I have survived a lifetime of participation in my own neglect and rejection (and of course this behavior, when it was all I knew, is what I brought into the world). 
With recovery, came
a whole new set of tools. Spiritual Recovery teaches me that I have choices and responsibilities. Self-care falls into each of those categories. After having fled from my mother and sister 26 years ago, with zero intent for even a return visit, upon receiving news of my 84 year old mother’s cancer, I promptly relocated cross country to be of service to her, knowingly accepting risk of proximity to a raging and crafty sister was a price I braved, so that my mother could have the blessing of knowing her grandsons. And grand, they fucken are. I treasured the insulation of 2500 miles between my family of origin (FOO) and US.
No good deed goes unpunished. I am proud of the choice I made, unsurprised by the continued dynamic. The only thing that has changed is me and nobody is pounding me on the back for my unwillingness to hold post as scapegoat. Unwilling to be co-erced or to engage in having my boundaries challenged, they do not know what to do with me. So they do as they always have. And I detach. If they had the awareness and the courage, they would more directly say to me “Fuck you for going off script. Who do you think you are?”
I am a child of God and a mother of two beautiful boys. I don’t believe we have met before.
I want to say something about this, but can’t quite put it into words. Your situation and mine are so different. Abusive, sick FOOs – check. Yes to that, although alcohol played a minor part. Being co-erced by my mother – continually. Slip-slidin’ away, out of her reach – oh yeah. Listening to her rants and rages over my evasions – as little as possible, which was still quite a lot. Feeling I would suffocate under her verbal abuse, screaming in my face, hitting me with whatever came to hand – how did I know that had a name, and it was called Abuse, and if her friends had heard that word said of her, Wow! But lots of parents then were what we’d call abusive now, and people just didn’t talk about it, or defended it on some grounds or other.
The “funny” thing is that later, both she and my Dad apologized to me several times for, on her side, insisting I do ALL the housework in a very large house, and do it to her standards, and on Dad’s side, for just standing aside and letting her get away with her atrocities even though he knew he should be taking my side, at least sometimes. He’d been my favorite parent, and continued in that role. Mother – well, in my late 30s, I forgave her, completely, totally forgave her.
Soon after that, she began to slip-slide away in her own fashion. Her angry, selfish, deprived heart lost a thought here, a memory there, and I was the beneficiary in that she remembered mostly good about me. Who’d-a thunk it? My mother giggling with me in the little girls room because Dad didn’t know where we were. Lying on my bed, talking about other people in the family – not mean and gossipy, just talk.
Then I took her out to lunch at one of her favorite places, and at one point, she said, “Why did you bring me here?” I said because I had the day off from work and just wanted to take my mother out to lunch.
She said, “Oh, I thought you might have wanted something from me. Like money.”
I was shocked. Why should I have been? She never could believe anyone loved her for herself, especially I, her hateful, greedy daughter.
It must have been about that day that I realized her dementia had its nasty side.
Yeah, Mom, you changed a lot. I still feel the same way I did in high school towards you – longing to be able to love you, being rejected and so little respected. If we meet in that sweet bye-and-bye, what will you think of me, what will you say? What will I say to you?
Thank you so much for your generous and thoughtful share in response to my post. You seem stop have such clarity of what you feel and felt and why and also to have made peace with what is and was. I have no peace. None. Well there are fleeting moments of peace or serenity but only when they are absent from my every thought both conscious and subconscious. Our dysfunction is like a parasite that gnaws on my soul and even my bones. My death or theirs often feels the on;y possible relief. That hurts to say. I think it has always been true and i am the only one who dares articulate it. They do things and say things that are destructive to me but would never own a destructive intent. I have no destructive intent, only thoughts of destruction. We differ.
Today is difficult. Thank you for being here.
Magda Gee