family

An Open Letter to the Children of Toxic Mothers

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

If you are reading this right now, I want you to know some things.

Everything you are feeling is valid.

You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to be sad. You are allowed to be frustrated, pissed off, and mad at the world. You are allowed to feel any way you want and need to feel.

You don’t have to love your mother. Despite what society tells you, some mothers aren’t all that great. Sometimes, they are downright toxic. They may have hurt you, abused you, maligned you, or made you feel worthless. These mothers don’t deserve your love and respect. They didn’t earn that yet, and they possibly never will.

You are not a bad person for not loving your mother. Sometimes, it takes as much strength not to love as it does to love.

And if you do love your mother, even after all she’s done to you, that’s okay, too.

You know why? Because everything you feel is valid. Your heart and mind know the truth; the truth that people on the outside can’t see (or choose not to see).

Never let anyone make you feel bad for how you feel.

Go ahead and let out that anger. Go ahead and cry. You are allowed to grieve the loss of the mother you should have had, the relationship you deserved.

You are not obligated to anyone but yourself. You don’t owe your mother anything, despite what she or others may tell you.

You deserved more than a toxic mother.

I know it hurts. I feel the pain every day. I feel the emptiness within my heart where my mother should be, but isn’t. It’s a pain that only those of us with toxic mothers can understand. It’s a pain that lingers and never quite goes away. A piece of you feels like it’s missing.

You can still find that missing piece. You can still find that love and care you should have gotten from your mother. Sometimes, you find it in other family. Sometimes, you find it in friends. It may already be within you. You just have to connect the pieces.

You are worth it.

Take care of yourself. Be your own mother. You deserve it.

Mother’s Day Card

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

As part of my therapeutic Mother-Yourself Day weekend, I decided to buy two Mother’s Day cards: one for myself, and one for the woman that gave birth to me.

I know that woman doesn’t deserve a card. Don’t worry – I’m not sending it to her. I wanted to get the card so I could write the things I wanted to say to her but never could.

Finding an appropriate card was near impossible. They don’t make Mother’s Day cards for horrible, undeserving mothers (though really, why can’t someone do this). I must have picked up at least 50 cards. Honestly, it made me a little sad, because I realized so much of what I missed out on by not having a good mother. Finally, I came across a card that was definitely not true, but something I could easily edit to make it appropriate.


I sat at my desk last night, opened the card, and started writing. I could have written so much more, but I couldn’t fit any more words on the card.

I almost wish she could see what I wrote. I wish she could know how I feel. But even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. And I have to accept that.

To the woman that gave birth to me,

I guess, by some definitions, you are my mother. But you don’t deserve that title. Being a mother is more than just giving birth. It’s about loving, caring for, guiding, and nurturing your children. You never did that. Ever. You pretended to love your children in public view, so everyone could think you were a good mom. But you weren’t. You don’t know how to love anyone but yourself. You never cared for me. Even my most basic needs were always such a burden for you. You neglected me, physically and emotionally. You abused your own child, your own flesh and blood. You took away my childhood, and I can never get that back. You broke my heart. Why? I didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t need another child to torture.

I don’t know what you saw in me that made you hate me so much. R got your love and attention (perhaps a little too much) because he followed your every command. He didn’t know any better. But I did. I knew you were wrong all along. It just took me 29 years to figure out how to stop you. I dealt with your torture for 29 years.

I used to think something was wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to love their moms, and I never felt that connection. The only thing I could feel was fear. I lived in fear of you, my own mother. And no one could understand why, because you took us to Church every Sunday and you send us to private school and you took us shopping like any normal family would. You were the perfect mother. No one saw how evil you really were.

You ruined my childhood. You ruined my adolescence. You ruined my 20s. You will not ruin my life anymore. Because despite everything you’ve done to me, I am still standing. I am still surviving.

I’m not perfect. I’m still afraid of you. That’s how deeply you’ve affected my life. I still have nightmares. I still shake when I check the mail. I still have the memories. I’m still grieving your loss.

