After an amazing couple days of watching someone show how completely psychic one can be, I walked into a reading with this man and his first words were “so your mother is mentally unstable.” You would think that as many times as I have said she is bat shit crazy, it would not have been such a profound revelation, and yet it truly has been. Don’t get me wrong I have totally thought she was mental, I just never thought it was diagnosable. Turns out she really does live just on the brink, a half ounce on the scale and she is over. So many stories come forward when I think about all of this, so many places I can validate his statement that she has multiple personality disorder, so many places explained. Such as why my brothers never see the crazy woman I do. It still makes me just a bit crazy, that they look at me as if I stepped off the deep end, whenever I speak of one of her incidents. How many times I have gone over and over a situation wondering if it was me, was I the one who was mental, did I misunderstand somehow? They never get that insane screaming, that woman who tells you, you are not worth the air you breath, the space you take up, that you are a total disappointment, all because you were laid off work. They get the can I help mother; not that I don’t get her too I just get that other one first.
Almost two years ago, I was standing in my friend’s kitchen having a particularly bad day. Listening to a forty five minute tantrum of what a low life piece of shit excuse for a human being I am. Because I had moved from my ex-husbands house and had no job, no car, and I was asking for a loan to assist in getting a place to live while I find a job.
Mind you I had recently returned from living in the UK, I was invited to share house with my ex-husband in the hopes that I would consider reconciliation. My ex and I had been divorced over a year, and upon my return he had decided that reconciliation was not what he wanted after all, and his new girlfriend was moving in. My mother was pissed that I had left him years before. She thought and said that I should have just had an affair if I was unhappy, as he was stable and could take care of me. This is all being addressed in the screaming coming from the phone. The call had been initiated by me asking to borrow 4,000 dollars, for a few months while I got on my feet. She totally freaked out, telling me she didn’t have that kind of money, her shops were failing, and she would have to cash in investments, and so on. Gratefully no one else was home at the time, though truth is no one usually is around for those outbursts. After this anger sip sides a bit the conversation goes on to; yes she will give me the money, but it will be a gift and I have to use part of it to buy a car. I explain that I cannot afford a car, that I can use the bus it is cheaper than insurance, that what I need is a place to live right now while I find work. This argument goes on for about another hour. At which point my will has once again been broken down and I agree to what she wants to get her off the phone.
The following week I get a call from her that I have an appointment with a man from enterprise car sales in Beaverton, two days from now. (You should know that her partner, I mean husband, works Tuesdays and Thursdays), the call came in on Tuesday and the appointment was for Thursday (this is so he does not know what she is doing). I was to arrive Thursday and call once I looked at the cars she had picked out for me. Oh, and I was not to spend over 12,000. I can imagine what you are thinking right now, but she was angry about the 4,000? Yes she was very angry about the 4,000.
So I arrive at the dealership a bit confused to say the least and with no real belief that this will come to fruition, as we have played this game before and gotten to the end only to have it all pulled out from under me. I have also had it all come to be, there is no way to be sure until it completes. So I am talking to the gentleman there looking for the man she sent me to, and apparently he does not work in this branch. The car she wants me to look at is not here either it is also at a different branch. She had shopped for these cars online, as she is in another state. So this sales guy offers to take me to that branch to see the car. She asks about the cars at this dealership, he lets her know there are similar cars with similar prices. The original car she wanted me to look at was 12,900 and has a tear in the seat, and these two cars were 13,900 and 14,400 (no tears, longer warranty). I mention that none are under 12,000 and she says in a snotty voice that she knows that, and that I should test drive both of them and tell her which one I like better. I do test drive both and pick the one I like of the two, she then buys the car pays all the fees, including 6 months of insurance (totaling just under 15,000), and I am told I can pick the car up the day after tomorrow once all the balances have cleared. She has told me that she will hold the title (“so that I do not sell it and move back to Europe”), but that this is my birthday and Christmas gifts for the next two years. She proceeded to send plane tickets to me and my kids, for the holidays and spent 700 on each of us including my daughter’s boyfriend (the first gifts they have had from her in 10 years, out of sight out of mind).You can trust that I am paying for all of this and more, maybe not with money, but I am definitely paying.
This is just one of the inconsistencies in the world of my mother. People look at me as if I am ungrateful when I tell this story, as if I should just be happy to have a car. I am grateful for the car, and any other assistance I am given. Though it is difficult to reconcile the situation, when it makes no sense at all. Why yell at me for hours because I ask for help, only to turn around and force a gift three times what was asked for to begin with??? Even in the name of control freak this reaches over the top. But when you throw different people into the mix it begins to make sense. If it is one personality freaking out and another gifting, it begins to make total sense. If it is one personality triggered by me and me alone, it would make sense that my brothers never see that side of her. It explains all the bat shit crazy moments I have endured over the years. It in no way condones the behavior, though it does explain it. It gives me a place to start to understand what has only been muddled.