Day by Day
“There’s not an event really, there’s just a lifetime because it’s my mom. I think the reason I talk about it so much is because I feel, not because it’s any better or worse than what happened to anyone else, but when it’s your mom, you have to get away from, people in general are less accepting. It’s your mom, she loves you, you should forgive her, it couldn’t be that bad. I just feel like there’s less understanding.”
Her mom had Alicia when she was 17 and married her father. They got divorced when Alicia was only 4 or 5 years old. Her father wasn’t really involved in her life growing up as she and her mom lived in Indiana and her father moved to Tennessee.
She doesn’t remember a time when her mother wasn’t physically abusive. Growing up, it was something normal for her. During fights she would say things to provoke her mom because she knew she was going to be beaten so she just wanted to get it over with. She remembers in junior high walking home with one of her friends, telling her about a fight her and her mom had the night before. She talked about how her mom threw her against a wall and choked her and her friend looked at her and says “Your mom is abusing you”. She denied it at the time, but it was a moment that stuck with her because she started to realize that this wasn’t normal and it wasn’t ok.
The first time she remembers telling anyone was in 7th grade. Her mother beat her very badly, eventually getting on top of her to choke her. She told her “Why do you make me do this to you”. The next morning, her mother came into her room and tried to help her cover up the marks on her face before school, but when she arrived at school, her friends notice and told the counselor. When Alicia was called into their office, she lied and said that she fell even though she knew that they knew the real story. “As a kid, you don’t want to get taken away from your mom. You don’t know what’s going to be worse. As a kid, that’s all I knew.”
“As bad as the physical stuff was, there was also mental and emotional abuse which I didn’t realize until I was an adult. Looking back, it’s the mental and emotional abuse that has left the deepest scars.”
She struggled with relationships through her life due to the impact her mother’s abuse had on her. She would try to pick fights with her partners waiting on them to leave. “When your mom doesn’t love you, you don’t expect anyone else to love you”
Her mother was extremely controlling and narcissistic. She would be able to turn on the charm to anyone. When she first married her husband, she would have to check everything with her mom. She remembers when they wanted to go on vacation, she would have to call her mom first to see if the dates were ok. In her mother’s eyes, she was never good enough and her mother would never say she was proud of her. She received a full academic scholarship to college and her mother would still not acknowledge any of her accomplishments. Whenever she would talk about Alicia, she would tell everyone how bad she is while at the same time, take credit for any of Alicia’s accomplishments.
Her mother would gas light her often causing Alicia to constantly second guess herself. She would often try to justify the abuse due to her mother’s gas lighting, believing that maybe her mother felt bad which is why she was denying the abuse. Other times, she would be made to feel as though she was blowing everything out of proportion.
She became pregnant with her first daughter who was born 8 weeks premature. It was a devastating and nerve racking time. Her daughter was in the NICU for 11 days and the doctors had said she could go home the next day if she was able to eat and keep her weight up. Her mother had came to visit her daughter and she had asked her not to pick her up since her daughter was sleeping. She wanted to make sure she had the energy to eat the next day to finally bring her home. Instead of being understanding, her mother gave her a terrible look and told her that she was being selfish saying she couldn’t pick up her own granddaughter. That was just another sign of her mother’s narcissism, being unable to think of anyone but herself.
2013 – Moving Away
5 years ago, she finally moved away from her mother and was able to cut ties completely. She remembers the breaking point. They had been to her mother’s for a visit and she had had some health issues. Her mother was very quiet and wasn’t talking at all, which wasn’t normal for her. She wasn’t even getting out of bed to say goodbye. She tried to ask her mother what was wrong, worrying her health issues maybe be more serious than she was telling them. All she said was that she had made a mistake at her job. Her mother worked as a financial manager for a small business and she said she had made a mistake calculating payroll taxes. Her boss was fined and was going to fire her, but she wouldn’t say anything else.
A few days later she called up Alicia and said that she was in trouble. The mistake she made at her job was a big one. Her boss was saying she needed to pay him $20,000 by Friday at 4:30 or he would have her arrested. Alicia didn’t know what to say, she kept asking her questions as the details didn’t add up. She knew her mom wasn’t telling her the entire story. How could she be arrested for making a mistake? Her mother said due to the fact that she lied and didn’t tell him she made a mistake, it could be considered fraud which is why he could have her arrested. Alicia didn’t have $20,000. They just moved and were still trying to get financially stable. When she told her mother that, she got very angry.
Friday at 4:30 came around and it seemed as though everything was ok. A few days later, a friend calls her and tells her that her mom has been taken out of work in handcuffs. At the time, Alicia was friends with the states attorney and gave her a call to try to find out what was going on. She finally gets all the details and it turns out that her mother had been embezzling from the company for years and took about $200,000. “I was still so under her spell and control, I did everything I could to help her.”
She went to the arraignment and paid to bail her mom out of jail. As soon as she picked her mom up, the manipulation started. Her mom told her “I just can’t go back there or I’ll kill myself”. Alicia stayed with her for the weekend and she would say statements like this constantly, even in front of her younger brother who was 9 or 10 at the time. Alicia knew she wasn’t going to hurt herself, but used those threats to manipulate those around her so she wouldn’t have to talk about what she did. Growing up, she would tell Alicia when they fought “I just want to kill myself so I never have to look at you again.” or statements like “I just found out I had an abnormal pap smear so I hope I get cancer so I can die and never see you again.”
