always sad

[Guest guest]

Hi -- I've recently joined this group and have been inspired by your honesty and

courage.

At age 51, I'm dealing with the sensation of having wasted/lost/sacrificed most

of my life to the bottomless well of my BPD mother's sorrow. Unlike some of the

sadistic nadas described so horrifyingly here, my mother engaged in rages and

name-calling, of which I was often the object, but the chief subject of her

rages and loathing was and is herself. As an only child, with no insights

offered by my father, who was not a dishrag but distanced himself from all of

this, I saw my mother as a godly authority. And she was always sad. Always

always always always horrifically sad. She loathed herself. It's not just

clinical depression (about which I also did not know, as a child). It's active,

raging self-loathing.

When your godly authority and only role model is wholly consumed with

self-loathing, it's catching. That's what you model yourself upon. She called

herself fat and ugly and stupid and did not call me those things, but if that's

your mother, and you come from your parents, then how (in a child's imaginings)

can you NOT be what she is: thus fat, ugly, and stupid. (She DID call me a slob

and a pig, even a " f***ing slob " and " f***ing pig, " but in those rages she would

wail that I was a f***ing slob and pig because SHE TOO was a f***ing slob and

pig and I took after her.

The main thing she gave me was fear. She was afraid of everything and everyplace

and everyone. Sinister forces lurked in every possibility. Think you're having

fun? Think again (she would have said). Your partner might be cheating on you,

or you might have cancer.

The point is that she manifested and continues to manifest the key BPD behaviors

to an amazing degree. Sadly, a therapist mentioned this to me over twenty years

ago, upon hearing my descriptions, but as my therapist was unable to define BPD

clearly for me and as the Internet did not yet exist to teach me more, my

youngish self did not pursue the subject. Bummer, because I suffered all the

BPD-kid stuff for another twenty-plus years until " rediscovering " the term BPD

this summer ... reading the books ... finding this site ... and feeling like

OMG, this explains EVERYTHING.

But now what? I feel sorry for myself, but I feel sorry for her too. Some of her

suffering is her choice -- refusing to consider seeing a therapist, eating

decent food, seeing the bright side of anything ... but I know she can't help

it. She has BPD.

I still feel so sorry for her. We talk on the phone once a week or so, and I

tell myself that she is where she is partly by choice. And I listen as she

recounts her misery. I always have. I try to remember that nothing I do could

alleviate her pain. She even tells me this -- that there is nothing I can do,

that she wishes she was dead and that nothing I can do or say would change this.

I realize that I'm still new at this role of BPD adult child, and don't want to

sacrifice more of my life on fear, self-loathing and sorrow ... and I know that

sympathy for her is another bottomless well. But I'm having trouble drawing

boundaries between safety and sympathy.