cogito

Hey Rachel, I'm happy to talk and stuff if you like

Hey MMX, thank you for telling me that. Thank you so much. I was shocked to find that reading this actually made me cry. I find it so unfair that there are people who live their lives in such a state of sadness, sort of by choice, but also because they've been beaten into submission. It seriously bums me out. Even more so that the children of these people need to distance themselves in order to achieve a better life. I'm so sorry that you went through all that you did, it sounds like you had a very similar childhood to my own, and that really fucking sucks, I'm glad you're so far away now and I hope you've been able to work on things too. Funnily enough, I actually have my mother's ashes kept on my bookshelf where I keep a photograph of her which reminds me of her at her best when I need it, but for the most part I pass it without much notice. I loved her and still do, but she wasn't a very good mother.

Tyler: I guess that everything you've written there is pretty much true. I've actually been told about the splitting I do with my mother before, it's really hard to not do it. I really struggle to see her as much more than a person with a shit hand dealt to them. Maybe because having developed problems of my own I can see how unhealthy behaviours become so automatic and hard to pull out of that they seem impossible... Either that or I just don't want to tarnish the nice parts of my mother. When a person you know to be kind and loving does bad things in such contrast to their other behaviour, it feels like it simply couldn't really be them, almost like a complete personality reversal. It's hard to put the two together to make one person, it doesn't feel like it makes sense. When I drop the labels I have for her, I tend to just see a sad person, and it makes me in a weird way, happy that everything's over for her. I don't know, sometimes I think that her being dead makes it harder for me to be mad at her. I don't want to criticise her or remember her faults for fear that it'll ruin all that I have left of her, after all, she's the only parent I had who I felt loved by and it'd kill me to lose that. A horrible confession I had to my sister, which she actually agreed with, was that I thought it was so incredibly unfair that we'd lost our mother and not our father since she'd been the only one who cared for us. She was the only person to which we could go to where we'd have a chance of feeling like we were at home. Which thinking about is fucking depressing. Now that I see my previous friendships and relationships were far from good, I do want to be with good people. I am incredibly introverted though and barely leave the house if I don't have to so my long-term friends basically consist of my boyfriend, his best friend and family, and my siblings. I guess I'm okay with that though. People stress me out and actually having to deal with them face to face on a regular basis is a chore that I'm actually pretty happy not doing. I also want to be able to experience emotions properly instead of this emotional constipation I find myself facing with the occasional uncontrollable outburst. I'm hoping once I get onto the therapy programme that I can start working on it in a more efficient way. Blaming myself and prioritising others is a bit further down on my list because I find it incredibly hard to give much of a shit about myself, but I understand it's something I need to work on in order to be a good model in the future to kids and my youngest two siblings. Triumph: It's no problem, I understand I have my hangups about this. Criticising my mother is something that results in a lot of hostility on my part and I really need to work on it. And yeah, I was (and still am) building towards a future where I could afford to perhaps put my mother through therapy and be there to support her financially so she wouldn't have had to rely on her boyfriend, but time did run out, and it was really shitty. I need to see that what happened happened and I can't harass myself forever about it. Thank you for sharing and I'm glad that you've had the time to work out your own issues. It's going to take some time and work, but I hope I will eventually be able to see things properly and act accordingly.

I'm not sure, at least I wasn't informed of anything like this when Michael emailed me back.On a separate note:I think it's too harsh to say my mother was an asshole, I think she really did try hard and I definitely felt loved by her despite everything. She was ill equipped to handle her emotions and life in general and never had the support she needed to get better. I hoped that one day I might be able to provide that support, but there you go.

I actually decided to cut off contact to try and get the message across to my mother that I wasn't happy with the whole home situation that she had going on. My siblings lived with her on weekdays and she often had her boyfriend around who was just a complete tool. He was awful to my siblings and her (lots of shouting and swearing). She wasn't happy, my siblings hated him, she was drinking more, and he on several occasions kicked her out of hotel rooms without any of her things when she had no money or car to get home. In short, he was an ass-hole. I didn't understand why she couldn't leave him when she'd expressed that she wanted to so often, or I guess I was more frustrated, I do actually see why she would have struggled to leave. Anyway, all I wanted was for my siblings to have a nice home and kind, loving mother to come home to, which she was when she was sober and happy. I guess cutting off contact was a sort of protest, and I wasn't so much angry as I was desperate for her to actually be happy for once, and to stop having to hear my siblings on the phone to me upset or crying about arguments they'd had with her boyfriend. When in these situations, I don't much care for myself. I just want to look after my siblings. I would pretty much do anything for them.

