I miss my mom but she ruined me, how do I move on?

[hazygarageparty873]

I originally posted this without an account, so here.

So just for some exposition, mother was an addict when I was born, my paternal grandparents would pick me up from strangers porches where she would leave me overnight and her neglect got worse through the years. Eventually she divorced when I was eight from my step father and had my brother when I turned ten. The man she had my brother with was an addict and was the one who got her to start injecting. She started to abuse h*roin, fentanyl, suboxine(? not sure how to spell it), and continues to use that rotation to this day. At thirteen I started doing sex work for her, it started with her berating my body and fixing it (putting make up on my boobs for low hanging shirts, booty shorts, makeup etc.) and pulling me out of school so I could 'work' full time to support us. I'd been self harming for years so she made me start self harming on my thighs to help me cope and hide my injuries from plain sight. Regularly she would physically abuse me when she couldn't get what she wanted or I couldn't find places for us to stay. Eventually started giving me m*th and weed to cope. Then she got in contact with my bio dad and in exchange for 'food' (flour and pickles), she had offered me to him since I wasn't aware he liked children (I evaded him successfully, I fought and he was under the assumption I would like it. I was assaulted for two months when living with her at one point from a man who stayed with some people we were with. He cut and burned my skin in exchange for him not assaulting my mom instead. He used me s*xually and I struggle with anger towards her for this, even though I would do it again for her. Regardless, she continued her addiction and we were homeless for about five years.

After I turned 16 I got emancipated with help from my maternal grandparents with some money I'd saved up. My grandmother got me into highschool based off of my test scores and I (somehow) graduated. I care for my brother still, since after he was born she neglected him immediately and left. He has been my son since he was born practically and I want to get better for him and myself. We reside with my maternal grandfather and my grandmother didn't make it through covid with us. We are very poor and I have no other family and am working two jobs to support us. My mom overdosed next to my brother and I chased her out after she returned from the hospital. I found a total of 120 needles in our home since she has left.

I have been clean from self harm for two years now and clean from meth for 3. I have attended therapy (7 different therapists), I have taken medications, I admitted myself in a hospital to get diagnosed and get on the medications I needed, I have tried to fix myself and everything but I can't move on. I had to drop my meds since they gave me seizures, I run off of weed now. I am going to be twenty this year and I know everyone goes at different paces to the race of life but I'm not sure what to do from here? How do I heal? I miss my mom so much, she was terrible I know that. I don't know other people like me and it's isolating. I'm trying to do the best for myself but I feel like I'm lugging a weight. I am trying to move on, I know trauma doesn't define me, how do I get that to stick in my brain?? Anyone in the same messed up boat?

 

[PlainJane]

@hazygarageparty873 Welcome!

Mod Note

I removed your trigger warning as we do not use them on the forum. Please, check out the Community Constitution and feel free to ask us any questions regarding the site at Contact Us!

 

[arfie]

hello hazy. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here.

if you have been clean from self-harm for 2 years and clean from meth for 3, i opine that you are already doing an hellacious job of moving on. please don't be discouraged if it is a tad more difficult than moving on when the traffic light changes. it takes generations to create these family snot knots. it takes more than 20 minutes to recover from them.

congratulations on your fine start in healing and recovery. be gentle with yourself and patient with the process.

 

[Friday]

I have tried to fix myself and everything but I can't move on.

What would moving on mean to you?

 

[OM_™]

I don't know other people like me and it's isolating.

Everyone here feels isolated, that’s why this forum exists. My story is very different to yours and different to many other stories on this forum. We all feel pain and love and have that in common.

 

[hazygarageparty873]

What would moving on mean to you?

i think personally moving on in my case would be having the grace and closure to let go and not let her be the scary monster in the closet, as cliche as it sounds

hello hazy. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here.

if you have been clean from self-harm for 2 years and clean from meth for 3, i opine that you are already doing an hellacious job of moving on. please don't be discouraged if it is a tad more difficult than moving on when the traffic light changes. it takes generations to create these family snot knots. it takes more than 20 minutes to recover from them.

congratulations on your fine start in healing and recovery. be gentle with yourself and patient with the process.

thank you. this honestly did help me conceptualize this better in those terms. i will take my time and be kind:)

Everyone here feels isolated, that’s why this forum exists. My story is very different to yours and different to many other stories on this forum. We all feel pain and love and have that in common.

its so humanizing and i appreciate the connection as terrible as it is that we all feel the same.

 

[Charbella]

i think personally moving on in my case would be having the grace and closure to let go and not let her be the scary monster in the closet, as cliche as it sounds

Maybe you need to be more compassionate with yourself before you can have the same for the monster? Seems like a hard standard that you have to have grace to get closure. Your mom was a monster and whether you forgive her or not does not reflect on you. If you want her in your life it doesn’t mean forgiving her it means allowing for the possibility that she has changed and that what YOU need is to have her.

Forgiveness and grace are a tall order and I’m guessing some part of you fights that fiercely. Another part of you fights calling her a monster because children need to believe their parents are there for them even if they can also see the reality.

My T says I have to have self compassion before I can really deal with the mom component of my trauma. That’s a major work in progress.

 

[Friday]

i think personally moving on in my case would be having the grace and closure to let go and not let her be the scary monster in the closet, as cliche as it sounds

Fear paired with imagination? Is crippling.

