Doing better

     I haven't written here in awhile and I actually see that as a good thing. I have gotten back to my "happy place" where I was when we first moved. I honestly don't think of my mother very often at all. That may sound cruel but it's truly better that way because it allows me to enjoy my own family and I am more relaxed. My mother doesn't call or email unless I send her an email and ask a question. They are not coming for John's birthday party and I am happy about that. I don't need the stress of seeing them. It's not enjoyable to visit with them so really, why bother? John doesn't mention them at all which is not surprising seeing how little time he spent with them when we lived ten minutes from them. I'm not foolish enough to believe that this calm will last forever, but for now I'm enjoying it. Had a great day today with my husband and son, enjoying each other's company as a family should. I'm feeling blessed.

The visit

     So, my parents have come and gone and I have been left reeling in their wake once again. As expected, they arrived Thursday evening. Friday my mother met her friends for lunch while Dad met with his client (the reason for the trip) and then the rest of their day was free. Because of my desire to "do the right thing" I texted her that I hoped she had fun and that if she wanted to, they could come over in the evening as John and I would be home. She texted back "yes, it will be great to see them again." I heard nothing further until almost 6pm when she called and asked if it was ok if they stopped by on their way back from the shore. I told her of course it was. They arrived 45 minutes later and stayed very briefly. She made a show of hugging John, who seemed quite underwhelmed. I showed them around the house and she deemed it "nice." They left, I put John to bed, and then I just sat in silence.
     On Saturday they came for lunch and my sister came over with her two kids. Things were so strained and awkward between my parents and their grandchildren. It was painfully obvious that they are essentially strangers. My parents of course brought their neurotic dogs and brought them into the house where one of them very quickly bit John on the hand. It didn't break the skin but it scared him. My mother of course blamed it on John and said he was "after her." I was in the kitchen and didn't see it happen but he spoke up and said "no, I was just trying to pet her." He probably scared her and she was in a strange place so I don't really blame the dog but my mother's attitude upset me. After that, they put the dogs in the car and obsessively checked on them every few minutes.
     Lunch was that special kind of awkwardness where you can feel the tension in the room. My mother's camera battery died so I was instructed to take pictures of her with her "babies" and email them to her. The pictures speak volumes; she is focused on the camera and the kids look bewildered and uncomfortable. My sister had to work so she left soon after lunch and my parents left at the same time to "relax at the hotel with their dogs." They were planning to leave Sunday morning but my dad was so eager to leave that they packed up and left at 1am.
     While they were here my mother said that my dad was going to be getting another client and they would be coming back in June. I said it would be nice if they made it around John's birthday and could come to his party. She said that they would try if it worked out that way. A few days after they left she emailed and said Dad wouldn't be pursuing that client and they didn't want to make another trip so soon. So they will not be coming for John's birthday. Shocking. I have been let down by them so many times it shouldn't come as a shock anymore but when it involves John it still upsets me. He deserves better. My MIL wants to spend every moment she can with John and can't believe my mother doesn't.
     I am trying to get back to the calm I had achieved before their visit but it has been very difficult. Things have been stirred up inside of me and I am struggling. I have once again allowed myself to entertain thoughts of how things "should" be and the reality of how things are contrasts so strongly with that. I am hurt by their rejection of John yet I am relieved that they will not be coming again next month. I am having a hard time and I think I may need to discuss with my new doctor the possibility of beginning some anxiety and/or depression medication. I'm not thrilled with that prospect but the truth of the matter is that this just may be too difficult to deal with on my own.

Continuing on

I have neglected this blog, but not because I have forgotten about it. In fact, I have composed several posts in my head but then I think "I can't write about x because I haven't yet explained y and z." Then I remembered that this blog is a form of "therapy" and it won't do me much good if I don't write on it, will it? So, I am going to write about current things and on the off chance that someone reads this and it doesn't make sense, feel free to ask. Also I will periodically write in "flashbacks" that perhaps will shed light on some things. Onwards then.

We have adjusted very well after our move. In many ways, it's like we never left. It feels familiar, comforting. In short, it feels like home and that's a wonderful feeling. Putting distance between my mother and I has done me a world of good. I've been dealing with things from my past. I've been reading a book about daughters of narcissistic mothers and it has been very enlightening. I am only able to read a little bit at a time, and then I need to process it. I have finally come to peace with my past and taken control of my future. I've finally accepted that I will never have the mother I wanted, the mother I needed. The calm this has given me is amazing.

That being said, things are sliding down into turmoil once more. My parents are coming here this weekend. My father needs to meet with a client (he's a financial advisor) so my mother is coming along so they can visit. They will arrive Thursday evening and are leaving on Sunday morning. How can such a short visit throw me into such a tailspin? The feelings it is stirring up in me make me realize that I am not as "over it" as I believed I was. To be fair to myself though, how can you really get over the fact that your mother doesn't love you? The one person in the world who should love you the most.

