One of the major lessons I learnt during my studies was that retelling a painful story over and over again is good. It takes the sting away with each retelling till it stops becoming something that happened to you, but just a ‘story.’ And so, I will tell till the pain is decreased.
Also, I’m hoping those who have condemned me unjustly will one day come across this and see the truth. (Don’t ask me how they’d find this blog,)
I shared in one of my YouTube videos that I was excited to get married. I was happy. And I deliberately chose April 27, Freedom Day, as I felt I was breaking free. Interestingly enough, a dear friend went to live with my parents and sister in 2020 and told me after a week, “Now I see why you wanted to escape.”🥹
After my wedding, my mother chastised me. I was apparently looking too happy at me wedding, as if they’d abused me. Never ever have I seen a happy bride and made it about her mother!🙄
One night, in June 2023, I thought back over my life. Why did my mother lie to my cousin and leave me vulnerable to her abuse? My cousin…In May 2022, I made the grave mistake of telling my cousin that with the inadequate care my mother was having under a relative supposedly living there to care but actually never there, my mother would lose her life earlier than she should. (A doctor had told me she was dying slowly.)
This cousin then asked me to hire a full time caregiver. She asked ME, an unemployed woman, to hire someone. Here’s the thing, this cousin KNEW I’d first hired my friend even though I myself didn’t have money for a helper for ME. And my poor friend lasted a whole six weeks before she had to leave.
There was too much abuse from all parties in the house.
I then hired a driver. My parents lived with an able bodied relative younger than I am. But still, we hired caregivers with OUR money while still providing grocery, toiletries and electricity for them every month since 2013. That person also quit due to abuse they were receiving. Also telling me that I was being abused-father expecting money from me while spending HIS money on the able bodied, employed relative living with them. And he-the driver-having to drive my father to the relatives WORKPLACE to ask why they’d stolen his social grant money. My father wept. Yet got angry with US, his non-thieving children, for referring to the habitual thief as a thief!🫣
Then we found them a three times a week cleaner and the poor lady quit because they weren’t paying her.
Under those circumstances, and the knowledge that my father wanted a slave, not an employee and given my medical costs were rising terribly, I refused when later in the week, cousin sent a message telling me I need to hire someone (again) despite my still feeding and providing electricity. (He even sat my friend down, telling her I was “poison” for allowing fat her a day off.)
I asked, “Why is it that my parents are suddenly my responsibility as if I went and chose them, finding them abandoned on the street. Why is it that though she has employed relatives, it’s all on ME, someone who is terribly ill all the time, having various co-payments for my tests and nobody asks if I can even afford what I’m already doing, let alone the extra stuff she is almost demanding?
I shouldn’t have dared voice my thoughts.
What followed was a diatribe I didn’t listen to. I sent her voice notes to others who knew her so they could hear the real person. One person wept. The other said I should swear at her, cuss back at her like she was cussing me. That there’s nothing wrong with adoption so for her to go on at me for having adopted was unChristian for this cousin who claimed she’s a Christian.
The first is something I’ve shared before. That I am lazy for not having paid employment. That my mother did various things for me so I owed her. (Black Tax!) worse yet, things she’d never done at all! Like paying for a flat for me and my BOYFRIEND to live in. You all know I’d never be living alone unmarried with a man!
She’s the one who said that because I went against her and my mother’s wishes about adopting, God cursed me and sent me the twins as punishment. Who said that I took my husband away to the mission field in Tanzania so he could also be unemployed like I was, supported by my mother. NOPE. I never viewed it that way, we both wanted to do mission work and my husband was doing remote work for his job. We never needed my mother’s money. Instead, we even regularly gave financial support to a newly widowed relative while out in the mission field.
What hurt was not only that I now knew for sure that she hated innocent babies finding parents, it was also the knowledge that my mother had lied about what she’d done for me. She did hate my life and who I was. But I didn’t know it would extend to lying about me in a negative manner and leaving me open to others abusing me. Your own daughter!??
I wept once after an appointment wishing I had a mother who loved me and would ask me how I am. The phone calls I used to get were asking for money. Now that will never happen. Instead I have the bitter knowledge that my mother lied to all and sundry about my life. Anything to make herself look good. Typical narc.