There was a reeeeally interesting study done a little while back about how the US’s tech capabilities are a far better deterrent against terrorists/smugglers/etc. than the actualities. IE because they CAN do XYZ, they DON’T actually have to do them. Almost ever. The fear of the possibility is enough to completely change behaviour patterns… into far, far, far more easy to f*ck up realities.

Not spinning out 10 zillion possibilities -all bad- as fear+imagination melts your hard drive? Ain’t cliche. It’s useful as hell. Imagine life WITHOUT all that time/energy wasted. Worth it.

 

[Paul-]

I originally posted this without an account, so here.

So just for some exposition, mother was an addict when I was born, my paternal grandparents would pick me up from strangers porches where she would leave me overnight and her neglect got worse through the years. Eventually she divorced when I was eight from my step father and had my brother when I turned ten. The man she had my brother with was an addict and was the one who got her to start injecting. She started to abuse h*roin, fentanyl, suboxine(? not sure how to spell it), and continues to use that rotation to this day. At thirteen I started doing sex work for her, it started with her berating my body and fixing it (putting make up on my boobs for low hanging shirts, booty shorts, makeup etc.) and pulling me out of school so I could 'work' full time to support us. I'd been self harming for years so she made me start self harming on my thighs to help me cope and hide my injuries from plain sight. Regularly she would physically abuse me when she couldn't get what she wanted or I couldn't find places for us to stay. Eventually started giving me m*th and weed to cope. Then she got in contact with my bio dad and in exchange for 'food' (flour and pickles), she had offered me to him since I wasn't aware he liked children (I evaded him successfully, I fought and he was under the assumption I would like it. I was assaulted for two months when living with her at one point from a man who stayed with some people we were with. He cut and burned my skin in exchange for him not assaulting my mom instead. He used me s*xually and I struggle with anger towards her for this, even though I would do it again for her. Regardless, she continued her addiction and we were homeless for about five years.

After I turned 16 I got emancipated with help from my maternal grandparents with some money I'd saved up. My grandmother got me into highschool based off of my test scores and I (somehow) graduated. I care for my brother still, since after he was born she neglected him immediately and left. He has been my son since he was born practically and I want to get better for him and myself. We reside with my maternal grandfather and my grandmother didn't make it through covid with us. We are very poor and I have no other family and am working two jobs to support us. My mom overdosed next to my brother and I chased her out after she returned from the hospital. I found a total of 120 needles in our home since she has left.

I have been clean from self harm for two years now and clean from meth for 3. I have attended therapy (7 different therapists), I have taken medications, I admitted myself in a hospital to get diagnosed and get on the medications I needed, I have tried to fix myself and everything but I can't move on. I had to drop my meds since they gave me seizures, I run off of weed now. I am going to be twenty this year and I know everyone goes at different paces to the race of life but I'm not sure what to do from here? How do I heal? I miss my mom so much, she was terrible I know that. I don't know other people like me and it's isolating. I'm trying to do the best for myself but I feel like I'm lugging a weight. I am trying to move on, I know trauma doesn't define me, how do I get that to stick in my brain?? Anyone in the same messed up boat?