The entire weekend, her mom refused to talk about what had happened and only said that she didn’t know why she did what she did. That was a turning point for Alicia
“I quit taking her calls. I asked a friend if if she thought it was okay to block her on Facebook. This is me not having her in my life. I can’t have her in my kid’s life. I have 2 daughters, 12 and 10 now. I can’t have her manipulating them like she does to others. She’s had 4 husbands and manipulates everyone and tears everyone down. She’s just so mean. That was just the point where I started being ok with myself. It was so hard at first and so devastating. You don’t just make a choice like that, you make that choice over and over again, every day. There are still days after 5 years I wanna call my mom and I have to remind myself, I don’t want to call my mom, I want to call the mom I never had. I miss the mom I never had.”
Living Her True Self
She has completely changed since cutting ties with her mother. She is able to live her life as her true self without being afraid to be herself. Even her political views have shifted. Her mother was very conservative. Anyone who was different than her was not okay. She was racist, homophobic and while Alicia didn’t share those views, she was never allowed to express her own. Her mother would call her a liberal and use the word as an insult. She can finally be the person who she’s supposed to be without criticism.
After Effects of Trauma
While she is able to live her life as herself, that doesn’t come without some struggle. When her daughter was a year old, she had a nervous breakdown. The depression and anxiety she experienced from her abuse was compounded by postpartum depression. She remembers sitting at work one day and she started digging a thumb tack into her arm. “Everything outside of my body was out of control. I kept cutting because I could focus on that.”
She realized this was a problem and eventually checked herself into the hospital. This was also the first moment she was diagnosed with anxiety, something she never knew she had. After she got out of the hospital, she began to see a therapist who suggested she involve her mother in her sessions, but her mother refused saying “Why would I come? These are your problems, not mine.” It was like a slap.
Being a Mom
“The best thing I’ve ever done is have kids. I always thought I didn’t want any of them and my first daughter was a surprise.”
She wasn’t married when she became pregnant, and at first didn’t feel as though she could be a good mom. She wasn’t in a healthy living situation as her daughter was born before she cut ties with her. Since moving away “I’ve become a great mom. My kids saved me. I used to blame myself a lot for what happened to me and then I realized that everything she did was a choice and I wouldn’t have realized that with my kids.” When she gets angry, she’ll yell and sometimes when her kids give her a look that reminds her of how she felt with her own mom, she’ll sit down with them and say “You did something that made me angry, but the way I reacted wasn’t ok.” It helped her realized that her own mother could have done that. Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s how we respond to those mistakes and how we change that matters.
“If we hadn’t moved away from her, I don’t know if I would even be alive. I remember being 12, telling her I wanted to kill myself but the only reason I didn’t was because, I’m an atheist now, but at the time I believed in God and I thought I would go to hell.” All her mother said was that she was just doing this to hurt her. She remembers telling her mom why she doesn’t talk to her aunt anymore was because she was raped at 13 by her aunt’s friend and her aunt even knew about it. Both times, her mother just reacted in apathy. She couldn’t fathom reacting that way should one of her daughters ever tell her anything like that.
After trauma impacts
She has very severe anxiety which was diagnosed when she had checked herself into the hospital. She’ll have nocturnal panic attacks where she’ll wake up feeling as though she can’t breathe or begin to think about very stressful things. She has a lot of trouble falling asleep as well. She takes medication to help her sleep.
While at times her anxiety can be crippling, talking about it helps her through it. She knows she’s ok and that it’s ok to feel this way. She has also struggled with eating disorders and self harm. While she doesn’t self harm anymore, the urge is always still there.
She has a wonderfully supportive husband who she can talk to. Some days she tells him that she’s not having a good day. She can tell him “I’m not ok today. I don’t know why and I can’t tell you what’s wrong, but I’m just not ok today”.
She’s knows that this is a part of her now “there’s nothing anyone can do, just fight your demons every day and I think I’ll fight them for the rest of my life.”
Advice
I know it’s probably an unpopular opinion, but I don’t believe you have to forgive someone to move on and be healthy. Cutting ties with someone so close to you, especially your mother, feels wrong and unnatural. You feel like maybe somehow you have failed as a child because all parents love their children, right? And that’s what society tells us, what our friends and loved ones tell us. That she’s your mom and she loves you and you should forgive her. I’m not angry anymore, but I don’t forgive her. I believe forgiveness is earned, and you can’t earn forgiveness if you can’t even recognize and acknowledge the damage you have caused. I think if I talked myself into forgiveness, then I would eventually talk myself into letting her back in. And I can’t do that. I can’t look back. I can’t be the person she turns me into. My kids deserve better than that. I deserve better than that. So my advice to other survivors is just this - do whatever you need to do to be okay, no matter what others tell you. Surround yourself with people who will accept you and love you, all the broken pieces of you. If forgiving your abuser helps you, then forgive them. But do it for you. You don’t own anyone forgiveness but yourself.