So, that night in June, I thought of my life compared to my other friends and their loving mothers who were great grannies to their children. How even my poor husband had tried to intervene. Had driven all the way to my parents to tell them they were hurting me and literally killing me (from stress which I was told to avoid big time for the sake of my stomach that gets inflamed.) See, as usual, we’d taken grocery etc to them and bought electricity. I had signing rights over my mother’s banking as the relative in the house seemed to be taking cellphones, bank cards, tithes, to live a life of’ fun’ while we fed her with never ever any gratitude. This employed relative sent a message the day after a surgery, asking me to buy something small. I told them I had just taken a whole lot of stuff to the house just a week before and they could surely rustle up the money to do what she wanted. They responded by telling me I am a fake Christian that doesn’t want to care for my parents. Make that make sense!
Husband went and told them they were abusing me. That I had had surgery the day before and I was no longer telling them when I had tests, operations as they never asked how I was, but only phoned me to abuse me. And he gave back the bank card which we’d topped up monthly so we could help. They responded with alleged sick and said that they’d call to apologise and admit their wrongs.
I’m still waiting for that call.
I wish you could feel the sense of betrayal and pain. This is a cousin much older than me, who I used to admire. I thought they loved me. I thought each message I sent telling them I’d be going silent as I was just about to have a procedure under anesthesia was seen. I thought they got me.
They then sent angry voice messages to my poor husband who was at work🤦🏾♀️ He too didn’t listen to them. He’s not a voice note person, I could have told her that.
So, my mother opened the door for others to abuse me. And THAT hurt a lot. That’s definitely not what society was saying mothers are for.
We go back to the night in June, 2023. I looked back over my life as a daughter. The childhood and adult insults. Strangers being told I’m a waste. And googled “Mother hates my body.” It took me to narcissistic mothers. “Your mother hates your body and here’s why…” I read site after site, identifying her as a narcissist. It finally came together. I’d yearned for my mother to be proud of me for being a law abiding relative giving her consistently my love through financial help since 2013. I thought she’d have boasted about us using our bonus to pay off three quarters of her debts when she retired. I hoped she’d one day appreciate my raising my children and educating them using a difficult curriculum like Cambridge.
But nope, narcs are only happy if you do things their way, and for THEM.
The next morning (after this random googling session and light bulb moment), I was told she had died. Do you believe we get communication or pre knowledge when our parents die? My husband did. He just suddenly stopped the blender and said, “My dad has just died.” He was correct. And so, I believe that that sudden late night search over characteristics of my mother was my premonition or warning. It was finally going to end. Never an apology, nothing. No telling me she loved me.
My mother’s relatives came. None said they were sorry for my loss. I’m not surprised and had even wanted not to go. It’s not like she’s seeing me. Ecclesiastes says the dead know nothing. Psalm says the grave holds sleeping bodies that do nothing… You see… Some December, I suddenly got a call and then audio notes from one of her nephews. In NATAL! Telling me I must go take care of her. I don’t know why they had my number. And you don’t order anyone around, let alone someone with her own family and problems.
See, the relative my parents defended when we called them out for stealing from my parents, has left them alone and one night my mother had fallen and this relative could not be found. (We’d had family meetings about their neglect of my parents. This relative is why I’d hired someone to do what they should do.) My mother slept on the floor and this random relative in Natal was more phoning me telling I must do something. With what back?? What strength? And.. WHY? They had their golden child living with them (What narcissist experts call the favorite relative *ahem*) and this golden child together with my parents, was telling all and sundry that she’s caring for them. While eating the food we were buying. So let that relative do the care work m! And more importantly, why phone me who lives far away? Phone the person they rely on, not the one they lie about.
When I told my friend who’d spent over a month with my parents, that my mother has died, her beautiful response was, “I’m sorry. You loved your mother though she didn’t love you back.” A different relative who knew the family dynamics asked, “did your mom ever apologise to you for the things she has told our family, did she make things right with God?” Those were the right responses. They’d seen it. I was abused and needed to receive an apology and God needed a repentant person, waiting for the resurrection.
No. She didn’t ever apologise.
So yes, I was scapegoated by these people so not a single soul greeted me. They climbed into funeral Mercs we’d paid for but never said a word to us. THAT was over. No more parental pain…
But I had two parents.
They said I should write a book 