It's a very sad story you've written about your mother and the if the truth be known, this is sadly happening all the time and demonstrates how many families out there are in desperate need of help.
Your mother was already battling addiction when you were born and from what you have written, your grandparents played a major role towards your caregiving needs.
Leaving you in the porches of houses belonging to complete strangers was irresponsible of your mother and yet it could only be assumed that when she did this to you, your mother was perhaps not even thinking straight because of her addiction.
Unfortunately for you, your mother will not have fully appreciated the long term effects that would have been caused by her abandoning you in these porch doorways. Because every time you were left in those porches, it silently conveyed a message to you that you weren't wanted and were then perhaps wondering why your grandparents had to pick you up.
Sadly, there's a chance you may have sensed the dismay on your grandparents faces every time you were collected from these doorways and could have even reaffirmed your own feelings of being unwelcome or not wanted in the family home.
Already at that early stage in your life, the journey to your own battles was beginning to take a hold because what often happens to children who are left in the company of other people all the time is they develop a sense of not being wanted.
It can be bad enough when the child is cared for by family friends and relatives and are present in conversations between the adults of who should take turns and on what days....There's a feeling within the child that says...."I'm not wanted here"....Even if nobody tells the child and even if the child doesn't really quite understand that inner feeling.
Putting things more simply....Being left in strangers porches conveyed a strong, symbolic message to you that you were not welcome. Even if you didn't feel aware of that underlying, invisible message.
Although you were only eight years old, the divorce of your mother and stepfather will have had a significant impact on you and there's the chance you would have experienced more situations where you may have secretly felt being on the sidelines again.
Sadly. The children always have and always will be deeply affected by the relationship break-ups of their parents and partners, yet neither parents nor the children may grasp the full impact of how it can change and affect everyone in later life.
When you were ten years old, your mother gave birth to your baby brother, which - as for many children whom go through the experience of a new arrival when they are older - may have immediately left you having to stand aside as your mother cared (or attempted to care) for your young, baby brother.
Even though she neglected your baby brother...Her intentions way well have been good at the time.
To make things more complicated, emotionally challenging and difficult for a ten year old, your mother's new partner was dealing with an addiction that was embedded far deeper than that of your mother's challenges with addiction.
Your mother started injecting after meeting her new partner (your brother's father) and there's not much that can be said with regards to her following in his footsteps with regard to moving on to more intense drug mis-use by injecting the heroin and other drugs.
The allure of her new partner will have been enough for your already vulnerable and impressionable mother to not see past what he was doing to himself - only to try some of these more intense drugs herself and very quickly become dependent.
The drugs will have been a very central part of their relationship and your very real and sad story only truly reflects a reality that is very much part of many families lives.
The drugs take a dominant role so powerful that their grip on the people is a clasp that cannot just be simply released, as many onlookers may wonder why people can't just quit taking the drugs in the first place before their lives are completely destroyed.
Although it may come over as somewhat unreal, your mother's deepest, true battles with her own mental health issues came to avail themselves through her treatment of you when you were just thirteen years old.
Perhaps over the years, your mother's own mental health problems were a part of her life and she would have been aware of her own inner conflicts, yet when you were thirteen, she looked at you and seriously became fully awakened to what was happening to her.
Looking at her own life unfolding to realise how chaotic it had become, your mother saw the daughter in her life developing into a teenager and the possibilities of becoming a young woman in her own right and preparing to lead her own life.
That could have been a turning point for your mother, following on with the inspiration to either start, or enhance her mis-treatment of you and your body.
In a similar way, you could compare your mother's treatment of you as a form of projecting her own self-harming desires by inflicting them upon you. Although you admit to having a history of self-harm yourself, it may need to be borne in mind that your mother's infliction of harm upon you was about her own aggressive, pent up frustrations being inflicted on you.
Perhaps your mother used your own self-harming background as a form of justification for own inflictions upon you by telling you to harm your thighs as if to say...."Well. You've already been doing this for a long time, so here's another way of doing it".....
The real, underlying reason was perhaps more for her benefit than your's.
Encouraging the self-harming on your thighs was her way of inflicting pain upon you to relieve her own intense pain and guilt.
She also could have used this tactic to suppres your confidence and control/manipulate you.
Perhaps in a strange, twisted way of helping you to cope with the sex work she bestowed upon you, your mother thought it would truly be of help.
When you were only thirteen years old, your own mother forced (for no other word) you to perform sex work.
Presumably, this was to help provide the financial means for the drugs she so depended on.
Of course it goes without saying, the need to put some food on the table and pay the rent/mortgage and bills.
All very challenging for someone with a drug habit to keep fuelling.
Surely. Deep down inside, your mother must have harboured some guilt at having to resort to the desperate act of allowing her teenage daughter to perform sexual acts for money.
Maybe your mother could have had that spark of humanity to feel resentment of herself.....
Even if that resentment and anger could only be converted and expressed through berating your body.
The fixing of your body was perhaps your mother's way of trying to put to right her own wrongs through you.
Admittedly, your mother would have been so stressed through her desperate need for cash, therefore constantly berating your body as if she was stressed out manager trying to complete a project before the deadline date.
You were a source of income for your very desperate mother who's troubled mind was consumed by the thought and craving for more drugs.
The harder the drugs, the bigger the need and the more expensive to accommodate such a powerful habit.
Many parents utilise their child's potential abilities as a vehicle to convey their repressed and often forgotten dreams of long ago.
This is something that is seen and experienced every day and is a fully visible and acceptable part of our society.
Of course, it goes without saying that there are some who go to great extremes.
Yet there is something of a hidden paradox to this behaviour that goes unseen and unnoticed by us all.
The parents (such as your mother) who still had those aspirations from what may seem a long time ago and in totally a different life.
Even if that past life was a quagmire of eternal, desperate crap..... Those young dreams were there.
Tragically, in a later stage of life, there's a child who shows some potential to break free from the binding chains of a life that will only involve drugs, violence and illegal sex....Whatever other realms of depravity there may be for their child.
Yet there are parents who can't accept the possibility of their child ever coming close to living a life they never had, let alone living their long lost dreams.
In a world wide system of hidden abuse and suffering that goes unseen behind closed doors and overlooked by a bureaucracy that can't deal with the overload of tragic cases, many children are (and will more so in future) continue to suffer.
Your mother's physical abuse towards and upon you were perhaps not just borne of her frustration at not getting the things she wanted like accommodation.
The frustration was directed at you because she needed someone to blame for her failings in life.
Seeing you move forward so as to lead you own life will have caused her to seriously evaluate her own....Leading to furthermore feelings of her own anger and bitterness without you being there to blame.
Giving you meth and weed to cope with what you had to do in order to support your mother was certainly irresponsible on her part, yet there is the issue from your mother's point of view of knowing what to really do. It's a tragic scenario where the desperate, drug addicted mother who relies upon her very vulnerable young daughter to help her to survive a situation they just can't break away from.
At the same time, you were both on a journey to a very dark place with regard to your mental health and without the appropriate help and support you both desperately needed, the situation was spiralling even deeper.
Your mother contacted your real father - perhaps out of her own desperate need for food and subsequently 'offered' you as a form of 'exchange'.
From what you have written, this 'exchange' was of a sexual nature for the benefit of your father whom had a tendency towards getting intimate with children. It is a tragic situation that seems to evade the so called 'stereotype' created by our society of someone who sexually abuses children.
Perhaps people are not always willing nor ready to accept that a person who sexually abuses children in such a way can also be parents themselves and this can only encourage this behaviour further, whilst the children suffer in silence.
You had to fight your father in order to prevent him inflicting any sexual harm upon you.
Another man who was living with your mother (and other people) assaulted you for two months and it involved the cutting and burning of your skin, for which he must have gained much gratification from doing so.
Athough you say he cut and burned you 'in exchange for not hurting your mother, it was more than likely he used a form of manipulation to coerce you mother into letting him do this to you.
Being honest, it could be said your mother would have been in a state of incomprehension at what was going on around her at times, include her selfishness, niavety and desperation in the mix as well...
Sadly. This man may have convinced both you and your mother to believe that by hurting you, you'll be helping your mother out in a very gracious way by taking the pain away from her (and remember that you were an abused child and could be convinced to believe many lies).
