NMom wanted me out of her life but wanted me to take the blame for it, part I (epic, Russian novel-length)

Subtitle: I'm 40 years old and I called my mother a name she refuses to forgive me for, and I don't even care.

OK, where to start? This is the post I've been feeling like I need to write, but have been avoiding writing because it's going to be long.

Start with childhood: I was SG, my NSis was GC. Parents are both N, but different. My dad was openly emotionally abusive to my mom from the beginning of their marriage (He would put her down, call her stupid, low-class, etc. One of my earliest memories is of her going to the dictionary to defend her pronunciations of words because he would make fun of her regional accent). Dad was always the one to belittle, while mom was the one who craved adulation and molded her kids into little mom-worshippers. Here's the thing: Until I graduated high school, I mostly got along with my mom. I begged her over the years to leave my dad who became emotionally and physically abusive to me as I got older, but I still remember her mostly being in my corner. There were little things, sure, like the fact that she was jealous that I was a better singer than she was and would say that her choir in high school (the one she didn't get into) was so much better than ours.

Examples of my family's weirdness: I was awkward, chubby, dorky, etc., and my sister was pretty, skinny, athletic. I was treated, especially by my dad, as though I was a real problem and couldn't get it together. This despite the fact that I had interests and pursuits, and had really moved past the point in my life where I was bullied by the time I went to high school. I went to a large high school and was able to find my niche with people like me. Ok, so my friends were on the academic bowl team, or in the choir, or the like, but they were my friends, and I'm still in touch with a lot of them today. I didn't care that my friends were the weirdos of the school, because I was also a weirdo, and we were comfortable being weirdos together. I dated a few guys, even. Life was good with me and my friends in our little weird crowd.

My sister, on the other hand, was a cheerleader in junior high, dressed in perfect fashion, etc,. but never dated anyone in high school until she was a senior. Like, literally, I went on my first date at age 13, and she went on her first date at age 17. Of course, the attitude in our family was that I needed to change because the boys wouldn't notice me and I wouldn't have friends (the boys noticed me, and I did have friends, but they were apparently the wrong boys and the wrong friends, being weird like me).

I had plenty of emotional problems in high school, mostly because of daily berating by my dad, but also because I was having trouble in school due to undiagnosed ADHD and learning disabilities (common for girls of my generation, especially considering that I had been intelligent enough to coast through school up to that point) and I went to counseling. My parents spoke about it to me as though needing counseling was an indicator that I was the broken one. It didn't take the counselor a long time to figure out that my father was a source of most of my problems and ask to see us together, but my father did not change his behavior toward me. Every day he would pick on me for how I sat or stood, how I ate, what I wore, etc. If I tried harder, he would just pick on me for other things. He was the same way to my mom.

I left to go to college and things started breaking down. My mother began planning to leave my father. I know this because she told me she was hiding money from her paycheck in a safe deposit box (she handled the finances, so she could siphon off this money without being noticed). I did, and I still do, think she had her reasons. She was terrified of being destitute without my father's paycheck, and she made a lot of concessions in the divorce, basically "giving it back" through letting him have a very favorable settlement.

The problem was, when I would come home from college for breaks, my house would become a war zone. It became worse and worse, with the entire family ganging up on me. They were never very supportive to me, but it was like when I was gone, they had nobody to dump on, so they would save it all up. My mother told me that everyone got along just fine when I was gone. But she also told me that one night while I was gone, she told my father to clear the table after dinner and he threw a fit and broke a bunch of glassware.

My senior year in college was my sister's freshman year. She went off to school and crashed and burned. In the course of one semester, she got a reputation in 4 different fraternity houses, and managed to alienate all of her friends by screwing all of their ex boyfriends (like, literally, all of them, as though this was a plan or something). She came home after her first semester due to "depression" stemming from the fact that she was drinking, smoking pot, and partying way too much, in what would have been the middle/end of her second semester. I had graduated a semester early, in December of 1997. I had planned on moving out in mid-January 1998 to live with some friends, but my parents kicked me out just before New Years, less than 2 weeks after I graduated school after an epic fight where each one of them had lined up to scream obscenities at me/hit me, and I dared to fight back. My mom threw me out after she slapped me in the face and I hit her back. I was 21, almost 22. I had never hit her back before.

My mom left my dad in March of 1998. I was on my own, my sister moved back into She moved in with my mom. She continued to live with my mom until 2005. Most of that time, she worked full time and/or attended a local college. It took her 8 years to get her degree. My sister finally moved out of my mom's home when my mom's boyfriend pitched a fit over my mom's then 26-year-old couch surfer. My sister moved out and then quit speaking to my mom soon after.

