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Mean Mom and Spam

I decided to start this blog as a way to help myself as well as others who may be dealing with the some of the same Mother issues. Dysfunctional may be the proper word.
I am 51 years old and my mother is 75. She is the meanest woman that ever lived and it doesn't seem that it will ever get any better no matter how hard I try. I hope this will not only be therapy for me but maybe there are those of us that can help support each other.

I call myself MicroMom because this is the way I treat my adult children, something I learned from my own mom. I always remind them to call other family members on birthdays, etc. and stay on top of them about stuff. I actually may go a week and not talk to them, just so they will have their own life without me in it. They don't realize how bad I had it. Even after I married and had children my mom called me everyday and tried to micro manage everything I did... what I cooked, what I wore, what the kids did, what I bought, etc. It took me years before I realized that this was not normal behavior. I was probably at least 30 years old or older with 3 small children.

I believe that my mother is bipolar but she has never been diagnosed. She can be really sweet and helpful at times but she gets in these abusive rages of hate and meaness verbally attacking my dad and her own children, mostly my older brother and I. Our younger brother, the 42 year old "baby," doesn't seem to get it as much but we're not really sure as he doens't talk to us much. He spends a lot of time in drug rehab.
When my mother is having one of her rages we have been called terrible names, told to go to hell and hung up on. You can't argue with her because she is always right and you are always wrong. She will pull something from the past that you have told her and make up something and blow it way out of proportion and attack you with it.
EXAMPLE: I think I must have menioned that we made Jambalia with shrimp one time. No big deal, right? It'd been a while because lately, shrimp is not in our budget.
She mentioned that the newspaper had Spam recipes in it one day. I responded that I thought Spam was gross. She attacked me with, "You think you're too good to eat Spam! We ate Spam all the time when we didn't have money! But oh no, you'd much rather have SHRIMP!"

Well, yes I would but where did all that come from? I even said I would but never said we ate it currently. She was pissed at me. Pretty minor, huh? Well, this was the beginning of a new set of rages. She had gone several months of being sweet and helpful to us because of financial issues. She will not take medication becuase she says she can't. It makes her sick. I tell her she is sick without it but she says she doen'st care. We just have to put up with her.
I decided last week I was not going to put up with her anymore. I was so angry I wrote a letter... not to anyone but just for myself. Here it is. The names have been removed to protect the innocent.

- Beginning of Letter -
Today, July 29, 2008, my mother’s 75th birthday, is the last day I have talked to her. It did not end well. I have no intentions of ever talking to her again but we’ll see how that goes. I’ve said that many times before.
Where do I start? She called me a liar because I called and talked to my Dad on Sunday and told him (my husband) was sick and they probably did no want to come over for (our daughter)’s birthday dinner. (My husband) would stay in the bedroom but it was up to them. My dad said he knew nothing about a birthday. I told him it was raining and the streets were bad so it was probably best they not drive over. He should not be driving anyway.
So now I’m a liar. Even though my mom admits my dad can’t get anything straight and his memory is bad but I’m the liar. Only thing I could get out of her was that he told her the get together was called off. I guess she got her feelings hurt when she called to talk to (our daughter) and she could hear all our other kids here.
Let’s just say that was the last straw. She already ridiculed me and said I did nothing for (my drug addicted brother) when he lived with us for 10 months and never paid rent, ate all our food, broke everything he touched (and never said a word about anything), continued to use drugs… even though we made him take a drug test but we were called liars about that too. I guess I was supposed to buy his drugs for him. I don’t know what else I could have done.
I can’t take anymore of this crap. All she does in her spare time, which is ALL the time, is continually make things up and twist things around.
Yesterday she told me she hated my dad so bad that she wanted to kill him. My dad has a brain injury and is getting senile. He's also almost 78. That doesn’t matter because she is perfect and everybody else is stupid.
I told (my husband) a couple of weeks ago that I wish she was gone and when she was gone I would not miss her. That’s sounds terrible doesn’t it? But she is such an awful mean person - even worse than my sister-in-law, (my husband's sister) who is real conniving. It may take you a while to figure out what she’s up to. My mother just lets it all out – anything and everything. She especially likes to tell people they are overweight. That’s so funny since she has always been overweight. It’s mainly embarrassing for the rest of us.
I lost 15 pounds a few weeks ago. Don’t know where I am with that now but when I told her she just said, “Well, you don’t look like it,” even though she had not seen me. She’s always telling me my girls are overweight and anyone else she can think of. She’s obsessed with other people’s weight, but only women that are in the family. All the men are too skinny because the women are not feeding them. I could go on about that.
This is the woman that told me each time I was pregnant that she would pay for the abortion. That was something I never wanted my kids to know but that’s how awful she was. I always waited to tell her last since I knew she would bring me down and never be happy for me. This is the woman that also called me a slut and whore when I was a teenager because I hung out with the boys in the neighborhood. We all grew up together and were good friends. I was never intimate with the boys in my neighborhood. We were just kids.
This woman also used to pull my hair and scream at me because my brother was beating me up and I screamed. I had to learn to just take and not scream because then I would just be punished.
Now (my younger drug-addicted brother) is going back in the hospital for drug use and (our daughter who lives with us) says I should not be angry about that and that I needed to be more supportive. Pleeeeeaaaasssseeeee!!!! How can I be more supportive?!?!? Been there, done that! (But I did nothing for him, remember!?!?!)
Well, if I’m such a horrible daughter, I have such a horrible husband, and my kids are so horrible, we really should just cut if off right now. The woman is nuts! My dad doesn’t even know we exist. All he hears and barely that, is how horrible we all are. He’ll never even miss us.
- End of Letter -

Well writing all that did make me feel a little better but I guess not enough since I'm here writing this.
I did talk to my mother last night, almost a week after I wrote that and she told me she would talk to me if I would calm down. Me? She's really confused! I told her she needed to get help but she is in denial.
My husband and grown kids really hav never seen this behavior because she alwasy directs it to me or my brother over the phone and not in person. That way when things get heated she can just hang up. She is pleasant around them. I'm considering taping my phone conversations with her just in case she ends up doing something dreadful like getting rid of my dad.

There is so much I want to write about this so I will be back with more.