I have spoken to my mother on the phone just once since we moved. We called for her birthday and John spoke to her for awhile and then I got on for a few minutes. We email very infrequently, most often initiated by me trying to "do the right thing." She is trying to punish me for moving away and honestly she is doing me a favor by limiting our contact. My aunt and uncle are renting our house in PA until it sells and my aunt has told me some of the things my mother has said about me. My mother tells her she cries all the time because she misses John so much. How can that be when she barely saw him when we lived 10 minutes away? And a big part of why we moved is because she refused to watch him one or two days a week so I could substitute teach. Everything is put into context of how it affects her. My aunt (her twin) is not speaking with my mother right now because she has had enough of the abuse. I know that they will make up so I don't tell my aunt much. I don't dare tell her what I've discovered about narcissism which is hard because it would make it so much easier for her to understand things.

If my mother misses John so much, why is this going to be such a short visit? My father is (mostly) retired and they have no pressing schedule. Her excuse: she is worried about leaving her birds. She is bringing her (neurotic) dogs of course. They will be here Thursday evening yet won't come here until saturday and then only for a couple hours before jetting off to the shore. She is having lunch with her "friends" on friday because they miss her so very much. She is admittedly charming to people who don't truly know her and there are very few people who really do. A few hours is all she can spare for the grandchild who she misses enough to spend her days sobbing over. I am happy, though, that my contact with them will be limited. My stomach has been in knots as the weekend draws nearer. My MIL wants to tell my mother off so badly but she won't because she knows it would make things worse for me. Russ is working and they will most likely be gone before he gets home which is a blessing because I'm not sure he will hold his tongue. He has watched me suffer her abuse for so many years and he's had enough. I do not put it past her to just "drop in" so she can tell her friends she had to see John every moment that she could. The thought of watching her pretend to be a grandmother to him makes the bile rise in my throat. I am trying to hold it together and just make it through this weekend. I think I can, I think I can. Forget thinking, it's time for some hard-core praying. Lord grant me the serenity....

Reading too much into it?

So, it's been a week and my mother has still not spoken to me or emailed me. I'm fine with that for me but it upsets me that she can just write John off that easily. By now I should expect it from her but it is so outside the realm of "normal" human behavior that it still catches me off guard sometimes. So I've been coming to terms with the fact that I may never speak to my mother again and then she sends me two emails today with pictures of my father when he was a little boy. No words, just photos. As if everything were fine between us and she's just casually sending family photos. Is this weird? Because it strikes me as odd. No contact for a week because she is so angry with me and then an email with childhood pictures of my father. Russ thinks she's trying to get to me by using my father against me like she always has but I wonder if she's just so far out of touch with reality that she doesn't even realize how badly things between us have deteriorated. Either explanation is just plain sad.  Counting the days until our move.

Worse than I expected

Seems like it has been forever since I updated here and so much has changed since my last post. I'll catch up as briefly as I can but I think this may be a super long one.
We are moving to NJ at the end of this month. My in-laws bought us a house (I can still hardly believe it myself!) and we will be about 2 miles from them, in the town where we lived before moving to Va. Neither of us have jobs there yet, so it's a bit scary but we're hopeful that we'll find something soon. My in-laws actually went to see the house and put a bid on it before we even saw it and we went to see it while we were there for Thanksgiving. It's a really nice house; bigger than this one, bigger yard, and on a quieter street. We're very excited and so overwhelmed by their generosity.  Things on that end are very good.
The not good part: I had to tell my mother. I had told her months ago that we weren't happy here and wanted to move but we kept it quiet while we were looking at houses on the internet and waited until this went through. I had expected her to react badly and give me a guilt trip but I wasn't fully prepared for the level she would take things to. She sent an email accusing me of all manner of things like denying them as my family, being cruel to them and blaming our move on them. She insisted that she and my Dad had tried to tell us not to move here (HUGE lie!) and to think things over and wait. She said they were very hurt by the way we are doing this and she hopes my in-laws live a very long time (very sarcastically). She also wrote that if I didn't stop complaining and judging, and say something positive then I was not to say anything to them again. Wow. I considered not even writing a reply but I desperately wanted to avoid leaving on (very) bad terms. Russ and his mom both wanted to tell her off when we left but I knew I couldn't live with that guilt so I really wanted to try and leave on good terms with her. Seems that's out the window now. I wrote back that I didn't understand why she was saying that I denied them as my family and that they didn't care. I told her that I took responsibility for the decision to move (even though she's the one that orchestrated everything and promised us the moon if we'd move here) and didn't blame them. I told her that whether she believed it or not we had tried very hard to be happy here and make friends. I said I didn't know what she meant by "how we are doing this" and that I had told her months ago that we were unhappy and would be moving. I told her we're not happy here so we are moving and that it didn't have to turn into something so ugly. I haven't heard from her since. I'm ok with her not talking to me but it hurts that she can turn her back on John so easily. She never said that she would miss him or that she would like to see him before we move. It's just the final confirmation that moving here for "family" was a huge mistake. It doesn't bother John that he doesn't see them because he's not used to seeing them on any kind of a regular basis anyway. So as things stand I'm not sure if I will never hear from my mother again or whether I will receive another hate filled, accusatory email from her letting me know how awful of a person I am. Sigh.
After the "exchange" with my mother I deleted all family members connected with her from my FB; she had already deleted me weeks ago. I just needed to make a break from the pain and I didn't want her keeping tabs on us through other family members and honestly I don't interact with them at all anyway. Well, my uncle called me and told me that my aunt (mom's twin sister) was very upset that I had deleted her and thought my mother had turned me against her. I called my aunt and we had a very long conversation about how my mother has hurt both of us. My aunt and uncle are moving away because of her. They have taken a huge loss on their house but, like me, my aunt is desperate to be away from my mother. My aunt has lived here all her life and feels like my mother has turned people against her since she moved back. My cousins don't have much of a relationship with my aunt because of the lies my mother has told them over the years. My mother is a very convincing liar and is very charming when she wants to be. Very few people see the real side of her; a classic hallmark of npd. Both my aunt and uncle also told me how my mother had bragged that she was making us move here. She told them that Russ didn't want to move here but that she would get him here "through me." Russ was quite ticked off when I told him that. She was determined to get us here, to "win" and then when we were here she wanted nothing to do with us. 
So, that's where things stand now. As far as I'm concerned we are moving forward and leaving the hurt in the past. If she never wants to speak to me again, that is her choice.

