My life as a target

Well, I can see that nobody has posted in this message board for a long time; however, I'm at a point of desperation and I need to vent. I need someone, anyone who understands to please, please contact me. I need support, I need a friend. I feel so alone.

My name is Brittany. I'm about to turn 20 and I just now, 6 months ago, got out of the hell I had been living in all of my life.

My earliest childhood memory goes back to 1994, when I was 6 years old. During that period in time, my Mother had just decided to go see a Psychiatrist for some emotional problems she'd been having (more on that later). The doctor diagnosed my mother with Bipolar Depression and they were testing different medication.

So, I was 6 years old and I had gotten off of the Elementary School bus at the bus stop. It was a quarter mile walk to my house and to make it worse, it was all up hill. Everyone else had a mother or father waiting there for them with open arms, hugging them and kissing them: "How was your day sweetie?" they would say, full of smiles and laughter! I always envied families with such strong bonds and so much love. My father worked full-time but my Mother was a stay at home Mother. She had no reason for not being there.

Anyways, on this particular day, when I approached my garage I heard sobbing. Someone was crying in the garage. "Mommy?" I asked, peaking around the corner to find my Mother lying on the garage floor, clutching a garden hose.

"What's wrong Mommy?" I asked.
No answer, just more sobbing.
"Mommy?" I asked again.
"THE LEPRECHAUN! HE STOLE MY SPRINKLER!" She screamed at me. "LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE!" She screamed louder.

Most people can remember back before they were 6 years old but not me. In fact, most of my childhood is kind of a blurry mesh of terror. I guess there are a lot of suppressed memories. The doctor explained to my mother that the episode in the garage had been a bad side effect of the medication they were trying. The testing of these drugs went on from years and years. I always wondered why none of them worked. It took me until about a year ago to find out (with the help of many, many research materials AND my therapist) to find out that she actually has Borderline Personality Disorder.

My childhood was nothing short of a nightmare. Now, I know that a lot of children have messed up childhoods. I grieve for them AND with them and I do not, under any circumstances, expect any sympathy from anyone else. But of all my friends, I had the hardest time. Nobody understood what I was going through so I never had anyone to talk to about what went on in my home. No, not my home - it was Hell.

Let me tell you a little bit more about the family. My Father is a smart man. He has a nice job and makes a very good amount of money. However, he is a workaholic and money hungry. In fact, he hordes money. My brother is 16 at the moment and he suffers from a serious heart disease that has nearly taken his life on several different occasion. And then there is my mother, a severe, untreated Borderline who is her own WORST enemy.

Nobody hated anyone more than my Mother hated herself. Her favorite thing to do was make fun of herself and call herself names. "I'm worthless."
"I'm an evil bitch."
"I'm dumb."
"I'm ugly."
"I'm fat."
"I'm a piece of $#%^."
"I'm nothing."
I could go on all day, the list goes on and on. Life with my Mother was a roller coaster but not in the same way as a Bipolar roller coaster. My Mother had the ability to go from sensitive, sweet, gentle Mom to rageful, violent, hateful Mom in a minute flat. What made it worse was that there was nothing you could do about it.

My Mother lived in a make-believe world in her head. Her main goal in life is to make sure that she is as miserable as humanly possible. If she's have a good day, she will make sure it's ruined before 12am. The only other people she hates more than herself are her immediate family; My father and I (never my brother, he was her ANGEL, her BABY).

She was only physically abusive, sometimes. It was not the main issue, however, I do feel that it needs to be addressed. When I think of physical abuse, I think of punching, kicking, scratching, and/or burning. My mother physically abused my father this way (I will never understand how a 90lbs woman can kick a 200lbs mans ass, I guess my father was just too broken) but she physically abused me in odd ways.

