The terror of being ill around a narcissistic parent

My mother has a full-on HATE for anyone who is ill - she claims it's just them needing attention. Obvious illness causes her to express rage and derision. For hours. I don't know what happened to her that she is so violently hateful of vulnerable people – although I know from personal experience, her mother - my grandmother  - was much the same. 

In my adult life, when I've been employed (I have been self-employed for almost 25 years) I had a terrible time calling in sick no matter how sick I was.  I always felt I would be called out as a liar. It was terrifying.  I'm in my late 50s and even now, being ill to the point I can't work really bothers me; I feel a deep sense of guilt, like I'm committing some type of fraud, and fear whatever response I might get. Some of that is my mother’s reaction to sick people generally, and how she handled me being ill specifically.

As a kid, I had terrible colds; I would often be up coughing all night and exhausted for weeks from lack of sleep.  I still went to school - by choice because feeling unwell at school was preferable to being in the house with her, enduring her endless rage.

In the worst years, I maintained my social life, being between 16 and 17 years old when the cruellest of this was going on. My mother railed on that my “never being home,” was why I was sick. That and the night air, which she claimed the doctor had told her was keeping me sick. According to her, I was doing everything I could to stay sick and keep her up at night. She argued my entire goal was to cause her as much distress as I could.

I remember once when I was very little – maybe 8 or nine – I had a bad earache. I remember sleeping in my mother’s bed and her saying she wished she could take the pain away, and I remember that statement didn't ring true. As I grew up, she became more and more hostile towards me and particularly when I was sick. Those many nights I'd be coughing so hard, trying to stifle the sound into my pillow, she would burst into my room in the early hours screaming at me that I was keeping her awake on purpose and was trying to wake the whole house, that I was selfish. She didn't care at all how sick I was, didn't offer help or medicine, never mind I was nearly barfing from coughing so hard... It was horrible. I was sick, exhausted and terrified she'd turn up screaming at me at 3 a.m..

My "favourite" incident of her going ballistic because I was sick was in the week after my boyfriend visited over the winter holidays in my 12^th grade year. This incident set off a chain of events that reverberated for more than 10 years after.

That December, my boyfriend, who lived away, came to stay with us over the winter holiday. Meeting him for the first time, my mother vacillated between being sugar-sweet and trying to make an impression on him, and being a full-fledged bitch. Near the end of his stay, she did a bizarre, really weird thing - the catalyst for events to occur a week later. He and I had come in late-ish from a New Year’s Eve party; She heard us come home, but we didn’t hear her emerge from her bedroom.

My mother’s controlling personality and her “religion” make for her being extremely caustic about intimacy, sex and relationships – insulting, derisive, weird. We weren’t allowed to share a room – and I get it; it was her house – so before parting for the night, we did what in-love 17-year-olds do and had a little make-out session on the couch. Her sudden, “That’s enough of that!” revealed my mother standing in the dark, observing us. She then disclosed she’d been watching us for 10 minutes. It was, among the many, many weird moments of her parenting, a pinnacle of her bizarre behaviour. We were mortified, embarrassed and of course subject to her barrage of insults and abuse. I still feel sick to my stomach remembering it; it was extremely peeping-Tom of her. So gross.

In the days after my boyfriend left to return to his home in another province, I came down with a wicked cold.  All the parties we’d been at and all the shared food we’d consumed were likely the source of whatever bugs I had, and as a 17-year-old, I was doubtless not as careful about hand-washing as I could have been – nor was anyone else. I was sick enough the week after the winter holiday I couldn't go back to school. My friend (a gal my mother absolutely detested for some reason - but she hated all my friends, so true to type) came over to bring homework material. 

My mother hadn't contacted the school to see if there was homework.... my fault that I wasn't there to get it myself, and I was just trying to get attention... endless, but I had called my friend and asked her to bring over whatever I needed to be working on. My mother absolutely freaked out at my friend came to the house. My mother cornered my friend in the front hall of our house, my friend’s back against the front door, unable – or too terrified – to leave, as my mother screamed in her face, called her names, tore into her character, shamed her. It was horrifying.