But I am better without you. I don’t need a mother now. I  needed one before and you chose to do what you did, you chose not to be a real mother. So I had to learn how to mother myself. I had to fill in the gaps that you have always left empty.

I do have to thank you, though. I tell myself that going through hell has been for a greater purpose. I am not the weak, worthless person you wanted me to be. I am strong. I have worth greater than you will ever get to see. I am going to make a difference in the world – because of the hell you put me through.

So thank you for forcing me to be a better human being. Thank you for showing me exactly how not to be. You are the worthless one. And you are no longer my mother.

I live to live

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

No matter how shitty (or great) I feel, I wake up at 4:30 every morning, take a shower, get dressed, and go to work. I could have slept two hours; I could have slept eight hours. It doesn’t matter. I continue to do it because I need to, and because I want to.

When I fell in the street at the end of last August, I picked myself back up, wiped the blood off of my hands and knees, walked to the bus stop and went to work. I didn’t stop. I went to the hospital afterwards, where I found out I had fractured my right foot (and sprained my left knee). Even then, in a cast and crutches, I woke up at 4:00 the next morning, took a shower, got dressed, and hobbled my way to the bus stop to get to work.

When I neared the end of my undergraduate career last August, I put my heart and soul into my work. Despite moving out, being hospitalized, working, and being officially diagnosed with DID within the course of a month, I managed to complete a research project and thesis and receive a near-perfect score (99). I graduated with top honors, despite the chaos going on around me.

When I ended up in the hospital in the beginning of August, I worked my ass off to get out. Right after I was released, I walked right to my therapist’s office and had a session. I went home, unpacked my things, and worked on my thesis, a chapter of which had then been overdue. Then the next morning, I woke up at 4:30, took a shower, got dressed, and started my first day at work, less than 24 hours after being released from the hospital.

When I ran away from home prison on July 10th, 2015, I did so against impossible odds. I managed to hide money away in separate online bank accounts that my mother didn’t know about. I managed to find a place far enough away to keep me safe, but close enough to a competent therapist and to a school where I could fulfill my dream of being a counselor. I managed to free myself and physically leave through the front door of the apartment, the same door that my mother slept just feet away from every night, as if she were a prison guard on duty. I could have been hurt. But I escaped. Despite everything, I found freedom.

I have consistently shown that I do not give up. Life seems to knock me down quite a bit. Sometimes it really gets to me, but I have never stopped living. Even in the darkest times, I continue to live.

I can’t change some of my circumstances.

I can’t give myself a biological family; that’s gone forever. But I have a family that consists of my friends from the new life I have built here.

I can’t grow money on trees. But I can keep working and find ways to survive until I find success someday.

I can’t cure my DID or take a pill and forget everything that happened to me. But I can keep going to therapy, even if I have to go for the rest of my life.

I may not be the best at life. Considering where and what I came from, I think I am doing a damn good job. I am living. Despite everything, I am living.

And I have died so many times, but I am still alive.

I am a work in progress, just like anyone else.

April 25th

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

On April 25th, many years ago, I tried (unsuccessfully) to end my life.

I should have died. I planned ahead. I did all of the calculations. This was supposed to be the time that it worked. This was supposed to be the end to my suffering.

But it didn’t turn out like I had planned. I ended up vomiting non-stop, my face and limbs were blue and purple, I lost my hearing, and had pain throughout my entire body. I was scared. I thought I was just going to die. This was not what I had intended.

Out of desperation, I told my family what I had done. I wanted to go to the hospital. I wanted someone to help me. I wanted to die, but not like this. This hurt. This was scary.

But they didn’t take me to the hospital. My mother didn’t want her reputation ruined. It was always about her. How could I do this to her? How could I do this to the family?

Instead they took my phone away so I couldn’t call for help. My brother went in his room and played video games. My father sat in the living room and watched Survivor on TV. And my mother laid on her usual spot on the couch muttering about how much of a failure I was.