At the same time, he could have convinced your mother (through a form of emotional blackmail) that by allowing him to hurt you, she'll not come to any harm herself. In your mother's desperate situation, she would could have very easily given in to any suggestions.
This man wanted to hurt a child long before you and your mother came to his attention and there was some justification in his mind for doing such an atrocious act.
Yet this man was merely a coward like many others who do the same thing and there are likely to be many more of these sick, evil characters hiding 'in plain sight' rather than in the darkness of our everyday lives.
Hurting you was his way of satisfying himself without having what he would consider the challenge of trying to hurt an adult in the same way. The anger you must harbour towards your mother must cut very deeply because it was her who allowed this man to continue his violation of your body and eventually he sexually abused you.
You say that you'd do it all again for her and that may be your way of seriously hoping and believing this would encourage your mother to love and respect you. Even if it all happened again, there's a high chance that your mother would let it all happen to again unless she really wants to change.
It's only fair to point out to anyone reading your post on here that what you are writing about will touch many readers because this is something happening that really goes unnoticed.
Your mother's addiction cost her and her family very dearly....In the end, you all became homeless for a lengthy period of time as a result. It's such a tragic waste of lives and this devastation can't seem to be avoided because once that dark hole swallows anyone, there just seems to be no way out.
People often say there is a way forward but like many aspects of life, it's all easier said than done.
Who do you blame? The addicts? The 'system'? How can people get the help they really need?
Much of what you have experienced in your young life can now be privately considered an ongoing, societal epidemic for which there doesn't seem to be any resolve due to lack of funding, over-burdened professionals with very high 'case-loads' to handle and no time or facilities to deal with it all.
It was when you came under the full care of your grandparents that both you and your brother started to benefit from school and a more secure, stable home life.
Your mother immediately neglected your brother when he was born, yet it wouldn't have been much of surprise because by then she was injecting and was at an advanced stage in her drug addiction. At the same time, she would have possibly felt just too overwhelmed with having to worry about his drug addicted father, her own problems and you to care for.
Sadly, your mother wasn't ready for it all....
You want what is best for your young brother and certainly want him to have a different life to what you both had to endure with your mother.
Unfortunately, you are in the grips of financial restraint and that must make life very difficult for you.
Sadly. This is another all too common problem occurring everywhere in the world today and that being insufficient provision for care due to lack of government funding and it being the responsibility for family to deal with.
If you have some money saved, then you will be penalised by the public system for saving your hard earned cash and will not receive any public help towards and costs in order to support any care needs.
As well as your brother to care for, there may also be some ongoing concern for your grandfather as well because losing his lifelong partner (your grandmother) to Covid-19 may take a toll on his own physical and mental wellbeing.
Although determined to make a go of this new life, it's imperative you look after yourself in the process.
Working two jobs must be hard work for you and needs a lot of inner motivation.
With regard to the work, keep thinking of the money you'll get at the end of the month and how the jobs are helping you to strive forward towards a better life for you all.
It's a tragically heartbreaking situation for the family when you ended up finding your mother in a drug overdosed state and lying next to your brother.
Perhaps this was her way of desperately trying to claw her way towards getting help.
She went to hospital and came back home.
However....What could you have done?...Other than chase her away and throw her out of the house....It's more than understandable in a situation like that.
The sad thing about all of this...What help is your mother receiving?
She's being admitted as an emergency patient but there's sadly only so much an overstretched emergency ward can do.
That is to help the patient physically recover as quickly as possible, then send them back out into the world.
There are so many lost souls whom have been through this situation and nothing seems to be able them because their troubles have just cut so deep into their hearts.
It must have been very hard for you to have found all those needles lying around the house and it's not just about the danger of having needles crop up here, there and everywhere because it goes on to your own issues with addiction as well.
It's a great achievement to have kept yourself clean from the self-harming and meth for so long now and that's possibly through not only your own determination but also the effects of witnessing and experiencing the tragic events surrounding your mother's life and her issues.
You've attended counselling/therapy and worked with several different therapists, taken medications and admitted yourself to hospital for diagnosis in order to 'fix yourself'....Yet you can't move on.
It's possible that you can't move forward because of all the past trauma you've experienced in your young life has been about you not only suffering yourself, but having to deal with the guilt associated with the responsibilities of looking after the family.
When your mother lived with you and treated you the way she did, it wasn't just about her inflicting the pain upon you to relieve her own ferocious, bullying needs. Her bullying and manipulation was designed to absolve her of the guilt she felt about herself and pass those weighty feelings of guilt upon you.
Over time, you've harboured the guilt of witnessing your mother's deterioration through the drugs because she somehow conveyed a message that it was at least partly your fault that she was in her situation.
There'd be some guilt laid upon your shoulders with regard to not having a place to live and being so poor because it's always associated with trying to look after, feed and cloth the children.
As the older sibling, you ended up looking after your brother and although that was what you seriously wanted to do, the responsibility involved could have created further feelings of guilt because anything that went wrong in your brothers life (whether at home or school), you will have felt responsible and harboured guilty feelings because of wondering if you could have done different to help him.
Then there's your grandparents taking on the responsibility of being your main care givers and finally your grandmother passing away....
It's like a chain of events that have been channelled from your mother and through the whole family, yet the full energy of emotional conflict and turmoil came directly as a result of your mother's actions and behaviour.
Sadly, the after-effects of your mother's lifelong actions (perhaps call it the 'fall-out') have not just effected the whole family but have placed a massive burden of guilt upon your young shoulders.
Your mother's addiction to drugs and whatever else....Her lifestyle....Her choosing motherhood....
You can't move on because there's always that overhanging burden on your own life that was caused by your mother and in many ways, you've perhaps never had the opportunity to express yourself and your feelings about how she treated you.
Being too young for a start, combined with being inexperienced and even when you had any chance of some redress, your mother was sadly 'out the loop' due to her drug addiction and fighting her own inner demons.
Ideally, you need to get control of how much weed you smoke because it could become a serious (and expensive) addiction in itself and there's the other issues associated with the weed could have a profound negative effect on your mental health.
As for the medication having to be stopped because of your seizures, it may be a good time to seek further medical advise with regard to using an alternative form of medication.
Perhaps the next steps for you to work on will firstly be to work on the counselling/therapy side of things so as to focus on the core issues with regard to your feelings about your mother and how she treated you.
It's perhaps about finding a direction towards your goal in therapy and that goal is to find inner peace through forgiveness of your mother.
Everything your mother was and what you saw and perceived of her was agreeably a massive element of who she was.
Deep underneath your mother's drug fuelled, naive, cruel and neglectful behaviour was possibly just a spark of a clever, manipulative agenda.
That was to create and maintain those feelings you now have today.
The feelings you harbour about your mother today will stand to benefit her in future, should she choose to want a bigger role in your life and will also possibly come back to you for the sake needing any help herself.
It's perhaps finding a balance between working towards moving forward yourself (by working with the therapist) and at the same time finding some forgiveness in your heart for your mother and her behaviour in the past.
She is your mother after all and there's a part of you that still wants her to in your life. However. Just 'forgiving and forgetting' will never be enough and she really needs to understand that....Your never going to forget how she treated you....
You miss your mother so much because she never really allowed you to grow up in the sense of becoming a nurtured adult who went on to live a full, independent life as such.
Your mother treated you badly and the way you grew up and matured was in a sense, all too very quickly.... Yet on the other hand, you were still only a child and all the responsibility you bore from the guilt that was burdened upon you, hence prevented you from growing up independently and discovering life as many young adults would.
For you now....It's about moving yourself forward and continuing the good work you've done for yourself and the help you've provided for your young brother.
It depends how you want to look at things. It can be more than agreed that your mother ruined your life....But at the same time she inadvertantly helped to shape the young, strong-willed adult you are today.
There's not much more you can do but otherwise continue with your own life and look after yourself.
You've done more than enough with regard to taking care of your brother and it's time for you to keep fighting forward.
By all means keep in contact with your mother but there needs to some boundaries in order to prevent a 'reversion' to past behaviour on her part.
Although you are both a little older, there's still the risk of 'falling back' under her spell.
Forgiveness will take time and healing....
Moving on and continuing with your life will help to overcome and repair the life your mother had ruined....
Her attempts to destroy you, made you even stronger than ever before.





