Everyone has someone that just hates them for no reason. Usually this is harmless. Everybody has somebody they don't get along with, just like they have at least one really good friend. But what do you do when the two people you love and trust more than anyone else on the face of the earth, do you the most damage?
I've gotten sone good advice from both of my parents from time to time. Best advice I ever got from my mom, "If you would be afraid for me to find out you're doing something, then you shouldn't be doing it." Best advice I ever got from my dad, "Just don't be anything like your mother and you'll be alright." LOL!
Then there are things I wish they'd never said. My mother, "Don't sleep with any ugly guys. I don't want ugly grandchildren." And "Trust me. I'm your mom. I only want what's best for you." That second was a flat out lie. My father, "You're a woman. You don't ever have to be broke. You're sitting on a gold mine." You need to keep in mind my father was a pimp for many years.
My mother raised me and I used to believe she was my very best friend ever. She didn't freak out when I got pregnant at fifteen. Her happy dance freaked me out worse than if she had been pissed. But she had been very supportive, watching my son while I finished high school. Offering to sign me out of high school if it was too much for me, I took a pass on that. I knew I had to finish. Then baby sitting for me while I went to college. Again she said if I dropped out, she wouldn't be disappointed in me. She knew I tried and that I was working hard, but she understood if it was too much for me. I don't know what made her say that because I never considered quitting college. My father had freaked out when I got pregnant at fifteen and wrote me a very nasty letter from his prison cell. Somehow I didn't take him seriously. How was a man, my father or not, going to tell me about my life and what I should be doing with it from a prison cell.
When I graduated from college, that's when things really started to fall apart between me and my mother. Up until that time I had always lived with her and I had never been on my own. But I was ready to leave the nest and nothing she could say or do now would convince me to continue to live with her. I had tried to move out before while I was going to college. While I was pregnant with my daughter, my second child, I applied for public housing. Living togehter in my mother's house was me, herself, my son and my younger mentally challenged brother, who was 19 with no independent living skills, and I was expecting my second child. The house wasn't going to accomodate us all comfortably. The logical thing in my mind was for me to get my own place for myself and my children. What would you do?
Well it can take a while for pupblic housing to come through; especially, if you need a two or three bedroom. While I was waiting and continuing to go to college as my belly expanded with my daughter, behind my back my mother signed my 19 year old mentally challenged brother with no independent living skills up for public housing. He being single with no children, only needed an efficiency or one bedroom. He got an apartment before me and suddenly my mother had me helping her move him into his little apartment a few blocks away from her home. After he was all moved in she said to me, "There, now there's enough room for the baby. You don't have to go anywhere. See what I've done for you. See how much I love you." And there was no reasoning with the woman. She made me feel obligated to stay and I still had more than a year of college left so I let my plans fall to the way side.
Now you need to remember that with my parents if they do something for you; especially something of significance, there is a price to pay, something they expect in return. I didn't quite understand this yet. It would take me a while to realize that that woman wanted nothing less than my soul, every little last piece of me, to the point that there was none of me for myself.
She kicked the manipulation and controlling into high gear. My college graduation present was a vehicle she never put in my name so when she got mad at me she could say, "and don't drive my car!" We began arguing on nearly the daily basis. My son had so many match box cars that he was busting them up with a hammer. I said not to by him anymore because he's just destroying them. She continued to buy them for him behind my back. She offered to put the car in my name and give me $6,000 if I gave her my children. Then she started making false reports to children services that I was abusing and neglecting my children. I was working, but I wasn't making enough. I signed up for different housing programs but they were taking too long. A social worker had to come out nearly everyday to check on the condition of my children only to note that my children were fine. They were healthy happy children. I was working three jobs and she used the money I gave her for the household bills to pay an attorney to sue me for custody of my children. But on the advice of the attorney, if she was suing for custody, I couldn't live with her. So she threw me and my two children out.
I took my son to stay with his father and step-mom so I didn't have to pull him out of school. My daughter was just a toddler so I took her with me to stay with relatives in a nearby town. She got an emergency custody order based on a bunch of crap, and I found an inner strength I didn't know I had. I called her attorney and started telling her things she didn't know about her client. Like how when I was 18 she held a gun to my brothers head threatening to kill him and herself if I didn't come home because she thought I was moving out, she thouhgt I was leaving her. I was threw keeping her secrets. I had my children back that same night.
I wish I could say that was the end of it but it wasn't. Stupid me, I love my mother, and I wanted a peaceful somewhat normal mother daughter relationship. I tried to mend things with her, but she just couldn't stop meddling. I ended up in court over the one time I actually did loose my temper with my son, and my purse was stolen. Because of the stolen purse, my rent check bounced. The landlady had me arrested for the bounced check and I spent my twenty-fifth birthday in the county jail, as if evicting me wasn't enough. Because of the eviction and my mother was making nice at that moment, I moved back in with my mother making it perfectly clear that this was only tempory until I found a new place.
Well, she did eveything in her power to hinder that process. I almost bought my first home, but that fell apart when my mother showed up at one of my jobs and raised hell. They didn't keep me after that and the deal on my house fell thru. My mother tried to cut me off from the world by setting the phone up so you had to put in a code to dial out. If I wanted to call someone, I had to walk to the payphone. It became so bad with the constant arguing, accusations of abusing my children, that I was a junkie and a prostitute and an alcoholic, I finally started to fall apart. I tried to check myself into the metal ward at the local hospital.
Finally after months of documenting everything they had observed, children services emergency evacuted me and my two children from my mother's home. We were technically homeless and in a motel room for a couple of weeks, they helped put a rush on some housing assistance for us and we moved into a three bedroom duplex. She had lost her case for gaining custody of my children, and had even lost her grandparents visitation rights. I had tried to reason with her, told her that with her mental instablity in her background they would never give her custody of my children. Asked her if what she wanted was for her grandchildren to grow up in foster care. And her response to me was, "If I can't have them, neither can you."
Anybody want to trade mothers? ...Anybody? ...Anybody?
You would think it would be over. She lost her bid fo custody and she even cheated herself out of her grandparents' visitation rights. But no she wasn't finished with me yet. Your probably asking yourself, well, what else could she do? The answer: she could kill me.
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