This could be why I'm so screwed up....

nar·cis·sism[nahr-suh-siz-em]
–noun 1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

I need to get this out. I may not be able to do it all in one post but I need to deal with this in a fashion that doesn't involve bias. In a way that allows me to form cohesive thoughts and not be burdened by the finality of speech.

My mother is an RN. When I was 11 she took a job she didn't (financially) need to take in a town 2 hours away from my father and I. My dad made enough money without her income to support us. She worked b/c she wanted to. She was gone Monday thru Friday and came home regularly on the weekends for a while. After a few months the weekends home become more sporadic and she would want me to come visit her. At some point she quit that job and returned home.

When I was 14 my mother allowed my 16 year old cousin and I to borrow her car (along with a carton of cigarettes she'd bought us)and drive an hour and a half into the city by ourselves to go to a water park.

Soon after I started my freshman year of high school she convinced my father to extend my curfew to 12:30 and I started hanging out with last years seniors (now college freshmen.)

At 15, the weekend before Christmas, she told me she was leaving my father. And made me promise not to tell him. She finally told him on New Year's Eve, the night before she left.

I spent the summer with her at her new condo. That's when I realized that for 3+ years she'd been cheating on my father with the man she'd hired to be my grandmother's physical therapist after her stroke.

She would leave me home alone with my boyfriend while she went to "work out" with the girls from work. She would come home with hickeys. At some point I remember asking her how long she was going to lie to me.

I decided to spend my Junior year with her since my new school would allow me to take college classes during the day. At this point, with a father working to afford alimony and child support, a mother who spent most of her time with her boyfriend and a credit card of my own (I was never made to work and my car was bought for me, along with insurance) I began to find other ways to get attention. Thankfully I never have been a drinker or done drugs. I just became a slut. My grades didn't suffer and I always made it to school on time so there weren't any "red flags." I wasn't a stupid girl either so I made sure birth control was covered.

My mom met a guy in a bar shortly after my dad filed for divorce. She would leave me alone, with what ever friend, male or female that was there, and spend the night with the new man. I'd spend 3-4 nights a week alone. I always went to my dad's on the weekend. After six months of listening to my mother moan about how stupid she was to leave my dad and how if she had it all to do over again...... she got engaged. In a bar. I was there b/c she's found a way to get me in and had been letting me go out with her. I was 17.

My senior year I moved back in with my dad. My mom moved in with her new husband and his two male roommates. When I would visit, I got to sleep on the couch.

My dad isn't totally in the clear. He should have worked less and stood up to her more. But she was always really good at hiding things from him.

My mother never does anything she doesn't want to. She doesn't think her decisions through and is now married to an alcoholic who doesn't want to sleep with her. She's never ever on time for anything and may or may do what she's promised. I spent 5 years after high school trying to make her love me the way I always thought a mother should. Then I had Remi.

We told her from day one of my pregnancy that as long as she smoked she would not keep my child. See on top of everything I've just told you, my mother is addicted to prescription drugs. Oh now she doesn't think she has a problem. She's had 3 back surgeries and has a "prescription" from a doctor she drives almost 2 hours to see b/c no other medical professional in his or her right mind would give her the meds she has now. Daily (sometimes two or three times) my mother takes morphine, oxy contin, Tylox, Loritab, Soma, Xanax, blood pressure meds, and Percocet. She falls asleep while she's talking. When I stopped taking my Percocet 3 days after my C section, she offered to buy them from me. Oh and on top of all of that she has "fibromyalgia." Yeah, that's a woman I'm going to let keep my child.

After his third birthday this year I told her she could come get him for a few hours the next weekend (my aunt would be with her.) She never showed up. Not even a phone call. At that point whatever inside me was still making excuses for her broke as I watched my 3 year old stand by the door waiting for Gammy.