Paul.....

 

[hazygarageparty873]

It's a very sad story you've written about your mother and the if the truth be known, this is sadly happening all the time and demonstrates how many families out there are in desperate need of help.
Your mother was already battling addiction when you were born and from what you have written, your grandparents played a major role towards your caregiving needs.
Leaving you in the porches of houses belonging to complete strangers was irresponsible of your mother and yet it could only be assumed that when she did this to you, your mother was perhaps not even thinking straight because of her addiction.
Unfortunately for you, your mother will not have fully appreciated the long term effects that would have been caused by her abandoning you in these porch doorways. Because every time you were left in those porches, it silently conveyed a message to you that you weren't wanted and were then perhaps wondering why your grandparents had to pick you up.
Sadly, there's a chance you may have sensed the dismay on your grandparents faces every time you were collected from these doorways and could have even reaffirmed your own feelings of being unwelcome or not wanted in the family home.
Already at that early stage in your life, the journey to your own battles was beginning to take a hold because what often happens to children who are left in the company of other people all the time is they develop a sense of not being wanted.
It can be bad enough when the child is cared for by family friends and relatives and are present in conversations between the adults of who should take turns and on what days....There's a feeling within the child that says...."I'm not wanted here"....Even if nobody tells the child and even if the child doesn't really quite understand that inner feeling.
Putting things more simply....Being left in strangers porches conveyed a strong, symbolic message to you that you were not welcome. Even if you didn't feel aware of that underlying, invisible message.
Although you were only eight years old, the divorce of your mother and stepfather will have had a significant impact on you and there's the chance you would have experienced more situations where you may have secretly felt being on the sidelines again.
Sadly. The children always have and always will be deeply affected by the relationship break-ups of their parents and partners, yet neither parents nor the children may grasp the full impact of how it can change and affect everyone in later life.
When you were ten years old, your mother gave birth to your baby brother, which - as for many children whom go through the experience of a new arrival when they are older - may have immediately left you having to stand aside as your mother cared (or attempted to care) for your young, baby brother.
Even though she neglected your baby brother...Her intentions way well have been good at the time.
To make things more complicated, emotionally challenging and difficult for a ten year old, your mother's new partner was dealing with an addiction that was embedded far deeper than that of your mother's challenges with addiction.
Your mother started injecting after meeting her new partner (your brother's father) and there's not much that can be said with regards to her following in his footsteps with regard to moving on to more intense drug mis-use by injecting the heroin and other drugs.
The allure of her new partner will have been enough for your already vulnerable and impressionable mother to not see past what he was doing to himself - only to try some of these more intense drugs herself and very quickly become dependent.
The drugs will have been a very central part of their relationship and your very real and sad story only truly reflects a reality that is very much part of many families lives.
The drugs take a dominant role so powerful that their grip on the people is a clasp that cannot just be simply released, as many onlookers may wonder why people can't just quit taking the drugs in the first place before their lives are completely destroyed.
Although it may come over as somewhat unreal, your mother's deepest, true battles with her own mental health issues came to avail themselves through her treatment of you when you were just thirteen years old.
Perhaps over the years, your mother's own mental health problems were a part of her life and she would have been aware of her own inner conflicts, yet when you were thirteen, she looked at you and seriously became fully awakened to what was happening to her.
Looking at her own life unfolding to realise how chaotic it had become, your mother saw the daughter in her life developing into a teenager and the possibilities of becoming a young woman in her own right and preparing to lead her own life.
That could have been a turning point for your mother, following on with the inspiration to either start, or enhance her mis-treatment of you and your body.
In a similar way, you could compare your mother's treatment of you as a form of projecting her own self-harming desires by inflicting them upon you. Although you admit to having a history of self-harm yourself, it may need to be borne in mind that your mother's infliction of harm upon you was about her own aggressive, pent up frustrations being inflicted on you.
Perhaps your mother used your own self-harming background as a form of justification for own inflictions upon you by telling you to harm your thighs as if to say...."Well. You've already been doing this for a long time, so here's another way of doing it".....
The real, underlying reason was perhaps more for her benefit than your's.
Encouraging the self-harming on your thighs was her way of inflicting pain upon you to relieve her own intense pain and guilt.
She also could have used this tactic to suppres your confidence and control/manipulate you.
Perhaps in a strange, twisted way of helping you to cope with the sex work she bestowed upon you, your mother thought it would truly be of help.
When you were only thirteen years old, your own mother forced (for no other word) you to perform sex work.
Presumably, this was to help provide the financial means for the drugs she so depended on.
Of course it goes without saying, the need to put some food on the table and pay the rent/mortgage and bills.
All very challenging for someone with a drug habit to keep fuelling.
Surely. Deep down inside, your mother must have harboured some guilt at having to resort to the desperate act of allowing her teenage daughter to perform sexual acts for money.
Maybe your mother could have had that spark of humanity to feel resentment of herself.....
Even if that resentment and anger could only be converted and expressed through berating your body.
The fixing of your body was perhaps your mother's way of trying to put to right her own wrongs through you.
Admittedly, your mother would have been so stressed through her desperate need for cash, therefore constantly berating your body as if she was stressed out manager trying to complete a project before the deadline date.
You were a source of income for your very desperate mother who's troubled mind was consumed by the thought and craving for more drugs.
The harder the drugs, the bigger the need and the more expensive to accommodate such a powerful habit.
Many parents utilise their child's potential abilities as a vehicle to convey their repressed and often forgotten dreams of long ago.
This is something that is seen and experienced every day and is a fully visible and acceptable part of our society.
Of course, it goes without saying that there are some who go to great extremes.