On a bad days she would become more aggressive. She would never raise a hand but she would still manage to physically hurt me. Sometimes she would poke me really hard in the arms or stomach, sometimes she would stiff arm me when we were walking (in parking lots especially because she could use the excuse 'I thought I saw a car coming'), or (her personal favorite) "accidentally" slamming doors on me. Yes, car doors, sliding doors, bedroom/closet/bathroom doors. Doors of all kinds. But I never thought anything of it because it was always "oops!" afterwards. Oops my ass, you don't make that mistake on a daily basis...

As I said before, the physical abuse wasn't the major bulk of the abuse that occurred. A majority of the pain was through emotional and verbal abuse. My Mother would say the most God aweful things to me. Another memory that I have:

I was about 9 years old, my brother was 6. I was downstairs watching t.v. on mute (the noise bothered her, if I turned it up she would go off on a crazy spell) when my brother came downstairs and sat down next to me. He looked up at me with his baby blue eyes (at 6 years old, mind you) and said "You're a bitch from hell who came to ruin my life."

"What?" I asked.
"Mommy said that." He said.

There are tons of stories that are almost identical to that, just edit the ages and add a different cuss word or derogatory name. It wasn't always to my brother though, she would say things to my face all the time. Another example:

When I was 15 years old my Mother went crazy (as usual) one night and for some reason, the rage was solely focussed on me. Normally, the rage is divided between my father and me so you get a break from time to time but this one was COMPLETELY mine. She had been downstairs screaming and cursing for hours. She'd broken all of the plates and bowls and was now working on the drinking glasses. She just loved to watch glass and ceramics shatter on the walls of our kitchen. Anyways, I had been in my room, sitting in the corning with head phones on (not an unusual position for me to be in) when she came upstairs and BUSTED my door down. I mean, completely OFF the hinges. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet.

"YOU SLUT, YOU ######6 SLUT! I HOPE YOU GET RAPED YOU LITTLE $#%^!"

Again, not an unusual thing to come out of her mouth but it stings the same every time. The last 20 years of my life have been this way. I've heard it all. She's accused me of being a drug addict, a thief, and a liar, a whore, a slut, and a home wrecker. I've been this biggest mistake of her life, the burden on her shoulders, the abortion that she should have had. I've been my mothers little $#%^ for ever. I've been her punching bag. I've also been her caretaker.

My mother also so happens to be a hypochondriac. When ever she was ill or injured, which was 99% of the time, I would be the only one there to take care of her. I would sit by her side, night and day, listening to her cry and complain. She would bark commands and I would run to fetch what ever it was she needed. I was obsessed with keeping her happy. I wanted her love and approval so bad. I would do anything for a hug or a smile from her. My mother never smiled...

The verbal abuse was never ending. Name calling was a day to day habitual thing and after a while, you become numb to abuse. In fact, if she would skip calling me names for one day, I would actually feel sick. I felt as if I had done something wrong, she was ignoring me for some reason and THAT'S why she hadn't told me how disgusting I was. BUT the emotional abuse was worse.

My mother liked to play games with your mind. She would call me into her bedroom (which was separate from my fathers, they NEVER slept in the same bedroom) and ask me to sit down. She'd start playing with my hair and telling me how pretty it was and how much she LOVED to brush it. When ever this happened I got a warm feeling inside (from the attention, from the fake front of LOVE she put on)... followed very shortly by a hard, rock-like pit settled at the bottom of my stomach (because I knew she was lying).

She would pry information out of me about school and friends and boys and so on. Nothing bad, just the normal mother-daughter gossip (oh how I wished). Then she would dismiss me, go into the bathroom, smoke a bowl (she was a pot smoker, it made her moods 'better' she claimed, but I never saw a difference), and make up an elaborate story in her head about something terrible I had done. For example:

One time, when I was about 15, I told her that I had gone with my friend Anna over the weekend for a sleep over at her Dads house in J-town (Name changed for privacy). She then told my father that J-town was the Meth capital of the world and that I had gone over to my friend Anna's dad's house to smoke Meth and that she was concerned because I was shaking from an obvious addiction.