And I sat there, alone, in tears, scared, and completely hopeless. Because in my darkest moment, I reached out for help, and I realized that I didn’t matter. I could have died. I should have died. And that didn’t matter to any of these people. They went on with their lives like usual, as if I weren’t sitting there deathly ill, as if I didn’t exist. Because my existence didn’t matter.

That is a feeling I will never forget. That is a feeling I will never get over. The small bit of hope I still carried with me that I meant something to my family, that one day my mother would love me, that one day my family would care…that hope was crushed on April 25th.

All of this time, I’ve been struggling to figure out why this day brought up such strong emotions for me. I think I kept assuming there must’ve been some preceding event that occurred on that date.

But I don’t think there was any preceding event. I think the damage caused, the hope that was crushed by my family on that date is what has made it continually difficult for me in the years since. I’ll never forget what that felt like.

Alone

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

In times of struggle, I realize that I am essentially alone.

I’ve been playing out this scenario in my head for the last few days. I pack my bags and go back home, knock on my mother’s door, beg for her forgiveness, and she takes me in and I have a family again. But she wouldn’t do that, because I broke her rules and betrayed her. I ran away from home and let people know what she did to her children. I’ll never be her daughter again.

I’m just so desperate. I’m alone.

When others are struggling, they have people to turn to, family to lean on, a significant other to cry with. I don’t have any of that. My family is gone, and I am alone. I struggle alone. I cry alone. I suffer alone. Alone. Alone. Alone.

I’m constantly reminded of why I can’t trust people. Then I feel even more alone. Trapped and alone. Living life, barely scraping by, and by the end of the day I am completely drained. I’m not even sure why I keep going through the motions. Does any of this even have a point?

I’m drowning in debt, some of it that isn’t even mine. I’m in school for something that I’m not even sure I can handle. I spend most nights wondering when it will all end. When will my struggle end?

Yes, I’m being selfish and pitiful right now. I’m tired of getting shat on in life while undeserving fuckheads get shit handed to them that they don’t even need or deserve. What the fuck. This is not a life I want.

I have no stable home base. I have no family. I’m losing all of my connections to the life I lived for so long.

What did I do wrong?

The response

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

My grandmother answered my letter.

I emailed it to her, so there would be no trace of my location. I wasn’t sure if she was a fully trustworthy person.

She didn’t acknowledge anything I wanted her to. In fact, she completely ignored most of my letter.

She updated me about herself, about how no one visits her, about how she gave my father a car so they could come over and they still didn’t visit, about how she could have sold the car to someone else instead.

Then at the end, she asked what school I was going to, and what I did for work. And that was that. No acknowledgement of anything else I wrote. No apology, no further questions, not even a mention of the word abuse.

I was disheartened. I realized that she is likely in denial. I said all I could. There’s nothing more I can do. I can’t force people to accept a reality they don’t want to face.

I was angry. She’s continuing to enable my family. She got them a car. A fucking car. All the while they’re still driving the Jeep that I bought them years ago. And they get a car, too. You know what I get? Nothing. I continue to get nothing. I’m the only one in the family that’s not a complete asshole, and I get shit. I struggle to be on my own and they get consistently get handouts. They get rewarded for being horrible people. Ain’t it funny how life works?

I didn’t reply back to her. I sat with my emotions for awhile. I emailed my therapist about it, and she reminded me that I don’t owe my grandmother anything, and I’m not obligated to send her a reply. The fact that my grandmother is still actively enabling my family makes her an unsafe person. I’m not quite sure it’s worth the added stress to go through a relationship that will never be genuine.

It hurts, but I’m actually so used to the hurt now that it doesn’t affect me like it should.

At least I tried.

The letter to my grandmother

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Grams,
I am sorry I haven’t reached out to you sooner. I had to make sure that I was safe, and that meant cutting contact with anyone who was still in contact with my immediate family.

I am safe now. I graduated from college (with high honors) and already started graduate school. I’m working at a great job, I write semi-professionally, and I recently started an organization to help others that have been through circumstances that no one should ever have to face. I am doing great things now.

