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My Dad passed away last year, we all lived with his "mother" after he retired from 22 years in the Marine Corps, she was toxic and can't be called a real Mother because no one should treat their child and their family the way she did us.
For years she called me names, put me down, blamed me for everything that went wrong in the house and accused me of things I couldn't possibly have done.
Never once apologizing.
My Grandpa on my Moms side came to drop some things off and didn't get the door latched. She threw an absolute fit, screamed and called me names, how I was a liar when I said it wasn't me and all I ever did was lie. Even after my Grandpa came and told her it was him and apologized for any trouble it caused she still said he must have been covering for me.
She accused me leaving a "brown ring" in the tub downstairs, called upstairs and demanded I come clean it. When I told her it wasn't me and I hadn't been in there in over a week (I was having my period at the time) she said she knew it was me because no one else in the house was that dirty. My sister was working in a carbon factory at the time and my Dad was a janitor, I was on holiday from University at the time. I never touched the shower again after that, I was too afraid of being accused and screamed at and that way my Dad could tell her I don't use it when she tried to.
When I was very little the Little Mermaid had just come out, my Mom bought me a beautiful Barbie of her. I left it in the tub to dry after a bath once and she took it, when I asked for it back she told me it was too pretty to be a bath toy and I was going to ruin it then convince my Dad (who had been snowed into thinking she was just wonderful) that I didn't need it back.
She accused me of burning a garbage bag of her blankets because she had seen me earlier in the week with a garbage bag putting it in the truck to be burned, when she later found them she tried to say I must have put them there after she complained. So I magically sewed the ashes back together?
My Dad was sick the last year of his life with cancer and AIDS, she would waylay him before he even got on the porch with a list of things she wanted him to do every single day, then tell people who mentioned him straining himself that he wouldn't take a break and she tried to get him and didn't know he wouldn't. Then why would you keep doing it? How well did you know your son if you didn't know what he was like when it came to getting a job done?
Once I was cleaning my cousins flip-flop off with the hose because she had stepped in deep mud and she came flying outside screaming and demanding I give my cousin back her shoe because she didn't know what I was doing with it but she knew I was doing something devious with it.
After my Dad died she kicked me and Mom out saying we weren't family anymore, she changed her will while Dad was dying in the hospital. She said we didn't have to hurry, that she didn't want anyone in town to think she was cruel kicking us out in winter but then every other day she would come upstairs to "check our progress".
When I graduated University she sent me a card 3 years later that said congratulations on my nursing degree (which I had gotten in HIGH SCHOOL) and that she hoped it helped me get a "real degree", if you don't know I majored in Forensic Medicine with minors in philosophy and psychology - I would call those real degrees, but then she wouldn't know because instead of coming to my graduation she had to go camping with her daughter that weekend.
Her daughter was another toxic person that acted just like her so no surprise there.
I have a brain tumor, I was in bed resting when she came upstairs and started screaming at me, saying I was a lazy fat pig for being in bed in the middle of the day and that my Mom was IN an accident on her WAY to work and her co-workers had been waiting on our porch for over an hour for me to bring clothes for her. She wouldn't tell me anything more just kept calling me names and telling me I needed to hurry up. Turns out they had been waiting maybe 5 minutes, instead of hollering up the stairs for me she used it as an excuse to come see how well the upstairs was cleaned and her coworkers had told her that Mom pooped herself at work and needed clothes yet she chose to make it out to be my Mom was in some horrible car crash on the way there. When Dad tried to stand up for me, because I said I was going to move in with my sister (who she had already driven away) she cried big crocodile tears to her daughter who came and called us everything but white folk and how we were sponging off her and never did anything, mind you we paid all the bills for our "apartment" and hers, took her wherever she needed when she asked, did all the repairs to the house, yard work ext.
The day before we moved out she said she was going to sue me because someone called her and said I was spreading lies about her on the internet, she wouldn't tell us who or what website though and when Mom told her she would get my laptop and show her everything then it suddenly became a different story and the lady who supposedly told her was going to send her a copy so she didn't have to do that and then started attacking Mom verbally.
That's just some of what she put me through and every single time I never raised my voice (until move out day when she couldn't just let us leave peacefully), I never called her names, I never tried to get revenge.
The other night I was in the shower and this wash of panic and fear rushed me, that it was going to be dirty, that I was taking too long ext., then I realized this is my house, there's no one here to complain but my Mom and she doesn't care.
I just got done hanging up Christmas decorations and the panic and fear waved over me, then I realized there's no one to complain about them being tacky or too many ext.
Every time the phone rings I wonder if it's going to be her calling to accuse me of something, trying to stir up trouble again because her life got a little too boring.
That's how it is, we have a new house and we're happy - even though it took Dad having to die to be able to afford it- but there are moments when that happiness is sucked away like the ocean before a tsunami. Moments when I am gripped with fear and paralyzed with panic. I can't breath, I burst into tears, I can't move.
Emotional abuse is ABUSE period. It will take me years to feel comfortable here in our new home, years to get over the hurtful things she did and said to me and people just brush it off, oh you're out of there or it's over now but the truth is it isn't over, it may never be. I can try to push her words and cruel actions out of my memory but they creep in like poison and that will take a lot of will power and years to finally be free of, to finally be able to take a shower in my own home and not feel panic.
It's okay to admit that some one is toxic - it took me pointing out every time she did something nasty to me, and her starting to do it to my Dad for my Dad to finally see it, it's okay to admit their actions hurt you in a deep way, it doesn't make you weak.
She has stolen so much happiness from us, it's hard but I'm trying not to let her take anymore by being afraid, by worrying, by letting the stress it causes bring my health back down.