After four days of being at home, subject to my mother’s endless abuse, despite still being sick, I went back to school and to my job serving tables in a busy restaurant. At the end of my first night back, I left by the staff entrance where my step-dad (who was amazing) and my mother (who bullied him) were waiting. My dad often picked me up, but this time, she was with him and my suitcase was in the car. It was 9:30 at night, I was tired after my shift, still quite sick, and VERY confused about what was happening. I don’t have words for what happened next; they drove me to the hospital and left me there.

I have almost no memory of what had actually happened that night. It was so deeply traumatizing I have only vague and incorrect memories of that night even now.

In my memory, my parents drove to the hospital and we came together into the lobby. I went to the bathroom and came out minutes later to find my parents gone and my suitcase abandoned in the middle of the lobby.

I didn't know I had spent two hours with a psychiatrist – I have still no memory of these two hours or having met with or spoken to anyone. I only remember entering a typical hospital public restroom, doing my thing and leaving in the usual time it takes.  I only discovered what had happened after yet another terrifying incident of my mother’s irrational rage, occurring almost 10 years later.

The incident that led me to discover almost four months of mostly-lost memory was spurred by my mother’s behaviour one particular day about two months after I got married, when she was visiting my house. I was juggling new spouse, new home, young child, new marriage, and on this day, caring for my two-year-old daughter and my friend’s child – a one-year-old.

My mother has a bizarre propensity for getting herself into rages. The usual trajectory is she says something caustic or critical about another person. Whoever she has said the thing to might respond with a counter of some type, at which point she blasts off into some explosive tirade.

As per her usual, this is exactly what happened. She launched into a rage within 30 minutes of arriving and began seething about my new spouse (who wasn't there) and my dad (definitely not there). After an hour of it, I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked her to stop slagging them off, that it wasn't fair or right and that she was not welcome to come to my house and tear into people, particularly when they weren't there, or to subject me to her shit in my own house. 

This made things worse by orders of magnitude.  She wasn't having it and doubled down on her attacks on my spouse and my dad, and screamed she could come to my house whenever she wanted, and I couldn't stop her... So bizarre.

As my mother slid into her rage, I put the kids in my bedroom in the crib, so they'd be out of danger, if not out of earshot. My mother - enraged, and irrational - and now resorting to striking me - refused to leave; she said she couldn't go because she needed her purse. I opened the front door and threw her purse onto the front lawn hoping she'd follow it. Nope. She still wouldn't leave and was in a massive, irrational frenzy. This is when I called the police.

By this point, we were both screaming.  I was pleading with her to leave, which became "you have to leave," which became "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" 

Suddenly, she went from full-on rage to dead calm; she spat out that she was leaving, adding her usual barrage of what a terrible person, mother, wife, daughter I was and how “everyone” knew how “sick” I was. But rather than heading out the front door, she went down the hallway, opened my bedroom door and scooped up my child. She tried to leave the house with my baby in her arms. This did not go well for her... 

I admit I threw a few hard punches to dislodge my child. This was the first time I had retaliated with purposeful violence. My mother had struck me many, many times in the past with fists and with objects. Sidebar: once she chased me upstairs with a carving knife – one she still has. I locked myself in the second-floor bathroom, but she kicked the door in and stood there with the knife in my face, screaming at me. Terrifying.

I had often defended myself, or had run off, sometimes down the street in the dark - once in bare feet in winter - but I had never reacted this way - consciously, purposefully resorting to violence with the goal of hurting her.  That she would attempt to take my child made me blind with anger.

It. Was. Horrifying. 

When the police finally arrived, she saw their vehicle pull up, threw herself into the couch beside the door, and as the officers came through the open front door, she bleated "Help me, she's trying to kill me."