I am not sure what my family has told you regarding my sudden disappearance, but I can be certain it hasn’t been the truth. I left to escape. I realized that I didn’t deserve to be controlled, hurt, taken advantage of, and abused any longer. I made the decision to leave on my own. No one made me leave. No one helped me except for a close friend. I left with two bags of clothes and shoes, my computer, and whatever money I managed to hide away. I left everything and everyone else behind.

I left because my mother is not a good person. She lies, manipulates, and controls people. She has abused her own children since childhood. She is dangerous. That is why I left. She will never change. I deserved better. R deserves better, too, but I worry that he is far too controlled to escape her.

I won’t get into too many details, because that doesn’t matter. I just want you to know the truth. My mother tries to discredit me by telling people that I am bipolar and a liar. I am neither. I have post-traumatic stress disorder, which is why I was hospitalized so many times in the past 18 months. I wanted to die because the memories of what happened to me were too painful to handle.

My mother has no genuine concern about me or why I left. She was and always has been only worried about herself. My mother sent me one text message a few days after I left. No one – not her, or my father, or Robin – has contacted me since. I have the same phone number and the same e-mail address I’ve had for the last decade. No one is blocked from contacting me.  I specifically didn’t change my number because I knew my mother would make this claim. They are lying when they say that they have tried to contact me.

I worry that they are using you to create rifts in the family, and it’s not fair. They aren’t concerned, they are using you and others to get to me. If they really needed to contact me, they would have. It’s been seven months of nothing. My mother is playing a game. Please don’t be a part of it.

You don’t have to respond to me. You don’t have to believe me. I know the truth because I have lived it. Others know the truth because they have seen it, but they are too afraid to come forward, too scared to stand against my mother. I am not afraid. She can’t hurt me anymore.

I’m sorry that it came to this. If you take anything from this, know that I am safe and well. I am healing now. I struggle every day, but I am getting by. It’s better than the life I had before. I will be okay, and I will love you regardless.

I read the letter out loud to my therapist in our session yesterday. When I finished reading and looked up, I could see the emotion written all over my therapist’s face and I immediately turned away.

She told me my strength really comes through in my writing…the same strength that I so often have difficulty finding when I need it the most. I know I am strong, but I still feel so weak.

I could have said a lot more. But what would that have done? I didn’t even mention my father’s involvement. That’s her son. I am not doing this to hurt her; I am doing this to protect her. I don’t want her to be among my mother’s countless victims.

I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. This can be the beginning of something. I just don’t know what that something is yet.

Don’t believe her, she’s bipolar.

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

My mother worked hard to isolate me from the rest of the world.

She did it in childhood by instilling into me a fear of the outside. As I grew up, she isolated me by telling everyone else I was crazy and a liar.

I knew for years that she was telling people I was close to lies about me. She was telling people at my work, and people I considered my friends. It was pointless to fight against her. She had her game down pat. She would talk all of her shit about me, and then would tell a sob story about how she was so hurt by my behaviors, how she just didn’t understand why I treated her so badly, why I hated her so much.

Why I treated her so badly? Guess who was paying the bills, cooking meals for the ‘family’, and cleaning up after everyone. Me. Who bought a vehicle for her? Me. I certainly didn’t need the vehicle; I’ve never even had a license. I did all of that because that’s what she instilled in me since youth. If I didn’t support her financially, I was selfish and bad. Yet even when I did support her, she’d still tell people I was selfish and bad. I could never win.

The biggest blow came last spring, when I realized just how low my mother would go to sabotage my life. I woke up to a series of text messages from my mother. My mother allegedly thought she was texting my brother the whole time, and then conveniently realized her mistake a few texts later and then started texting me this sob story about how she was so concerned about me and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah because that’s all it was. Lies and nonsense. I could see right through her. And I would bet my life savings that her texting me this was no accident. My brother and I have names on complete opposite sides of the alphabet. For a woman so careful in every action of her life, she would never make a mistake like that. She wanted me to read this. She wanted me to know that she was in control of everything and everyone, even the people I called friends.

