Hi.
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Idk how to start off so I'll just dive in.
Around the time that I went to college a couple of years ago, I read a book called "A Child Called It". It's about child abuse. Though I had not experienced the same degree of abuse, reading the book invoked old feelings and memories from my childhood and I started to realize what my childhood had really been. Prior to reading the book I always felt awkward when people would talk about their childhoods. I always regarded it as a fearsome and dreadful time but I didn't know why. I always felt ashamed of myself.
Around this time my mother also talked to me about the abuse I went through because she had just learned of it from my brother. She apologized profusely for leaving me alone with the abuser, especially because the abuser had done the same and much worse to my mother as well.
I said that it was ok. How could she have known. That would have been true had my mother not known first hand the abuse by this person, but since she did know first hand, I questioned how my mother could allow the person into our house. I questioned how she could have not known. I asked her and she just said, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to drag her back by her hair and slap her? Because I wish I could do that, but I can't. And in a way, that made me feel better to know that my mother cared.
I was extremely unaware of who I was in H's and college. I didn't realize I had low self esteem and hated myself until this realization in college.
I love books but I hated going to class. I hated interacting with my peers and I still don't like talking to people bc I always feel like they can smell it on me, the fact that I was hit and berated just about everyday of my childhood. The fact that I was often humiliated in front of my friends that were allowed to come over and after a while they were not allowed to come over anymore.
I almost didn't get into college (I was an average student but I tensed to stay home from school as I just felt lifeless). When I did get into college I almost failed out.
I didn't understand why I didn't get in. When I applied to a school I really wanted to get into they wrote back that though I met the qualifications for admission they had decided against it because other candidates were stronger applicants. And I just didn't understand why I wasn't good enough. It added to my already fragile opinion of myself.
I blamed my parents who refused to sign my FAFSA on time and on one occasion had to apply late because of this fact.
That might be party of the reason, but I think a part of it was that I didn't come off add self aware, just going through the motions.
Once I got to college I really hated my fellow students. I found the place to be racist both on the academic and social level. I felt like people just looked at me as different and they would ask me quarks I did not know the answers to. I hated the culture I came from as it had a robust history of cold abuse and other types of abuse. I tried to join a club that had the same ethnic students but find that not only did I not identify with them, they seemed ville to me, concerned with the superficial parts of our culture in an effort to attract a wider audience.
I did not feel welcome though I spent a semester going to the meetings and actively participated in events.
I had also joined my school magazine but by the end of the year I was not part of any extra curriculars, was on academic probation and lived with a girl who punched me and talked down to me.
I didn't know what to do so I went to see the school counselor who was a therapist. I only went to see him once but he told me that though it was impossible to diagnose me from one meeting all my answers went along with bi polar disorder and major depressive disorder. He asked me to schedule more meetings but I was too freaked out to go back.
I cut out the friend who punched me and joined another club where I fit in better but I still found many people to be racist. I realized that most people didn't want to talk to me when we went out and looking back I had a lot of anxiety about meeting people because I thought they would think I'm a loser. I always convinced myself, once a semester that some guy was going to be the person who would understand me, tell me what to do and love me. Which I know now, is completely the wrong thing to focus on. But i didn't know what I was doing. I was trying to pick up water with my hands.
I had a dismal gpa in college.
I graduated college and started working with my mother and while we were working I started to really get to know her. She was verbally not very nice. She knew that my abuser always commented on my looks negatively and my mother did too, saying that she was just concerned for my health. She would give me instructions and i would say i needed to write it down. She would say, you shouldn't need to write this down, just listen. When i inevitably screwed up she would of course yell at me.
I always wanted to say, if you were so concerned, why didn't you do anything all those years? My abuser would, since she started living with us, force me to over eat. I would throw up. And that was a meal. She would load my plate up and say that if I didn't eat it I would get hit.
However, that's not what my mother liked to talk about. She liked to point out that I am big and that I should lose weight like she does. I know, however that she does it by starving herself and then eating more and then starving herself again etc. She is the type of woman who is always tired, can't open jars, can't take walks bc she never actually exercises. She cleans and is often out of breath from sweeping the floor.
But since she is slender, she doesn't really care as long as she looks good.
It is hard to explain bc I think my mother thinks she loves me and she does, but I don't think she has escaped the effects of the abuse she went through. She used to go to therapy but it wasn't for abuse though she has talked about it as far as I know.
She has control issues. My husband realized what kind of person she is once we started living with her and doesn't really take to the way she treats me or people in general.
Most people who see our relationship from the outside think she is great. She can be great. She buys me things if I say I like something and she spends time thoughtfully picking out Christmas gifts for me. She sends me food. She let my husband and me stay at my parents' s house while we were moving from another state. However, the entire time she hinted that we were mooching off her and kept pointing out all the times she had given me money. I made it clear that she offered to pay, which is different and that I was thankful and grateful to her.
She was also going through some troubles with my dad which she told me about but didn't want my brother to know about. I had no idea what she wanted me to do. I didn't know what to do.
And I am grateful for the things she did to help but at the same time, she always throws those things back in my face and I have decided that I can't accept anything from her. I mentioned to her that I needed boots and the next thing that happened was that i got boots in the mail.(Which I told her I could not and was not going to accept).
I've also heard her telling someone a lie about me when she didn't think I could hear.
Anyway, I quit working with her, moved away, got married, and live close to my husband's family.
One day, idk what the trigger was, but I remembered things she had done to my brother when he was younger. Very cruel things, physically, in the name of punishment.
I brought it up to her recently, and she said it had been the right thing to do. She has also told me that if I don't hit my kids, when I have them, I should leave them with her and she will set them straight.
I told my husband all of these things from the abuse to the things she did to my brother to the things she said. And we both agreed that she would never be alone with our children/child.
All this being said, I guess I'm asking, what have you done if you are depressed due to abuse. The abuser is not in my life anymore. My gut tells me that if I cut my mother out I'll be much happier, though she is often nice now (but still says things in passing conversation that I don't take to heart any longer). However, she is my mother and I don't know that I wouldn't regret it if something happened to her and I had not talked to her in a while. I do still love her but just being with her for the holidays or for dinner is unbearable most of the time.
I feel this growing resentment towards my entire past. I always think that if i could have just fought back or told someone, life would be different. But i think in a case like that i would have probably ended up in Foster care and who knows. Maybe that was the best alternative. Who knows.
I look at my friends who went to Ivy League schools. I remember telling them how unhappy i was at school. I wanted to know what their schools were like. They said they loved their schools overall. They told me to transfer in and i remember thinking, wow, they actually think I'm Ivy League material.
But then i think of my parents. I think of them embarrassing me on purpose in front of my friends and their parents so that they wouldn't have to participate. I think of my abuser yelling at me in front of my classmate and calling her an idiot. The girl was highly offended and demanded an apology in class. People were bewildered that my family was that way. I still hadn't realized that i was in an abusive situation. That the abuser always tries to isolate you by any means and that is what was going on.
And it irked me that when i was in college my parents wouldn't put up the car decal bc my college wasnt well known or an Ivy League. I assured them that it was a highly merited college but they didn't believe me. They needed other people to tell them. my dad called me up once and asked me why I hadn't gone to Harvard. He told me that his Co worker said he had never heard of my college so it must not be any good but he had heard of Harvard.
And to this day it makes me so angry. I hate feeling like I have no control or power. They like that i feel helpless, like they can control me. And I just don't want anything to do with them, with much of my culture even.
I just feel like idk what to do.