Damn. Yeah, you nailed it. Thank you, I'll try ringing in with this. Apparently the call's booked up till October so it looks like there's going to be a rather long wait. But I'll jot this down somewhere and keep it ready for when I get my opportunity. Thank you so much.

It's all right. I don't really know the specifics around the times that I wasn't there to experience first-hand. My family isn't and never was big into talking about things, especially stuff like this, so the ways in which she carried out most of her attempts are fairly unknown to me. I'm aware she tried to slit her wrists and overdose on alcohol or pills a few times, but I don't know the predominant method she used.

Firstly I'd just like to say thank you all for your kind responses, it was really nice to see such helpful and kind replies. To Robert: I understand logically that my mother was bound to succeed one day, I guess I just blindly chose to believe that she wouldn't. And as for the reasons, I still feel to this day that it happened because I was a naughty child or because I'd been too annoying or something. To MMX: I'm fairly certain my mother did it when everyone was home, or perhaps just my father, or any combination really. I remember being rushed to the neighbours a few times because my mother 'wasn't well'. To Magnum: I'm hoping that my time on the waiting list will be over soon, I am looking forward to being able to tackle my issues with a proper structure and support system to guide me. I would like to call in to the podcast at some point, but I'm not really sure what I'd say, I feel like I'd need a properly structured question or something to go in with or something else along those lines. And Triumph: I don't really feel that I was robbed of a good childhood since I never knew that my childhood was any different from anyone else's until I'd already left home, and I did have fun and loving experiences in between the bad ones, particularly with my mother. But thank you so much for everything you've said. I understand that I need to start putting everything behind me in order to move forward and I need to stop blaming myself for things that aren't my fault if I'm ever to be there for my younger siblings and any future children of my own. Hopefully with a little hard work I'll get there one day.

Hey, So I guess this is where people introduce themselves and tell other's a little bit about their story. I'm a 22 year old in London. I currently live with my boyfriend and cat and I study Psychology at University with the hopes of becoming a Cognitive Neuroscientist. I guess I came from a bit of a rocky childhood home. I’m the eldest of four and I remember that whilst growing up, the house was often full of screaming and shouting. Our father worked until late in the evening and our mother stayed at home. Out father was physically abusive towards our mother, she suffered from manic depression, and she was also an alcoholic, so as a kid I had things thrown at me, was yelled at, or locked outside at night until my sister let me in. My sister also experienced these things but was a lot quieter and better behaved than me so it happened less frequently for her. Our father never really did anything to prevent this from happening. He wouldn't even let me in at night when he got home from work. He would also spank my sister and me and on occasion would use objects like cables or belts. My parents later got divorced. I experienced first-hand several suicide attempts by my mother, twice when I was the only other person home to phone the ambulance and perform CPR. I tried to commit suicide at the age of 17, was rejected by my friends for being an 'attention seeker', moved school, and ended up in a two year long relationship where I was both hit and shouted at. I went to University, moved out of my family home, and started doing really well. Despite this, I ended up becoming really ill. I'd always struggled with eating and self-harm, but it got to the point where I lost so much weight that I got diagnosed with anorexia. I gradually gained weight and my diagnosis moved over into the EDNOS category but I also got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and a dissociative disorder. I've been awaiting therapy for over two years now for various reasons, and I still really struggle to deal with difficult emotions without turning to self-attack. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I find it incredibly difficult to be upset or angry at my parents or my ex. I feel like I did something wrong and that I deserved what I got, no matter how much I disliked it. In addition to this, being angry gets a lot harder because my mother hung herself last year after I cut off contact with her for three months, leaving me with such a tremendous amount of guilt that I don't even know what to do. I should mention that I'm using an old member's account so that there isn't any confusion about who this is.