My mother told everyone she met that I was bipolar, as if it were the main descriptive criterion of my entire existence. She never told anyone how intelligent I was, how selfless I was, how hard I worked…no, instead she told everyone that her daughter was crazy. Even worse, I don’t even have bipolar disorder. She liked to throw that diagnosis around because it came with all the added stigma that played perfectly into her game.

What kind of person tells everyone that their child hurts themselves as a part of regular conversation? I guess she used it to add on to my “crazy” label. But why did nobody question WHY I was hurting myself for the last 19 years? Ten year-old children don’t normally understand self-injury, and they shouldn’t comprehend that type of pain. That is a red flag that everyone just kept ignoring.

Why did nobody question why this woman’s other child, her adult son, my brother, was also hurting himself? What are the odds that a perfectly innocent parent raises two children who end up with psychological problems and extensive self-injury? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say those odds are pretty low. But damnit, my mother just played on people’s emotions like a violin. The odds never mattered because all people could focus on was my mother’s fictitious plight.

She just picks up and leaves without saying anything to anyone! Oh my God, someone call the police! I say that jokingly, but my mother would threaten to call the cops in the rare times I managed to escape from home prison for a few hours unsupervised. But why did no one see an issue with this? Why would her 29 year-old daughter need to ask permission to leave the house? THIS IS NOT NORMAL BEHAVIOR. It angers me that people did not question her at all. It really angers me. They enabled her, allowing her behavior to continue until the day I finally left.

She doesn’t want friends. Wow. I longed for friends. I never had real friends as a child. I was never allowed to spend time with anyone outside of school, and I was never allowed to have anyone over our house. I was alone my entire life. I looked forward to work because that was the only way I could have friendships. Unfortunately, that also meant my friendships were easier for my mother to control, because she had access to everyone I also had access to. I can’t imagine how many people she told these same lies to. I can’t think about all of the people I could have gotten closer to had my mother not poisoned their opinions of me with her lies. I actually had a few people come forward in the months after I left and told me similar stories – that my mother had told them I didn’t want any friends, that I didn’t like anyone, and that I thought I was too good for people. I would be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt me. It hurts me to this day.

She thinks she’s better than everyone else. That could not be farther from the truth. I still struggle with my own self-worth. My problem is I don’t think enough of myself, not that I think too much of myself. I downplay my intelligence and my abilities. I treat myself like shit often because that’s how my parents treated me. I never thought I was better than everyone else. I thought I was worthless and undeserving of life. I figured I never had any friends because I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t realize that my mother played a hand in every aspect of my life, even my potential relationships with others.

The truth is that my mother thinks she is better than everyone else. She believes that she is worthy of respect, that she is above the law, and that she deserves everything to be handed to her.

I can’t find it in my heart to delete these screenshots from my phone. The day this happened, I realized that I could trust no one. I realized that my mother had poisoned everything and everyone around me. It hurt then, and it still hurts now.

It hurts because I know my mother continues to tell lies about me, even to other members in our family. She tells people I have problems, that I make up stories. For so many years, I didn’t fight back.

Today, I have chosen to fight back. I sent a letter to my grandmother tonight. I told her why I left. I told her the truth about me. She deserves to know the truth, and not the lies my mother has continued to tell. I will not continue to be torn down by this woman any longer. I don’t deserve it.

 

I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

My mother would have made a brilliant cult leader.

I say that half in jest, and half in all seriousness.

When you think about it, my mother already has her own cult. It may be small, it may only consist of some family members and those around her, but it has the dynamics of a cult nonetheless. Her followers do her bidding, no matter how out there her requests and teachings may be. She gets them to leech on to her as if she was their only remaining source of life. By some miracle, I managed not to become a member in my mother’s cult.

Today’s therapy session was mostly about my feelings of guilt concerning my brother. I realized, thanks to my therapist, that these feelings of guilt were the result of my mother’s programming. My mother ingrained in me a sense of responsibility for everything bad that ever happened, even the things that had nothing to do with me.