I had already told dispatch what was going on - and they'd heard her screaming her head off in the background, so the police were aware of what was going on, that she was attempting to take my child, that she was in my house and refusing to leave. The officers managed to coax her out the door and into her car, to a cacophony of her pleading and desperately trying to convince them she should take my child. 

As much as my mother attempting to abduct my child was horrific, as were the hours leading to that moment, and the years before, and her regular, horrifying, middle-of-the-night attacks on a sick teenager, I'm glad - strange word to use - it happened. Her rage and her having tried to take my daughter that day compelled me to find out what had transpired 10 years earlier. 

That incident was a turning point. I knew then I needed to comprehend what was going on and what had been going on my entire life. I knew I had to understand as much as I could about her – and, by extension, about me. The gaslighting my mother is so expert at had led me to question my fitness as a parent and my sanity from as far back as when I was in fifth grade, when she would tell me, on an almost-daily basis, she had people watching me.

I started calling around. I remembered a couple counselling sessions we’d attended as a “family,” and I knew which hospital they'd taken me to and knew that there must be a record. When I called the hospital, I was transferred to the psych unit. Reception confirmed there were records of that family counselling and gave me the names of the people who'd seen us. My call was then transferred to a doctor - a psychiatrist - who said he remembered me, and that he'd met with me for two hours on that night many years earlier. 

I was STUNNED to understand I'd spent two hours at the hospital with a psychiatrist. I remember walking into the hospital's main reception area, my step-dad putting my suitcase down, me walking forward into a small white bathroom and walking out soon after to find my suitcase sitting in the middle of the floor, and my parents gone. I remember calling our then-pastor, who came to pick me up, and spending two or three nights with him and his family, sleeping in their den on their pull-out.

I had no memory of anything else (even now), and asked the doctor if he was sure he had met with me. He was, and said he had a file with names, dates, and record of that meeting. Writing this now, 40 years later, I'm still amazed I remember nothing of this night beyond these incorrect details.

I requested access to the file and said I wanted to come in and read it. When I arrived to the doctor’s offices in the basement of the hospital annexe a few days later, he was at first very reluctant to let me read the file - because, he said, my mother was not there, so something about consent. I said that file was also about ME and I WAS there. He relented but said I could not copy anything, or take the file out of the small room he put me in. Fine. I had notepaper with me and I did copy. Furiously.

This file was a compilation of notes from the initial intake – that two hours I remember nothing of – and several family sessions. I was utterly stunned - again - to understand we had attended EIGHT family sessions. Even now, I have no memory of these sessions beyond two.

We – my mother and I – had attended family counselling sessions in the past, usually with a minister at our church or a school counsellor. My mother had tried many times to find a counsellor who would say I was crazy, and threw around “schizophrenic” like she was some expert on mental health.

As a sidebar to her behaviour in counselling, this anecdote:
When I was 15, at her insistence, we'd met with our then-pastor. He had heard her out on a couple prior occasions, and I think she thought he was an ally. However, within 15 minutes of the start of the session, she exposed herself, her anger, her behaviour, and the abuse she was heaping on me. He identified several issues and suggested she shouldn't treat me the way she did and that things would be easier if she weren't so harsh. 

This, predictably, resulted in furious, loud outrage on her part, and her stalking out, as was her usual response to anyone pointing out she might have contributed to the situation. She accused our pastor of attacking her, and of conspiring to ruin her reputation in the church. Bizarrely, but not unpredictably, she turned on that man with a vengeance. Although she had led the charge to see him hired as our pastor, she launched a vicious campaign to discredit him, and have him fired.

Her personality and tendency to extreme outbursts were well-known in our church of barely 150 people (on a good day when dessert was served), so her campaign was unsupported and unsuccessful. Her efforts resulted in him remaining with the support of the greater congregation, and her leaving our church and to begin attending the very large church up the road from us - a church she had spent many years maligning for its demographic of "all those wealthy people who look down on me." It was bizarre. 