Ludacrisy! I have never even SEEN meth, much less ever smoked it. Luckily, my father never believed it. He knew as well as I did that she was the biggest liar known to man kind. So I never got in trouble with him. But my mother, she didn't live in the same world as everyone else. Oh no, she was CONVINCED. Even though I clearly said NOTHING about meth, she was 100% positive that I had and that I WAS addicted. She then proceeded to admit me into rehab but my father stopped her before she could.

The suicide attempts were the worse. Her stomach had been pumped multiple times from overdosing on pills. She would threaten it almost daily. She even had a tied noose in her room. Weird, right? The worst memory I have involved one of her suicide attempts.

I was about 10 when this happened. My mom was on a tangent, as usual, and decided that jumping out of the 3rd floor bathroom window was how she was going to die. For four hours she hung out of the window screaming "###$ YOU PEOPLE, YOU TORTURE ME, YOU HATE ME, NONE OF YOU LOVE ME, YOU ALL WANT ME DEAD, YOU THINK I'M CRAZY!" She never jumped...

Numerous times the cops were called. But don't be fooled. Only ONCE did someone else call the cops on her (that was me). She called the cops on herself 5 other times for child abuse. They never arrested her, however, they would get close when she would start cussing and yelling "Take me away I'm evil!!!"

If she wasn't threatening to commit suicide, she was inflicting pain on herself. She would have random bruises all over her body that "mysteriously" appeared there. She had no idea how? But they were huge. I'm convinced she did it to herself. One time, she punched herself in the eye (it was swollen shut) and claimed to have been raped by a taxi driving. Two days later she admitted to it being a lie. Then two days after that tried to say she lied when she said she lied and that she, in fact, HAD been raped. Then, once again, admitted to it being a lie.

To everyone outside of our family, she was super sweet. She would talk to anyone and was the first one to volunteer to help someone out. She loved to feel needed so if someone was in distress, she was right there. Though everyone knew she was a little off because her social skills were that of a young child. She would say inappropriate things during dinner, such as; poop, snot, booger, fart, ect. (really embarrassing when your friends or boyfriend are over to meet them). She was very awkward in public, it's as if she didn't know how to act. Personally, I think it's because she doesn't know how to live in the same world as everyone else.

Although my mother never provided me with any kind of support she always expected me to be there when ever SHE needed support. She would sit me down (again, almost daily) and tell me how #######5 my father was. She would tell me that "he can't keep his dick in his pants" and that he was constantly having affairs with other women. One time she even told me he was Gay (which wasn't true). She told me that he had thousands of dollars hidden away in a secret bank account that he used to raise his other family (mind you there was no other family, the story would change every time she told it). She told me how awful he was to her and us kids.

When ever she had a problem with my father, she would come to me about it. When I was 8 I would hear about their sex life and about how my mother could smell another womans vagina on him. Graphic from such a young child, you know? When she had a problem with me, then it was public. So public that the neighbors could sometimes hear her screaming at me.

My mother refuses treatment, she thinks she is a perfectly functional human being and that the rest of the family are the crazy ones. She thinks we conspire against her. She thinks we plan to make her miserable. She thinks we want her to be in pain. She looks at us and sees evil. - When I look at her, I see everything she sees in the rest of us. I think that's the problem. I think my mother hates herself so much that she wants everyone else to hate her too.

I moved out about 6 months ago and thought that things would get better. They didn't, they only got worse. I've been having panic attacks and am a nervous wreck. She calls me multiple times a day, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, sometimes laughing. She won't leave me alone. She calls to tell me everything my dad does and says to her (they're in the middle of an extremely messy divorce). The other day she asked me to stop talking to him all together.

I just need help. I don't know how to cut her off. I need her out of my life. Because of the abuse, because of all the things she's done and i've seen her do in my life - I just can't continue to have her poison my life. She is toxic and I need to rid myself of these demons before they take me too. I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm always emotional, I'm sensitive, and I'm paranoid. Help!!!!!

