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.
No comments:
Post a Comment