also have overly flirtatious relationships with male friends and coworkers, which is also incredibly inappropriate, but was normalized in their family.

    This part is really embarrassing - when I was about 10 years old, I accidentally found a porn website on the internet run by a couple who slept with other people. I was horrified. I remember sending them a message about how what they're doing is wrong, and how if they're married, they should only be doing that with their spouse. The reason I'm sharing this story, which makes me cringe as I type it, is because despite my upbringing, I didn't think this kind of behavior was normal or acceptable. This is why I don't really care that my parents grew up around infidelity - that doesn't make it right, and it leads me to think that their own flaws, lack of basic morals, and disordered thinking are at fault here.

    There are a few more things I could share, maybe in separate blog posts in the future. Lo and behold, at the age of 26 - I'm in a normal marriage, the kind they call a "Hollywood marriage", which they think only exists on TV, but actually represents a vast majority of marriages in most cultures.

Decoding the "Love"

     My mom always told me that she loved me. According to her, we had "a bond like no two other human beings had". She'd corner me, look in my eyes, and tell me how I'm the most important person to her.

    Yet, we don't talk. As of today, it's been just over two months since I spoke to her. And I don't feel like her actions ever lined up with the things she said to me. From a young age, I'd get uneasy when she said these things to me. As my awareness of our family's dysfunction developed, the uneasy feelings grew. I'd get nauseous hearing my mom talk about how much she loves me.

    With emotionally immature, abusive, dysfunctional, or personality disordered parents... the grasp of the concept of "love" is very shallow. It's best to mentally add "...as long as you're useful to me" at the end of every "I love you" from them. Relationships with people like this are a transaction, first and foremost. Any feelings they have towards or about you are only as deep as your willingness to obey them and play the role they've assigned you.

    I spent the first five or so years of my adult life driving my mom to and from work, and anywhere else that she wanted to go, at the cost of friendships, education opportunities, and jobs that I wanted. I was her secretary, filling out hundreds of pages of immigration paperwork and making every phone call for her. During my childhood and teen years, I was her confidante, her best friend, her therapist, her "boyfriend" (I'm female), and so on. I was pressured to give her a constant stream of validation and compliments. I always provided her with something. And now, I don't. So our "bond like no two other human being have" has disintegrated.

    The biggest part of our transaction was that I was supposed to pledge undying loyalty to the family. The ultimate reason why I was discarded is because it turned out that my boundaries were no joke. She couldn't get anything else out of me. At this point, I was impossible to control and get back in line. I had rejected her demands of helping her for weeks, and I had her take my name off of all of their utility bills. I didn't care about any "help" that her and my dad promised me anymore. One of her last attempts was offering to pay for my car insurance so that I'd feel bad telling them, my dad especially, to stay away from my daughter. In their world, you do things to get access to people, regardless of what's right or how anyone in the situation (besides themselves) actually feels about anything.

    Even my parents' marriage was transactional and ingenuine. My dad went to work and provided a paycheck (er, most of the time), and my mom did the cooking and the cleaning. They said they loved each other, but both of them had numerous affairs and treated each other terribly - of course, they'd never actually say that their dynamic was bad. To them, this was a proper marriage, and they genuinely couldn't fathom that other couples lived differently. They called healthy marriages "Hollywood marriages", something that clearly only existed on TV, and insisted that every married couple lived like they did behind closed doors. You were met with eye rolling and sarcasm if you insisted otherwise.

    When I met my husband, my mom couldn't understand "what I offered that boy". I hate to call it "status", because that's not what it is even if I can't find a better word for it, but he has a certain "status" in our religion, and apparently, I didn't have anything "equivalent" to it that would make me a good fit for him. All the way until I went No Contact and was then promptly discarded by her, she kept figuring out different things that he was "getting out of our relationship" - near the end, she decided that what he got out of me was the ability to "control" me. It never really crossed her mind that maybe, he just likes me, and that's why we're together.