My therapist is already well aware of the differences between my brother and I, despite the fact that we both experienced some of the same abuse and trauma growing up. While I distanced myself from my mother as best as I could, my brother did the exact opposite; he was drawn to her. My therapist reminded me that even though our approaches were quite different, my brother and I were working towards the same goal: keeping ourselves safe, and not “poking the bear” that was/is my mother.

In the middle of our discussion, my therapist told me “you’re here because you didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.” She was right. I didn’t drink it. But my brother did. And as a result, he is stuck with her, physically, emotionally, and financially. He is so deeply brainwashed that I don’t think there is a chance for him to ever get free. I can’t change him. I can’t save him. He’s been drinking my mother’s Kool-Aid for so long that it’s in his blood. Even though he has brief moments of clarity, moments where he feels fear of her, it’s not enough to break free. He has always, and will always, report back to his leader.

My therapist asked me if there was a way my brother could ever be free. My immediate thought, which I said out loud, was when my mother finally dies. But as I thought about it, not even her death would help him. It may even damage him further. They are so enmeshed that I’m not sure he could survive without her. I have hope that he can, but I’m also realistically doubtful.

“It’s remarkable that you came out of this the way you did. You developed empathy in an environment where there was no empathy, you learned how to feel even though you were punished for feeling.” My therapist was right. But that very fact is why I often doubt my own experiences. How did I end up halfway decent of a person? How am I able to function? It doesn’t make any sense.

And then I look at my brother, a man so badly damaged, so unable to control his anger, living his life as a puppet with my mother as his master puppeteer. Although he experienced much less brutal abuse than I had, he is suffering nonetheless.

We are a perfect example of nature versus nurture. There is likely something in my wiring, something in the way my brain works, that allowed me to respond to my life experiences in the way that I did…something very different from how my brother’s brain is wired. These differences allowed me to survive and eventually to live a free life. While my brother is technically surviving, he’s not really living at all.

I used to be so envious of my brother. Now I see that my mother treated him differently in order to keep him in her favor. She needed a member, and my mother knew early on that I was too resistant, too obstinate, too strong-willed to succumb to her ways. My brother, however, was too easily swayed, too willing to follow, too blind to see reality – he was the perfect candidate. And my mother groomed him so perfectly that now, as a man in his mid-to-late thirties, he knows nothing other than what comes out of my mother’s mouth. I would never want his life. It’s not a life at all.

He drank the Kool-Aid. I didn’t.

 

Guilt

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

My heart is heavy.

The last two days have been hard for me. I’ve learned some things I didn’t know before, and I’ve had things confirmed for me that I had long suspected.

Anger, frustration, sadness, guilt…all of this overwhelms me. I spent the majority of today crying. I tried to distract myself with reading and TV, but my thoughts always returned to the emotional whirlwind going on inside.

I worry about my brother. I left him behind in order to save myself. I left him behind to continue to be abused by our mother. He is suffering. He is trapped. And I’ve done nothing to help him. I feel incredibly guilty. I am no better than all of those people who turned a blind eye to my abuse.

I fear he suffers from similar psychological difficulties that I do. Considering what we have both gone through (and I’m not even fully aware of the extent of his experiences since he is seven years older than me), it’s not unlikely.

People that I love are being dragged into the mess that I created. Innocent people. People that don’t deserve to be affected by my mother’s toxicity are now having to deal with it. It’s not fair to them. I put them at risk. Because they chose to remain connected to me, they now have to endure my mother’s bullshit, to be pawns in her chess game. This adds to my guilt even more.

Then I have people close to me that don’t understand why my mother isn’t in jail. Why haven’t I pursued legal action? Why am I protecting her? She deserves to be sitting in a prison cell, not living her life taking advantage of everyone around her. And I know that, trust me I do. But what am I supposed to do? They don’t just convict people of crimes based on what someone says. I have no proof. And she has the charm and the know-how to work the system in her favor. It would be a fruitless effort.

To be told that I am protecting her feels like I’m being stabbed in the heart. I don’t want to protect a monster. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I feel guilty for letting her go free.