I really don't have any advice for you, just writing to say how bad I feel that you have gone through something like this. Honestly, I have been through things and heard stories of others and this sounds like one of the worst, if not the worst case of emotional/psychological abuse I have heard of.

You deserve a lot of credit for being so gracious of your mother in this post. It seems you have a lot of understanding and still some empathy/sympathy for her experience and how she feels even in the midst of how awful she has treated you (and your father). This is especially after having been so manipulated, embarrassed, humiliated, shocked, terrorized, and psychologically beaten down all on a constant basis.

You don't mention much, but I'm sure you must have some kind of symptoms of your own after going through all that. You need to be concerned about your own healing, not just about getting away and cutting off all contact with your mom. Usually after being in a relationship like that, even after the person is long gone (even if they die) it can be psychologically like they are still in your life. Unless we (as the formerly abused) deal with what is in us now, it's like the attacks and effects from the abuser keep continuing.

Again, at least you acknowledge that though she treated her family horribly, she measured out the same to herself. In fact I often think some of the rage and attacks against others are because of all the frustration, bad feelings and guilt they feel about themselves. It's just a big pot boiling over. I'm not BPD but I feel a lot for them. Though your sharing your story has made me see another side and maybe balance out my perception of BPD. I mean it's one thing to go give out this stuff towards another adult, but kids...Most kids can't understand this kind of behavior, let alone even those that do have some understanding, to have that responsibility /burden placed on you as a child to become the adults caretaker...is unreasonable and not how it's supposed to be.

I also wonder which is worse (there probably isn't a worse, just different effects) being raised by a BPD parent or an NPD parent (excluding physical &/or sexual abuse)? Not sure which is worse, hearing you are loved and then be cursed-or not hearing it at all, being hugged and then wished for dead or not being hugged at all....don't know just wondering and comparing.

Please do not despair. I think the attitudes you are taking already can help you on your way to healing and being whole. I do believe people can have their bad circumstances turned into something that makes them stronger and better able to survive and possibly even help others.

I guess I would say this, it's time for you to leave your mom in God's hands and for you to make sure you're doing alright and getting any help you need, for yourself.

I'm really glad to see someone reply. Its silly, I just feel relieved to know that someone out there cares enough to respond to my sad-sap story.

Thank you so much, sometimes its nice to hear someone tell me I'm doing a good job. I get scared sometimes. I don't know whether or not what I'm doing is right or wrong; how to I compare when I've never met anyone with the same situation?

I'm in therapy right now, but he was a total quack. So now I'm looking for a new one. I've got a lot of anxiety issues. I have panic attacks but no doctor will give me anything to stop them cause I'm so young. I have sleeping issues and I'm paranoid all the time...

I wouldn’t want to put anything on you, but I wonder if you might be suffering from PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ). This surely could have resulted from your mothers sudden on & off again terrorizing and through your witnessing her own traumas. Like you just mentioned …. On a website about it, I saw it said symptoms include: sleeping problems and increased tendency and reaction to being startled, and hypervigilance to threat (is that part of your “paranoia“?).

They also mentioned: “trouble concentrating, irritability, anger, poor concentration, blackouts or difficulty remembering things, problems regulating feelings, which can result in suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or passive aggressive behaviors; a tendency to forget the trauma or feel detached from one's life (dissociation) or body (depersonalization); persistent feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt or being completely different from others;”…

Maybe you should look into it, look it up.

It’s not a sap story, it was your life. It’s good in a way, that these days young people can write about the horrible things they might be going through, and have a better chance to find others who will listen and maybe have gone/are going through the same kinds of things. There is some comfort in that. Back in my day, the Internet wasn’t an outlet yet. So you just had to hope someone in your circles could relate to your experience, or else I suppose you just had to hide everything (which would just make it worse).

Hope you find someone better able to help you find healing (instead of a quack)…