Growing up in my house
By the time I was a teenager, I had divorced parents. My real father abused both me and my mother, all the time, but this was before anyone HAD to report it, like Dr’s nowadays.
Anyway, she would call me at family member’s house and say did you tell them we fought last night, cuz if you did I will kill myself. So I have a vivid memory of the house I grew up in, of seeing my mother in every room lying in a pool of blood, cuz she kept telling me she was going to kill herself….and I was young enough to BELIEVE my mother. So if I was brought home before she was supposed to be home I would do a thorough check of the house and each room I would “ready” myself to see here there in the floor face down. Terrible images I know….and I am over 40, so imagine as a young pre-teen, that I faced this daily, when she threw her tantrum.
She always managed to ruin special occassions for me….and still to this day she still manages to ruin them.
She would see my “outburst” and take me in the bathroom to discipline me, and then tell me after spanking me, dry it up, wipe your face and if ANYONE out there knows you got in trouble in here….I will spank you again when we get home. She did not do this in nice tones….these were almost yelling…but there were others in the other room so she had to be to the point, yet be quiet.
Now she manages to ruin special occassions by telling me when I reprimand my child that, “You need to stop creating a scene” I don’t feel I am the one creating a scene. The child is. I am doing my parental duty in keeping him in line.
Enough for tonight on that
Well maybe one more point. Several months ago she fell down in her back, had some of my children, and I said to her, I will come by and pick them up so you won’t have to worry about them while you have your back hurt, she started in about, well if you come take them then I will just kill myself. I said “Now stop that, I lived my whole life worried I was going to find you dead in our house and we are not going to “teach” this behavior to the grandkids, nor do I want them to worry about you like I did daily.” She so far has not said it ever again. Oh to be young again…..I know how to handle her now!
2 Comments »
Leave a comment
-
Recent Comments
April on December 13, 2006 April on The pick up Forestchild on The pick up Addy on Her Sarah on Growing up in my house
-
Archives
- April 2009 (1)
- April 2007 (9)
-
Categories
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
One of the most difficult concepts to teach our children in how to deal with Bi-Polar MIL…was that they are not responsible for her happiness,her tirades,her depression or any other threat she issued.
We are responsible only for our own actions and our own thoughts.
You mother may threaten to kill herself….but you are not responsible for her feelings or her possible carrying thru said threat.
You are not responsible for sending her into a depression…you have become the enabler and caregiver keeping her from going into a depression.
Has the father of the children said anything in regard to how the children are being used as pawns and does mom’s husband recognize the problem also and everyone is just surviving/coping by giving in to keep mom happy?
These are things to consider….
I know this isn’t of much comfort but… My mother is bipolar as well. I’m in college now 3,000 miles away but she still comsumes a major part of my life. She has the rapid cycling kind, and has as long as I can remember. I just wanted to say that I know exactly what you went through with coming home and expecting the worst. My mom would abuse her “pills” all the time (I now know they’re sleeping pills) and go into a dazed comatose state all the time. She would always say that she didn’t want to live any more and would try to kill her self, so after fits of rage I would come upstairs in the morning or home from school and crack her door open to her room, wondering if she was still alive. I know now that they are empty threats and she’d never actually kill herself, but I know exactly what that is like. And the thing I feel terrible about is that sometimes I actually wondered what it would be like, and even wish she would…