‘Who is the mother and who is the daughter in this relationship?’
That’s the question I was asked a lot by family, friends, and even complete strangers during my younger years.
A question that, sometimes, I struggled to know the answer to.
See, my mother was an alcoholic and I was robbed of my childhood as I ended up taking care of the one person that should have been taking care of me.
On my 11th birthday, my parents split and my mother moved us away to a small village in southwest England. That was where the real problems started.
I saw my dad from time to time, but only really when my mother wanted some kind of maintenance money from him.
My mother drank pretty much every day.
The roles ended up reversed – I became the one who made sure that I ate, washed, had clean clothes and got myself to school. She never seemed to bother about any of that at all.
I would get calls while I was at school to come and get her and take her home because she was too drunk to look after herself.
She was also violent towards me. I was no worse than any other kid of that age, but she battered me on more than one occasion for really trivial things, like getting in trouble in class.
On one hand, I hated her and wanted her out of my life but on the other, she was still my mother and so I felt I had some kind of misguided duty of care as her daughter.
But it was more than any child should ever have to put up with.
I began skipping school and drinking in the park instead, anything to numb the pain of what was happening to me
Things got worse when I turned 12. An older man I met through one of my peers soon became a ‘family friend’.
He saw that I was vulnerable, and began sexually abusing me; my mother knew what was happening. She would make comments like, ‘You’re the one prostituting yourself…’ when she was drunk.
She did absolutely nothing to stop it.
She knew he was giving me money essentially for sexual favours and so because that was drink money for her, she chose to ignore what was happening. She would just blankly ask me how much money I had and then just take it from me.
She watched while this slowly destroyed me, and by the time I was 14, I was doing drugs and getting into all sorts of trouble. I began skipping school and drinking in the park instead, anything to numb the pain of what was happening to me.
I started to turn into my mother.
Then, when I was 15, I started to fight back. I was sick of it. Of feeling so low and worthless. Of feeling like her.
Friends were telling me that this wasn’t a normal mother-daughter relationship and that I needed to break away from her in order to make anything of my own life.
One day, she kicked me out of the house after a huge argument. She had been drunk the night before and said some awful things about how I was a damaged person and my personal favourite: ‘People don’t like you, they just tolerate you’.
I had absolutely nowhere to go, so I spent a few years sofa surfing with various friends or, at worst, sleeping in a park.
It was hard. I did wonder whether I should just swallow my pride and go home but then I remembered the pain she put me through.
I still got calls from people telling me my mum was in the pub drunk and that I would have to come and sort her out
I decided to keep her at arm’s length and concentrated on survival; I was essentially a homeless child and I needed to concentrate on getting my life together.
When I turned 18, I moved into a women’s hostel and began to carve out a life for myself. I got a job working in nightclubs and started to think about myself more. I wanted to settle down properly, get a good job, and make a nice home for myself.
Eventually, I got a job in a shop and was earning decent money.
I finally felt things were really turning around for me.
But when my sister was born a couple of years later, I began to feel tethered to my mother again because I knew my sister could potentially go through what I did as a child.
A relationship with my mother was not an option, so I made sure to keep any contact to a minimum and only really ever spoke to her about my sister.
In turn, my sibling spent her childhood in and out of foster care; as much as I wanted a relationship with her, being moved around so often, we weren’t able to get close.
Around the same time, when I was 19, I met my now-husband. He came from a stable background and was a really good influence on me.
My husband was generally quite horrified at the things I had been through – but I kept much of my trauma to myself. He stuck by me and showed me what normal life is like.
He did things like take me to the zoo for the first time and bought me clothes that didn’t have holes in them.
I explained that I had been abused by a man and my mother knew and did nothing
I still got calls from people (friends of both mine and hers) telling me my mum was in the pub drunk and that I would have to come and sort her out. But I avoided it. I told them no, I wasn’t her carer and had my own life.
I would be so angry with her but unless my little sister was at any risk, I would just ignore her… I had to for the benefit of my own mental health.
The last time I saw my mother in person was over a decade ago, when my first son was born. Since then, she has not had anything to do with her grandsons. I have deliberately kept it that way because as long as there is breath in my body, they will not be exposed to that kind of poison.
After 13 years, aged 27 and with raging postnatal depression after the birth of my second child, I finally managed to tell my husband about what happened to me.
I explained that I had been abused by a man and my mother knew and did nothing. It was so hard to find the words to tell him but I knew I had to because it was destroying my mental health and had a huge impact on who I was as a person.
He was horrified at the prospect of someone he loved suffering in silence for so long. He vowed to get me through the pain and suffering and get me the help I needed to get over my horrible childhood.
Now that someone else knew, I felt relieved and almost lighter.
Some would ask why I left it so long to say something to him, but I felt so much shame and guilt. I was terrified that it would change the way my husband looked at me.
I was scared that he would run and I’d never see him again.
At first, it was an awful shock for him but to this day, he supports me.
I needed to set myself free to live the life that I wanted, needed, and thoroughly deserved
Now, my mother and I don’t speak at all. I cut her off back just before the pandemic after she called the police, told them that I’d been abused as a child, and sent them to my house. I told them what had happened to me and they asked me if I wanted to make a complaint about the abuse.
I declined. I was relatively at peace with it by this point so I felt putting my family through that wasn’t an option.
After hearing my version of events, it became clear to the police that this call came from a malicious place, and my mother was subsequently warned by the force that, if she made a call like that again, she would be arrested.
I made it clear that I wanted nothing more to do with her. I blocked her straight away on all social media and phone numbers and now do not speak to her at all.
Thankfully, my sister is now old enough to make her own choices about who she has in her life, so that negates the need for me to have any contact with my mother.
And now that she is an adult, we have a really close and special bond for which I am so grateful.
It is my life’s mission to bring my children up in the way I should have been.
There’s no denying that I still have days where I struggle. A girl needs her mum, right?
I made a difficult decision to not have her in my life – but it was the right one.
I needed to set myself free to live the life that I wanted, needed, and thoroughly deserved.
She took my whole childhood away from me and left me in pieces and she will not take any more of my life away from me.
I’m the mother in the relationship now. And I’m taking control.
Degrees of Separation
This series aims to offer a nuanced look at familial estrangement.
Estrangement is not a one-size-fits-all situation, and we want to give voice to those who’ve been through it themselves.
If you’ve experienced estrangement personally and want to share your story, you can email [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Source: Read Full Article