In my memory of the counselling sessions following the hospital incident, I was there with my mother, my step-dad, and a female counsellor. I didn't remember her name, nor do I remember how I got to these sessions or where they were held. I was living with my dad at that point, so likely he drove me, but I don't have any memory of getting there or leaving or being dropped off or picked up. 

In the two sessions I have in my memory, my mother was OUTRAGED. I remember her being utterly furious at the psychologist for having identified my mother’s negative, angry behaviours and their effect on me and on my siblings and step-dad; and I remember her furiously lashing out, calling the counsellor names, accusing her of making stuff up, of being unfair, of colluding with other people who were out to get her. She stalked out of both sessions claiming everyone was against her (she said this regularly, along with "You can hardly wait until I'm dead.... ").

As I sat in that small, windowless cubicle reading the notes written by the psychologist who did the sessions, I remember being relieved that she had identified my mother’s extensive personal issues. This was the first time I’d had anyone – particularly an adult – identify my mother’s serious mental issues. The counsellor observed my mother took no responsibility for her actions or behaviours, or anything she said; that she perceived herself as constantly set upon and persecuted by other people; that people were out to “make her look bad;” and that she was still furious at my father for leaving her. The counsellor wrote my mother was dealing with her mental distress by making me her target. In her notes, the counsellor identified my mother as intensely angry and having deep-seated feelings of maltreatment. She wrote, "The mother is scapegoating her child." Yes. Yes she was. From the time I was about two years old.

Discovering the truth about the night my parents left me at the hospital, and knowing the extent of counselling, how many sessions there were, identification of my mother's serious personality issues, and understanding - finally - those were not my fault, and knowing the extent of them was horrifying but a relief.

That counsellor wrote my "behaviour" issues, which she identified as my acting out as a means of self-preservation, were a direct result of my mother's scapegoating.

I began to heal after that. Very slowly. I was completely out of contact with my mother for almost two years after that, but there were many relapses, many times I tried to have a relationship with her; many, many more of her outrages, her abuses, her irrational anger, her tearing me to bits, and the time she lashed out at my parenting with “You’re a terrible mother; you don’t feed your children potatoes.” Yes, she actually said that. That comment caused a huge crack in the “matrix.” That comment, and my mother’s apparent narcissism, irrational, unpredictable, abusive behaviour are the foundation for the vast raft of reasons for our present reality.

When my children were in their early teens, she began directing her anger and treachery towards them in person, and in emails. She told them they were “heathens” and that she was sorry they would never go to heaven. In emails, she wrote things like, "I don't know why you hang around those people who hate me and want me dead." Six years ago, she finally, terminally, crossed the line. (Chapter six million... to follow).

Am I still amazed that I have no memories of that hospital visit and six of the eight counselling sessions? YES. Do I still struggle with taking time out when I’m ill? Yes. Do I feel guilt about being out of contact with my mother? Yes.

But I understand that guilt and why it is misdirected. The guilt I feel is attached to a mythical "good, loving mother" who doesn't exist, but who I have abandoned. Six years ago, when I finally hit that terminal wall and suspended contact with my mother, that guilt was suffocating. My extrication left my sibling with care and feeding of this abusive woman, who has since turned her abuse on this sibling – the was-golden-child (chapter six-million-two-hundred to follow). For the record, there are three of us siblings. The other one literally fled the country, where they have a “relationship” with our mother from a safe distance (chapter six-million-three-hundred to follow).

In the last three or four years, I've come to understand this guilt and its context; every child’s enduring wish for a good mother who cares about them, is kind and loving, and engaged in a caring, unobtrusive way. However, in my case, this mother does not exist and never has. I finally understand there is nothing at all I can do to elicit the good mother. I can let go of feeling guilty for abandoning what is a fantasy mother who doesn’t, and never did exist. The real thing has serious personality challenges that no amount of me "being good" will fix. It took me 50 years to get to this point, many bouts of deep, terrifying depression, much self-flagellation and self-hate, but I am finally out.