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.
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