Ah dear. 

Thursday, I went to stay at my mothers. I hadn't seen her since my super-fun trip away in January but all of our conversations since then have been..pleasant..sorta. For my part I ignore anything I perceive as a barb or a taunt and just steer the conversation on to happy things, and if she persists, I become busy and have to go. And that works well, when it's on the phone or facebook. I mean, I love my mother and she has been much nicer in recent years but she's also very difficult for me to understand most of the time and it seems as though she's only really nice when she is angry with my sister or my grandmother and wants me to side with her.

I have noticed that she's escalated a lot of stuff she used to do "sometimes" to "most of the time". Like fire non-stop questions that can't be answered or ask silly questions that aren't helpful but just designed to sting, and ask them over and over. Say for example, she will ask "so does Daughter's school need boxes, egg cartons etc for their art-room" and I'll say "no, they don't want any of that kind of stuff". She will say "Oh OK, that's a shame". Then a week later she will call and say "so I've been saving these boxes and egg-cartons, when are you coming to get them?" and I'll say "I'm not, I told you they don't want them" and she'll get angry because I have wasted her time and she has a bunch of junk to get rid of now that I can't be bothered travelling 8 hours to come and collect and take home on the train. It's just nonsense. That's just one example. It isn't a memory problem, mother is as sharp as a tack; it's very apparent that she's baiting me and the more time I spend thinking alanon thoughts and doing alanon things the more I recognise it as "not my business" and to be honest now that I can detach from it, it's a bit disturbing. It's a daily thing; she creates a situation, ignores what I say and then tries to tell me I asked her to do something or other, and I am realising that she always did this I just used to buy into it and try to JADE my way through each situation. And now I don't and I don't think she likes it very much at all.

Anyway last week I mentioned to her that I wanted to get my daughter an e-reader that was on sale for an amazing price and she asked "can I get it for her" and I said OK great. She said she was going to buy it and have it delivered and even called again to check the delivery time with me. Then she changed her mind and said she would save it to give to daughter when we visited. So when we arrived and sat down she asked (in front of daughter) "so, did you get here that ereader you were after?" and I said no, and she said "well that's a shame because it won't be on special any more, you've missed out". OK, whatever. Disappointing but whatever.   Then she says "so, I've made up the single bed for daughter, and you can blow up the blow up bed for yourself if you want". I was annoyed at this point and said "don't people generally give the proper bed to the adult and the blow up bed to the light-as-a-feather child who will probably enjoy sleeping on the blow up bed?" and she says "well no, I've made up the nice bed for my grand-daughter. You don't matter, you're just her mother". These sort of comments are becoming commonplace, like on daughter's birthday she opened a present and it was a super-ugly doll-thing (it was the weeping angel that sat next to the tardis cake for anyone that remembers) and the first thing she said was "Oh my goodness it looks like Melissa!". These "jokes" aren't even thinly veiled really, they're just kinda nasty and not really what you expect from your mother. Or a couple of years ago she invited us to stay at the holiday house and said "now we have a full house so there is a bed inside for daughter but no room for you. But I thought you could sleep outside in a deck-chair since the weather will be warm, won't that be fun?" She wasn't joking and kept repeating the offer. I declined and she kept calling and asking, "why won't you come? We've had an outside shower put in too and we thought you could be the first to use it!! Daughter will be so disappointed that you won't come". At the time I was so mortified at her suggestion that while the rest of the family stay indoors I can sleep and shower outside, it was so mean and ridiculous that I stopped talking to her for a long time until she started being nice again and I conveniently forgot. Hmm, what a familiar sounding pattern!! And yes, I am quite sure she wasn't joking.

Wow. Anyway it went on like this and I don't take any of it personally anymore but it bugs me nonetheless, mostly because daughter catches on to it and starts being rude to me too. And I remember, when i was a kid my grandmother was always angry that my mother wasn't very nice to me and would buy me things and look after me, and mother was very resentful. So maybe this is some kind of revenge? I don't know, but after a day of it I was angry with daughter for jumping on the bandwagon and being really quite unkind to me too- it's not in her usual character- and I am thinking, how very sad would it be to repeat the cycle? Mum did say to me, when my daughter was born, that she would be my daughter's "best friend" and "get back at my grandmother and I for ganging up on her" and I thought she was joking but now I'm starting to realise, maybe she really truly wasn't joking at all.

So anyway, I think at this point I have to abandon the fantasy that my mother loves me deep down and just says "odd things" sometimes or "gets in moods'. I think as I get better, she is going to push harder and be more hurtful and it's no secret that she drinks a lot more now than she ever did before and that's not going to improve things in the slightest. So it's time to be real about it because if I want to be better I can't continually and willingly subject myself to this kind of abuse and turn the other cheek and pretend it didn't happen because that's the pattern I have been stuck in..well forever really.

I do know that I am surrounded by people who are unkind or downright abusive and that isn't some sort of terrible accident; the common denominator is ME and it HAS to come down to me inviting and encouraging it, maybe not with my mother but in my choice of men and friends, my response to ill-intentioned people like crazy neighbours or my ex-husband and his wife and my general unwillingness or inability to stand up to people when they are rude or nasty or unfair. I don't believe I imagine or exaggerate it although I question myself a lot because it seems like there are an awful lot of people "victimising" me, doesn't it? Like something doesn't add up and maybe I'm just nuts and paranoid and misread everything. I'm so sure I don't but I have to be playing a role in it.

I feel I am a lot better in myself- I like me, I feel like a worthy human being most of the time, I can walk away from unpleasant situations and people now AND I am better at attracting and recognising healthy people that I WANT to have in my circle of friends but still have no clue how to actually stand up for myself or tell people "that I won't accept their behaviour. Do I need to? Or is it enough to just detach and avoid toxic people? Confrontation just makes me feel ill and even thinking about it makes my head go down and my shoulders slump. Is it necessary? I'm feeling quite weary of it right about now. Is anyone else a big wuss like me?