There was a time when my heart was completely open to her, and I thought hers was completely open to me. But sadly, I was duped. I still love her, don't get me wrong. I would still be there for her in a pinch. But there is one little thing that has changed: I am no longer the Golden Child.
Several years ago, before I found out about Mom being a Borderline, sometimes it was all Sis and I could do to combat mother's crazy times by bonding together. We swore we would stand strong in the face of her rages, and her attempts to manipulate and divide us.
We even took a trip together WITH Mom, it was arranged by Sis. I knew it was going to be a nightmare, but I went with them to support my sister, through thick and thin. Whenever Mom started losing it on the trip, we joined hands (and power rings) and called her on her acting out. She made the trip as miserable as she could. Sis and I made the best of it.
After we got home, Mom would not let the experience die. She wanted to blame me, Sis, anyone but herself for her misery and the fights she found herself in. She accused us of "ganging up" on her. Actually, we tried to make everything as easy as possible on her. We simply superseded her non-sensical attempts to control the trip (a cripple, who never travels, is going to think she can dictate the hows and whys of cross continental travel, through 2 countries? No freaking way!).
Now, as typical with Borderlines, Mom thinks everything she does is reasonable while everyone else is out of control. She swears she isn't mad at me, & that the *real* reason why we don't talk is because I am mad at her. She kept up this charade to friends and family even while I was trying to maintain open communication with her by calling her weekly and inviting her to my home for coffee, dinners, etc. Most of which she refused, or showed up only to abruptly leave. Those phone calls often degraded into her raging at me, so I politely ended the conversation. This went on for over a year, it was very, very stressful. I can imagine very little worse than talking to your parent with nothing but anger and hate coming back at you. Multiply that single episode over more than a year of weekly conversations.
At holiday time a few years ago, I simply could not take any more of her abuse, and politely refused to get together with her over the holidays. If I was on her shit list before, this action now put me on the blacklist! Since then, Mother has been whispering in Sis's ear. Sadly, Sis has allowed the poison into her heart.
Sis now enjoys a pleasant relationship as Mother's right hand. Though Sis wants to say nothing has changed between her and I, that is a bald faced lie. Not only has Sis repeated things to Mom that I told her in confidence (and had nothing to do with Mom), but she has taken Mom's side out of nowhere and accused me of transgressions manufactured in Mom's mind.
We tried to clear the air a year ago, but in the end we decided to agree to disagree.
Sis is very uncomfortable with my focus on Borderline and Narcissitic Personality Disorder. She wishes I would stop talking about it, reading about it. She says she "doesn't want to label" anyone. When I finally got her to read Understanding the Borderline Mother, she conceded that she saw our mother in the book. But that is as far as she will go. She is terrified that I will confront Mother about her disorder (fat lot of good that would do). She simply wants me to stop talking about it.
So to sum it up:
1) I have to be careful what I say to Sis, because she thinks it perfectly ok to pass on my news to Mom
2) I can't talk to Sis about being estranged from Mom & Dad, because she is choosing to forget the circumstances that created the rift and now believes Mom's crazy town revised version.
3) A big part of my growth is what I am learning about BPD and the sharing I am doing with other grown children from BPD/NPD support networks. I can share no part of this with Sis without some negative comment from her (or silence, or 'the look')
So in many ways she has taken our open, loving relationship and decimated it into a meaningless one.
Is it any wonder I don't want to spend more time with her? I can no longer be myself with her. I suppose part of me is sad, angry at the loss. But then another part of me rationalizes that it IS no real loss, since the imagined closeness was apparently never real. While she needed me to support her, I did, completely. I even put my own head on Mom's chopping block for her.
But when I asked her to support me the same way, she turned her back on me. That isn't love, that isn't support. It is using someone for your own gain and then reneging on your end of the relationship.