I didn't talk to her for 2 months. When I finally answered her calls she told me it was time to "let go" of all of "that stuff." She had "paid her dues" and I needed to let it go. That she hadn't done anything wrong. That I just didn't have any respect for her

She doesn't understand why I feel the way I do. She doesn't think anything she did could have hurt me. I realized recently I don't hate her anymore. I'm not angry, or hurt. I'm indifferent. I used to say I loved her b/c she was my mother. At some point in the last few months I realised I felt nothing anymore. I just want her to go away. I used to feel badly for Remi. Then I realized that he has a wonderful, amazing grandmother in my MIL. I can't let my mother hurt him the way she hurt me. I didn't have anyone to protect me but I can protect my son.

My husband doesn't understand. My dad feels horrible about not doing something but hind sight is 20/20. I'm not sure what to do from here. I have no idea how to deal with this. She really and truely doesn't understand what she's done and until she can admit to something I can't have a relationship with her. I feel lost. How do you tell your own mother you don't want to speak to her any more?

Me too

We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better.


I'd really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would.



I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.


I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.
And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.



It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.



I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.



I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room,but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him.



When you want to see a movie and your little sister wants to tag along, I hope you'll let her.

I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.
On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom.



If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.

I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.



When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.



I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy/girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like.



May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.



I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it.. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend.



I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.



May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.



I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Hannukah/Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.


*The above is from an email and is credited to Paul Harvey

Things I would do differently

I found out this week that my barely 18 year old, high school senior niece is pregnant. She was going to have college soccer scouts out in the spring to watch her play. But you can't play soccer when you're pregnant. She's a beautiful girl who craves the attention of men and wears too much makeup. She's also smart and talented and I hope that this set back doesn't hinder her future too much. However it got me to thinking. If I could do it over, what would I do differently?

The first thing that comes to mind is my grandmother. On our very first trip to the mall when I was 13 she had a stroke. Several more small strokes as well as a more major one would follow. In the coming years she would lose the use of her left side as well as her ability to communicate. That amazing woman was my world. She raised me for the first 6 years while my mother was having back surgery after back surgery. I would spend every weekend and most of my summer in the tiny town of Sasakawa, OK learning to bake, how to take care of my skin, how to sew,and how to make amazing bread and butter pickles. I also learned to drive a stick shift, a tractor and a four wheeler. She showed me how to garden, how to run a fence line and how to birth a calf. She also taught me that sometime you can be right, or you can be happy. I learned how to take care of a husband and a family. She and my grandfather had never even kissed anyone else. And in her last months, when she was in the hospital more than out of it, I should have been by her side every second I could spare. But I was 17 and when she passed away a month before my high school graduation I realized that too late. I will regret that for the rest of my life.

One of the other more important things in my life was my best friend and my first love. If I could do it over I would realize that the relationship we had, even at 14, was true love. I would have put more effort into our friendship and not worried so much about what everyone else thought. Because my best friend at 12 is still my very best friend now, at 25. He is funny and supportive and would drop everything at 3am to help me or just to talk. I would have ignored my mother when she told me it was just puppy love. When he told me the guy I was dating at 18 was totally wrong for me I would have listened. Because he knows me better than anyone else and that one simple conversation would have saved me from the one and only abusive relationship I've ever been in.

Above all else I would have confronted my parents at 16 when they decided to divorce. I should have cast aside the doubts I had that they wouldn't listen to "just a kid" and pointed out that their marriage was going down the drain because they both have an addiction problem. My dad is what they call a functioning alcoholic. His drinking doesn't affect his job but he smells like peppermint schnapps at 9 am. My mother uses her bad back as an excuse to take Loritab, Tylox, Morphine, Xanax, Soma, and Oxy Contin every day. Twice a day. If I had told them then, then maybe my dad wouldn't have gotten a DUI and maybe my mother wouldn't be falling asleep in the middle of conversations. Because now that I'm older and I'm petrified to leave my child alone with them, I realize that if I had spoken up 10 years ago maybe my son could really know his grandparents. But how do you help someone that doesn't think they have a problem?

Most of the things in my life that I recognize as mistakes have made me who I am today. Most of them I wouldn't change for fear I wouldn't be the person I am today. But sometimes, when I look at my nieces and nephews and I see them afraid to speak up or preoccupied with things that they will only later realize aren't really important I wish I could make them understand. But then I think that sometimes learning things the hard way is the only way to make the lesson stick.