    In searching for a husband, she thought I was ridiculous for insisting on marrying a man with the same religious beliefs and morals as me - the only thing that mattered was his ability to provide a paycheck and "masculine" duties around the house. She really pushed for me to marry one particularly nasty, violent alcoholic who I had nothing in common with, because at the time, he appeared to fit her narrow idea of what qualities a husband should have. "Don't worry, one day he'll probably convert to your religion..." as if it was a costume I put on because I thought it was pretty, and not a genuine belief that I expected my potential husband to take every bit as seriously as I did. She only began to dislike him when it turned out he wasn't going to give her back money he borrowed from her, and that he dishonestly called out "sick" from work a lot - not when he treated me abusively.

    Her reasoning for this was two-fold - deep down inside, she wanted me to suffer and eat my words about how "one day, I'll have a happy marriage with someone who loves me and enjoys spending time with me". And if I married someone with bad behavioral tendencies, I'd be less likely to realize that there's more to life and marriage than having enough money to buy new throw pillows every month while both of us cheat on each other. Somewhere in her heart, she must know that others start families with people they really love, and that potential material benefit in either direction doesn't even cross their minds, and she yearns for it. It's the real self vs. the false self.

    Gift-giving was never done out of love. It was expected to be a reciprocal act. I called it the "traveling $100 bill" when my mom and my aunt would always gift each other a card with a $100 bill in it, with the expectation that they'd get one back the next time a birthday or holiday came around. My aunt once bought me a wooden kitchen table and chairs, still sitting in her garage nearly a decade later, to which my mom said "I hope you're happy - this means I have to buy her daughter something worth the same amount of money". There was immense pressure to rack up credit card debt to get my mom gifts for Christmas as soon as I turned 18. Every bit of "help" towards my bills or tuition and every "gift" came with strings attached - never, not once, was it a one-way transaction that just said "I love you, I want you to be happy, so take this". She didn't understand why the women at my church gave me a surprise baby shower or hand-me-down baby items, and she was baffled by the fact that I wasn't gifting them things worth the same amount back. I still feel lousy accepting gifts, even when I know the people giving them to me are doing it out of love.

    Loyalty was to be given to people who performed a material transaction with you. My aunt, who is nearly as mentally ill as my mom, "helped" my mom with some illegal bureaucratic nonsense when they were still living here without papers - this was actually one of the only times I ever saw my mom get royally owned by a narcissist besides my own dad. My aunt had my mom on an emotional leash for years because of this act. It's never just help with these people (despite my moral objections to the "help" that was offered in that situation), it's "if I do x, you do y, or else".

    Actions never matched words. The over-the-top barrage of verbal "affection" made me so uncomfortable because it just wasn't real. If I was so loved, so important to her, the center of her world... surely, she would have protected me from someone she knew was a violent, alcoholic child molester. She wouldn't have told me "hah - so he's not good enough for you, but his money is?" when I confronted her about this as a young adult. Because in her eyes, the fact that they put a roof over my head and occasionally bought me trinkets more than made up for any discomfort or pain they caused me. In fact, that was a part of my transaction with them - I sit there, shut up, and ignore any bad feelings they cause, because they're "doing things for me". It's a mindset totally devoid of empathy or normal emotions that one ought to feel for their child.

    In just under two years, I married, bought a house, and had a baby with someone who both "wasn't man enough" (because he isn't wealthy) and "doesn't get anything from me" (because I don't hold a similar "status" as he does). I became active in the religious community that she always resented because it baffled her - she couldn't understand that sometimes, people hold genuine beliefs that they don't "get anything out of". I was surrounded by people who truly loved me and built up my confidence, and over time, I wriggled out of the firm grasp she had over my emotions and my life. I grew a spine. I realized what I'd been missing out on for nearly a quarter of a century.

    Both of my parents grew up in homes with similar dynamics to ours. I don't play the "they had a hard childhood too" game, but it's probably all they've ever actually personally seen. I think that on some level, they suspect that real love exists between people who don't intentionally hurt each other and view each other as more than a means to an end, and they're both pretty bitter about the fact that they don't get to experience it. Misery loves company, and they wanted to shoot down every opportunity I had in life to have that for myself.

"I love you... as long as you're useful to me"