Strong enough?

So much has happened since my last post! My FIL is in the hospital with diverticulitis (that's what they think at this point anyway) and he may need surgery. We had planned to head to NJ for the weekend together to see him and do what we can to help. However, my father has been urinating blood and has had some scares as his doctor tries to figure out the cause. His doctor biopsied his prostate last week (he had surgery last year) and thank God it came back negative but still no idea of the cause of the bleeding. Over the past week he has continued to bleed and had to go to the emergency room to be catheterized because a blood clot had formed and his bladder nearly burst because he couldn't urinate.. His doctor decided to leave the catheter in for now until they know what is causing him to bleed. The doctor cauterized the bleeding yesterday and actually ended up cauterizing most of the prostate. During the procedure my dad lost a lot of blood and almost needed a transfusion. So, I don't feel comfortable leaving when my dad is in such a precarious state as well so Russ is going by himself.

After this latest crisis with his parents, Russ and I had a serious discussion and we decided that we should not wait to move closer to them. The reality is that neither of them is in good health and his mother continues to show signs of developing Alzheimer's. The debt we accrued in moving here will not allow us to buy a house but we agreed that we would find a place to rent and sell this house to help get out of debt and hopefully be able to afford a house in a few years. We would be closer to my in laws to help out and neither of us like this area and really want to move. It's a win-win, right? Well, in all honesty I am having a difficult time with it since we made our decision. In my reading about npd, it is repeated that it is often necessary to break contact with a narcissist in order to preserve yourself. My rational mind understands this but it seems that my heart still holds a tiny speck of hope that my mother will change. After forty years I should know better. I do know better; I just hope I'm strong enough to go through with it. She knows we want to move but not that we have decided to do it much sooner than she expected. I fully expect her to have a meltdown of epic proportions. She will pull out all the stops to make me feel guilty enough to cave. I just pray that I have the strength to endure it and I pray that I'm making the right decision.

I want a mommy

I'm sick. Very sick. I have pneumonia and I feel awful. I get violent coughing spells and my head is pounding. I really want someone to take care of me and baby me. I'd love to curl up in my bed and sleep so my body will heal faster. I'd love for someone to stroke my hair and make me some soup and tell me to rest and not worry about anything until I'm feeling better. I want a mommy. Unfortunately none of this is going to happen and instead I must soldier on. My husband takes pretty good care of me when I'm sick but he's traveling for work. I posted on FB that I had pneumonia and my mother offered to watch John so I could rest. Nice gesture, right? It would be if it were genuine. She said it to impress my friends and had no intention of following through. How do I know this? Whenever I was sick as a child, she would get annoyed with me. No soup, no comfort; I was told to go to my room and stay there until I was better. But I was expected to wait on her when she had a headache. When she had a headache the world had to stop. She would lock herself in her room and we were forbidden to make any noise at all.  Of course as the dutiful daughter I catered to her; I brought her cold compresses every hour and brought her saltines and ginger ale and rubbed her head. To this day when someone is sick I make them soup and make a fuss over them. One positive aspect of having a mother with npd is that it has made me a very nurturing person. She also said that my Dad is already on an antibiotic so at least he will be "safe" around John. The first thing she thinks of when anyone is sick is herself and that she doesn't want to catch it because she will surely be sicker than they were. All of this plus after the last "incident", I really don't want him around her unless I'm there. There is no telling what kinds of things she would tell him and he's at a very impressionable age. And if she really was sincere, how come she didn't call or email me at all today to see if I'm ok? I'm just feeling sorry for myself today because I'm so sick and wishing I had a mommy to take care of me.