Yet there is something of a hidden paradox to this behaviour that goes unseen and unnoticed by us all.
The parents (such as your mother) who still had those aspirations from what may seem a long time ago and in totally a different life.
Even if that past life was a quagmire of eternal, desperate crap..... Those young dreams were there.
Tragically, in a later stage of life, there's a child who shows some potential to break free from the binding chains of a life that will only involve drugs, violence and illegal sex....Whatever other realms of depravity there may be for their child.
Yet there are parents who can't accept the possibility of their child ever coming close to living a life they never had, let alone living their long lost dreams.
In a world wide system of hidden abuse and suffering that goes unseen behind closed doors and overlooked by a bureaucracy that can't deal with the overload of tragic cases, many children are (and will more so in future) continue to suffer.
Your mother's physical abuse towards and upon you were perhaps not just borne of her frustration at not getting the things she wanted like accommodation.
The frustration was directed at you because she needed someone to blame for her failings in life.
Seeing you move forward so as to lead you own life will have caused her to seriously evaluate her own....Leading to furthermore feelings of her own anger and bitterness without you being there to blame.
Giving you meth and weed to cope with what you had to do in order to support your mother was certainly irresponsible on her part, yet there is the issue from your mother's point of view of knowing what to really do. It's a tragic scenario where the desperate, drug addicted mother who relies upon her very vulnerable young daughter to help her to survive a situation they just can't break away from.
At the same time, you were both on a journey to a very dark place with regard to your mental health and without the appropriate help and support you both desperately needed, the situation was spiralling even deeper.
Your mother contacted your real father - perhaps out of her own desperate need for food and subsequently 'offered' you as a form of 'exchange'.
From what you have written, this 'exchange' was of a sexual nature for the benefit of your father whom had a tendency towards getting intimate with children. It is a tragic situation that seems to evade the so called 'stereotype' created by our society of someone who sexually abuses children.
Perhaps people are not always willing nor ready to accept that a person who sexually abuses children in such a way can also be parents themselves and this can only encourage this behaviour further, whilst the children suffer in silence.
You had to fight your father in order to prevent him inflicting any sexual harm upon you.
Another man who was living with your mother (and other people) assaulted you for two months and it involved the cutting and burning of your skin, for which he must have gained much gratification from doing so.
Athough you say he cut and burned you 'in exchange for not hurting your mother, it was more than likely he used a form of manipulation to coerce you mother into letting him do this to you.
Being honest, it could be said your mother would have been in a state of incomprehension at what was going on around her at times, include her selfishness, niavety and desperation in the mix as well...
Sadly. This man may have convinced both you and your mother to believe that by hurting you, you'll be helping your mother out in a very gracious way by taking the pain away from her (and remember that you were an abused child and could be convinced to believe many lies).
At the same time, he could have convinced your mother (through a form of emotional blackmail) that by allowing him to hurt you, she'll not come to any harm herself. In your mother's desperate situation, she would could have very easily given in to any suggestions.
This man wanted to hurt a child long before you and your mother came to his attention and there was some justification in his mind for doing such an atrocious act.
Yet this man was merely a coward like many others who do the same thing and there are likely to be many more of these sick, evil characters hiding 'in plain sight' rather than in the darkness of our everyday lives.
Hurting you was his way of satisfying himself without having what he would consider the challenge of trying to hurt an adult in the same way. The anger you must harbour towards your mother must cut very deeply because it was her who allowed this man to continue his violation of your body and eventually he sexually abused you.
You say that you'd do it all again for her and that may be your way of seriously hoping and believing this would encourage your mother to love and respect you. Even if it all happened again, there's a high chance that your mother would let it all happen to again unless she really wants to change.
It's only fair to point out to anyone reading your post on here that what you are writing about will touch many readers because this is something happening that really goes unnoticed.
Your mother's addiction cost her and her family very dearly....In the end, you all became homeless for a lengthy period of time as a result. It's such a tragic waste of lives and this devastation can't seem to be avoided because once that dark hole swallows anyone, there just seems to be no way out.
People often say there is a way forward but like many aspects of life, it's all easier said than done.
Who do you blame? The addicts? The 'system'? How can people get the help they really need?
Much of what you have experienced in your young life can now be privately considered an ongoing, societal epidemic for which there doesn't seem to be any resolve due to lack of funding, over-burdened professionals with very high 'case-loads' to handle and no time or facilities to deal with it all.
It was when you came under the full care of your grandparents that both you and your brother started to benefit from school and a more secure, stable home life.
Your mother immediately neglected your brother when he was born, yet it wouldn't have been much of surprise because by then she was injecting and was at an advanced stage in her drug addiction. At the same time, she would have possibly felt just too overwhelmed with having to worry about his drug addicted father, her own problems and you to care for.
Sadly, your mother wasn't ready for it all....
You want what is best for your young brother and certainly want him to have a different life to what you both had to endure with your mother.
Unfortunately, you are in the grips of financial restraint and that must make life very difficult for you.
Sadly. This is another all too common problem occurring everywhere in the world today and that being insufficient provision for care due to lack of government funding and it being the responsibility for family to deal with.
If you have some money saved, then you will be penalised by the public system for saving your hard earned cash and will not receive any public help towards and costs in order to support any care needs.
As well as your brother to care for, there may also be some ongoing concern for your grandfather as well because losing his lifelong partner (your grandmother) to Covid-19 may take a toll on his own physical and mental wellbeing.
Although determined to make a go of this new life, it's imperative you look after yourself in the process.
Working two jobs must be hard work for you and needs a lot of inner motivation.
