I wanted a place on the internet where I could be completely anonymous. Talking about your mother in negative terms feels wrong, even though mothers, just as much as fathers, have the capacity to let us down. Talking about someone with very difficult mental heath struggles in negative terms feels wrong, even when, of course, their mental health affects the dynamic of the whole family. Perhaps with Borderline Personality Disorder in particular, I have noticed that many children feel like I do: an intense internal conflict. It is easy to simply say the way a narcissistic parent behaves is hurtful and wrong and that parent, being narcissistic, seems unperturbed by their failings. But the borderline parent can often be warm and loving and caring and thoughtful. The borderline person is often very aware of their shortcomings, feels pain and guilt from them. So for all of these reasons, I needed a place to express my experiences as a daughter of a borderline mother without fearing that I would hurt her even more.
This journey first started when I decided to go to counseling. My mom had openly talked about her struggles with depression throughout my life. She went to counseling frequently and was on anti-depressants. Overall, we had a positive view of taking care of your mental health in our family. I never thought particularly of going to therapy myself. Throughout my life I had always considered myself a pretty well adjusted, happy, healthy individual. Is it absolutely insane that I grew up with a borderline mother, being the central relationship for her, and I never knew it?
I suppose no one knows that one quirk your family has is weird until you get into your first serious relationship and you see that your partner’s family doesn’t do that thing or have that tradition or take this certain belief for granted. Your world gets jarred and knocked a bit. Your frame of perception widens.
I didn’t ever face anything in my family that I didn’t feel capable of handling until my engagement. In fact, I felt very confident in my competency to handle my mother. I felt like I could handle her emotional swings and behavior better than anyone else. I even frequently felt disdain for my father who was freaked out by her episodes, if he happened to be around when they happened. I used to scoff to myself, “You’re freaked out by this? For me this is just the average Thursday.” He would make it worse, of course, almost as though his instincts were precisely calibrated, 180 degrees off. How is it possible to be so finely tuned in exactly the wrong direction? I think my father was perfectly happy to let me resolve the situations with my mother. Happy not to have to deal with them. Happy to slip into the background of our lives. Happy to slip more deeply into an all-consuming addiction to work.
But I am avoiding it. I am avoiding writing it. I am avoiding telling you the one episode I couldn’t handle. Even after my mom told me that she was sexually abused when I was 10 years old, I thought I could handle it. Or I was too young to know that I couldn’t. Even after hearing her scream and bellow her desire to kill herself when I was six years old, I thought I could handle it. Or I was too young to know that I couldn’t. Even after I was 15 years old, and she told me she would kill herself because I had gotten close to my grandpa, I thought I could handle it. Even after I gave up dream after dream, to remain close to her and support her, I thought I could handle it. Even after at 17 she began describing to me the incidents of her abuse in excessive detail, I thought I could handle it. Even when she described to me her practice of self-harm, I thought I could handle it. Even when she called me after swallowing a whole bottle of pills, and she thought she was going to die, and she wanted me to be there when she did, I thought I could handle it.
But at 29, on the morning after my engagement, I couldn’t handle it. It certainly wasn’t the most extreme episodes from her, it was just the one that hurt me the most. After suicide threats and attempts and screaming and yelling and weeping and collapsing and pitiful stories told me with a bit of a cruel gleam in her eye all while I keep my face a calm, immutable mask. I will not let her see into me. I will not betray my inner safest self. Make yourself small, small, small, invisible. Don’t move or quiver. Not a millimeter.
My mom and I enjoyed meeting up in the mornings to go running with our dog on a beautiful trail. The day previous I was tired and out of it. I just wasn’t up for it, so I texted her saying as much. I needed to rest. She texted me in clipped tones, then ignored my response. I knew she was angry about it, and I was so nervous every time she got angry. My gut roiled. So I was sure on the following day not to miss our running date, even though I was still tired and wrung out. Probably more so from her own explosive moods. She picked me up and we started chatting as though nothing happened. This was her habit when her bad behavior got her what she wanted. It was as though nothing happened. For her. I was still reeling. Then she leaned over and crossed her left arm across herself to show me as she drove. She had cut herself. Not just thin lines, but rectangles, an inch wide, one and a half to two inches across. And they were deep. There were four lined up on her arm. They were like Band-Aids. Anti-Band-Aids. Slightly shorter but just as broad. I will never forget that until the day that I die. I will never forget it.
She looked at me again with that slightly cruel gleam in her eye. I am not making it up. The vision I have of her is not someone who is sad or about to cry or ashamed. She was brazen. She was observing me closely. How would I react? How would I take it? One misstep and she would explode. I had been like a bomb sniffing dog who had been sniffing out field mines for thirty years straight without a break, not an evening or a day when I didn’t have to keep working. I may have been exhausted but I was well practiced. The mask came to me, it was always on, but it could shield me more tightly, the protection could be more complete. It could come up behind the eyes to make me impassive. I would shut her out, shut out her gaze. She cannot look inside me. She said to me, “This is how your engagement makes me feel.”
I calmly encouraged her to call her current therapist. She said she didn’t want to. I said, “If you’re self-harming, you need to talk to your therapist. He needs to know.” She demurred and avoided. It was not the response she wanted but it also didn’t trip the wires of the explosives beneath the surface. I called later that day to follow up, she said she called but she couldn’t get an appointment until next week. “Did you tell them you’d been self-harming?” She admitted she had not. “If you tell them you’re self-harming they’ll get you in today.” She hung up then texted me a few minutes later. She got an appointment with her therapist that afternoon.
I saw her the next day at her house and asked her how she was. She said she felt all better. She said that cutting always makes her feel better. She admitted it wasn’t a normal way to deal with her feelings, but it works! She said this cheerfully like she was on a gum commercial. She said she didn’t think she really needed to go to therapy since she feels better now. She smiled and smiled and smiled at me. She looked for me to smile back, but my mask failed me. She didn’t say sorry. She just expected me to be just as fine as she now was. She didn’t ask me how I was doing or if I had any feelings about what happened. She just smiled and smiled into my face.