In 1998-1999, my mom lived 2 miles away from where I lived. When I first moved out of my parents house, I had no idea how to care for myself, as a lot of 21-year-olds don't. I was living in a city and had no car, and I'd only ever lived in dorms and a sorority house in college. I would go grocery shopping with my newly separated mom because it was a way to get a ride to the store. We'd then spend the day together. After a while, it was too much trouble for her to take me shopping, and I started shopping by myself, but still spending an afternoon a week with her. Then it started being too much trouble for my mom to pick me up at my place, so I would take the bus to her and she would drive me home. Then driving me home became too much trouble. As soon as she would complain that I needed too much help from her (while my sister was utterly helpless and treated as such), I would decrease what I needed from her. She would then find a new thing to complain about. I asked for less and less from her.

During the time that my sister lived with my mom, a lot of things happened. First of all, my sister was drinking and smoking a lot of pot, and I wouldn't be surprised if she was abusing other drugs as well. When she crashed and burned in college, she was diagnosed with "depression" and given a bunch of different pharmaceuticals to try at various times, including some highly-addictive anti-anxiety drugs (Xanax, Klonopin, etc.) She was on this experimental cocktail, liberally lubricated with alcohol and marijuana, during the time she lived with my mother. Of course, my sister was spoken of in the tones that one uses to speak of a wounded kitten, as opposed to me, when I'd had problems, in the terms of a fuckup who just couldn't get it together. Talking about my sister's illegal drug use was verboten. I was told she never smoked pot in the condo (not true, since I saw her doing it). She would go out and come back and forget where she parked her car. She would throw up all the time. She would cycle through friends like most people change their socks (like literally, she'd meet a girl who was her instant bestie, and then 6 months later, she hated that person).

During this time, I went to grad school, bailed on grad school, taught in China for a year and a half, came back to my hometown, lived with my mom and sis for 3 hellish months, and moved into an apartment on my own. I was having trouble finding secretarial work, and my money was running out, and I had a lot of qualifications in a field that was imploding (library). I was overqualified for all the jobs that did exist, and perfectly qualified for jobs that didn't exist.

I also had become religious during this time, rejecting Reform Judaism for Modern Orthodoxy. Materially, what this meant for my mother was that I started wearing clothes she didn't like (long skirts et al), I was unavailable on Friday nights/Saturdays unless she came to me, and I asked that she either buy kosher chicken or cook vegetarian food for me in her home. This was seen as just non-negotiable to her. She refused to ever come to my neighborhood (We're from a large city and I moved into a neighborhood where parking was somewhat scarce), and she would whine that I wouldn't eat anything she cooked (even though she made vegetarian food for her own dinner a few nights a week). Walking into my mom's home was hard, as my sister would do her best to get me thrown out. She would start a fight with me, pick on me until I snapped back, and I'd get thrown out. She lived there, so she couldn't be asked to leave. My sister would forge new identities based around whatever guy she was dating at the time. One time she was wiccan and into tarot cards. Another time she was atheist. She was always against anything intellectual because it was too nerdy for her, and I literally feel like during this time I watched my sister, who had been very intelligent, turn into a moron. She would say vapid things and think they were profound. She would be told to read a specific book by one of her boyfriends, and she wouldn't understand it. She dated lots of guys and cheated on every one of them. She was addicted to male attention. She couldn't keep female friends. She never had money because she was constantly blowing it on herself. She refused to shop or help around the house, and bitched at my mom when my mom asked her to pay rent (a whopping $300 a month which included rent/utilities/groceries (including non-food items like toiletries), which she should have been easily able to afford).

I, meanwhile, was having financial trouble, and my mom, who was letting my sister live practically rent-free while she worked full-time, wouldn't let me move in for a few months to get back on my feet, get a decent job without having to take the first shitty thing that came along just so I could make sure my bills were paid, etc. I would call up crying, hoping for validation, and she would say, "I don't understand what you want me to do." I wanted her to tell me I wasn't a loser, I wasn't doomed to failure, etc. I had an emotionally abusive boss call me a bitch. I told my mother this, and her answer was, "well, were you?"

Around the time my sister moved out, I stopped seeing my mom altogether. She just didn't have time for me. I lived 3 miles away from her at this point. She told me that weeknights, she didn't want to go out after she came home. Saturday nights, she went to her boyfriend's house and came back on Sunday, and Friday nights I was busy with Sabbath (I think this was a dig at me for keeping Sabbath). She and I would go months without seeing one another.

Part II of the epic saga will be forthcoming, in which ivmeer gets a husband and some kids, moves 1000 miles away, and finally ditches mom!