With regard to the work, keep thinking of the money you'll get at the end of the month and how the jobs are helping you to strive forward towards a better life for you all.
It's a tragically heartbreaking situation for the family when you ended up finding your mother in a drug overdosed state and lying next to your brother.
Perhaps this was her way of desperately trying to claw her way towards getting help.
She went to hospital and came back home.
However....What could you have done?...Other than chase her away and throw her out of the house....It's more than understandable in a situation like that.
The sad thing about all of this...What help is your mother receiving?
She's being admitted as an emergency patient but there's sadly only so much an overstretched emergency ward can do.
That is to help the patient physically recover as quickly as possible, then send them back out into the world.
There are so many lost souls whom have been through this situation and nothing seems to be able them because their troubles have just cut so deep into their hearts.
It must have been very hard for you to have found all those needles lying around the house and it's not just about the danger of having needles crop up here, there and everywhere because it goes on to your own issues with addiction as well.
It's a great achievement to have kept yourself clean from the self-harming and meth for so long now and that's possibly through not only your own determination but also the effects of witnessing and experiencing the tragic events surrounding your mother's life and her issues.
You've attended counselling/therapy and worked with several different therapists, taken medications and admitted yourself to hospital for diagnosis in order to 'fix yourself'....Yet you can't move on.
It's possible that you can't move forward because of all the past trauma you've experienced in your young life has been about you not only suffering yourself, but having to deal with the guilt associated with the responsibilities of looking after the family.
When your mother lived with you and treated you the way she did, it wasn't just about her inflicting the pain upon you to relieve her own ferocious, bullying needs. Her bullying and manipulation was designed to absolve her of the guilt she felt about herself and pass those weighty feelings of guilt upon you.
Over time, you've harboured the guilt of witnessing your mother's deterioration through the drugs because she somehow conveyed a message that it was at least partly your fault that she was in her situation.
There'd be some guilt laid upon your shoulders with regard to not having a place to live and being so poor because it's always associated with trying to look after, feed and cloth the children.
As the older sibling, you ended up looking after your brother and although that was what you seriously wanted to do, the responsibility involved could have created further feelings of guilt because anything that went wrong in your brothers life (whether at home or school), you will have felt responsible and harboured guilty feelings because of wondering if you could have done different to help him.
Then there's your grandparents taking on the responsibility of being your main care givers and finally your grandmother passing away....
It's like a chain of events that have been channelled from your mother and through the whole family, yet the full energy of emotional conflict and turmoil came directly as a result of your mother's actions and behaviour.
Sadly, the after-effects of your mother's lifelong actions (perhaps call it the 'fall-out') have not just effected the whole family but have placed a massive burden of guilt upon your young shoulders.
Your mother's addiction to drugs and whatever else....Her lifestyle....Her choosing motherhood....
You can't move on because there's always that overhanging burden on your own life that was caused by your mother and in many ways, you've perhaps never had the opportunity to express yourself and your feelings about how she treated you.
Being too young for a start, combined with being inexperienced and even when you had any chance of some redress, your mother was sadly 'out the loop' due to her drug addiction and fighting her own inner demons.
Ideally, you need to get control of how much weed you smoke because it could become a serious (and expensive) addiction in itself and there's the other issues associated with the weed could have a profound negative effect on your mental health.
As for the medication having to be stopped because of your seizures, it may be a good time to seek further medical advise with regard to using an alternative form of medication.
Perhaps the next steps for you to work on will firstly be to work on the counselling/therapy side of things so as to focus on the core issues with regard to your feelings about your mother and how she treated you.
It's perhaps about finding a direction towards your goal in therapy and that goal is to find inner peace through forgiveness of your mother.
Everything your mother was and what you saw and perceived of her was agreeably a massive element of who she was.
Deep underneath your mother's drug fuelled, naive, cruel and neglectful behaviour was possibly just a spark of a clever, manipulative agenda.
That was to create and maintain those feelings you now have today.
The feelings you harbour about your mother today will stand to benefit her in future, should she choose to want a bigger role in your life and will also possibly come back to you for the sake needing any help herself.
It's perhaps finding a balance between working towards moving forward yourself (by working with the therapist) and at the same time finding some forgiveness in your heart for your mother and her behaviour in the past.
She is your mother after all and there's a part of you that still wants her to in your life. However. Just 'forgiving and forgetting' will never be enough and she really needs to understand that....Your never going to forget how she treated you....
You miss your mother so much because she never really allowed you to grow up in the sense of becoming a nurtured adult who went on to live a full, independent life as such.
Your mother treated you badly and the way you grew up and matured was in a sense, all too very quickly.... Yet on the other hand, you were still only a child and all the responsibility you bore from the guilt that was burdened upon you, hence prevented you from growing up independently and discovering life as many young adults would.
For you now....It's about moving yourself forward and continuing the good work you've done for yourself and the help you've provided for your young brother.
It depends how you want to look at things. It can be more than agreed that your mother ruined your life....But at the same time she inadvertantly helped to shape the young, strong-willed adult you are today.
There's not much more you can do but otherwise continue with your own life and look after yourself.
You've done more than enough with regard to taking care of your brother and it's time for you to keep fighting forward.
By all means keep in contact with your mother but there needs to some boundaries in order to prevent a 'reversion' to past behaviour on her part.
Although you are both a little older, there's still the risk of 'falling back' under her spell.
Forgiveness will take time and healing....
Moving on and continuing with your life will help to overcome and repair the life your mother had ruined....
Her attempts to destroy you, made you even stronger than ever before.





