Hello mother,
Where do I start but to say we’ve missed out on so much together. We could’ve and should’ve had so much more between us as mother and daughter. I look around and see so many beautiful relationships that could’ve been ours. I’ve spent years crying over the mother I wanted to have.
I yearned to have someone that I could relate to and share my innermost feelings without fear of judgement. Instead you made me feel I had no right to those feelings and I was wrong to feel them. I was always flawed in your eyes and never entitled to be me.
I wanted so badly a mother that would embrace me fully the way I was and build me up instead of tearing me down. I grew up doubting myself and still do to this day. I never felt good enough in your eyes and still struggle with this in the eyes of others.
I believed everything you told me and this formed my view of other people and the world around me but it was your world through the eyes of a narcissist.
Yes, narcissist. I’ve never told you that you are a narcissist have I? I’ve learned so much over the last few years and you have a disorder called narcissism.
Before you start denying it and shutting me down please hear me out. You had a traumatic childhood of emotional and physical abuse with grandmother a raging alcoholic and again a narcissist. You were tossed around from relative to relative and then a convent. Somewhere through that abuse you shut down and with that was your empathy and emotional development. You formed a survival mechanism and part of that was the need to control and bury away the real you.
Yes I know not you, no, its me reading too much into the situation but I know what you are now and no amount of gaslighting can ever fog this new found knowledge I’ve obtained. I’ve learned how you’ve triangulated my brother and I to achieve your control over us but that backfired.
You see now you also will never have the experience of seeing a relationship the way you dreamed it would be. That being the relationship between your grandchildren.
Before you start getting angry know this was not done to hurt you but rather protect my children and myself from further abuse on your part. I now know you can’t help the way you are it’s a part of who you’ve become.
This disorder you have has stolen so much from you and I. We will never be able to be a proper family ever again. No family dinners where we laugh and share our lives. No Christmas holidays around the tree unwrapping gifts together. No trust where we can open up to each other during times of need. No spending time together you and I shopping or just even going for a coffee together. We were robbed of so much because of narcissism. One word but so much damage.
I’ve mourned the loss of the mother I so very wanted through the years but in the process i’m gaining a love for myself. You didn’t want me to know i didn’t need your approval or validation but through understanding narcissism I realise it’s not about me and my shortcomings but its about your personality disorder, narcissism.
I want you to know I love you and have forgiven you but you will no longer control the way I feel about myself. The abuse stops here. Oh you can continue on as you always have but i won’t allow you to affect me as you have all these years.
Mother you have a personality disorder called narcissism and this is why we will never be what we should’ve been to each other but I will make sure i’m that parent to my children.