Paul.....

thank you so much. this helped my muddled thoughts greatly! my mother and i are currently no contact since she relapsed heavily and lied for months. i have admitted her to every rehab in the state and upper state that would take her, some multiple times. i am far done with that, and so far yes, i am saving money. it’s just a bit hard since im helping pay rent and food stamps doesn’t cover much unfortunately. my brother is autistic so we do get a small amount monthly but in the wayward of savings, i have 400 saved. it was 800 but whittled down after a costly sickness swept the house. my grandfather is 72 so sickness doesn’t fair well; he is also a heavy drinker so the alcohol doesn’t help his health much either haha. i am getting a new therapist and looking into meds soon, so here’s to hoping to find a medicine that works!!

 

[Beth W.]

Fear paired with imagination? Is crippling.

There was a reeeeally interesting study done a little while back about how the US’s tech capabilities are a far better deterrent against terrorists/smugglers/etc. than the actualities. IE because they CAN do XYZ, they DON’T actually have to do them. Almost ever. The fear of the possibility is enough to completely change behaviour patterns… into far, far, far more easy to f*ck up realities.

Not spinning out 10 zillion possibilities -all bad- as fear+imagination melts your hard drive? Ain’t cliche. It’s useful as hell. Imagine life WITHOUT all that time/energy wasted. Worth it.

This is a really cool and thought-provoking response! And also love that you used a real life study to support your point! Spot on. I definitely will be chewing on some of your points and applying them to my own life :) Thanks for sharing