Hello my friends. Today in my CPTSD healing journey, I'm processing memories of my dark tetrad (narcissistic, exploitative, arrogant, self-centered, cruel) mother. I'm looking at some of her bizarre, attention-seeking mannerisms, facial expressions and speech patterns. I will show how these were part of the disguise she wears for her role of good, Christian lady while in reality being dark, cold, calculating and haughty. Some of these may seem innocent and for a long time her gaslighting worked and I believed they were too. But when the mask began to slip, I saw how incredibly disturbing and disturbed they are. And I can never unsee it again.
For background, my mother loves to play an assortment of parts in her one-woman show. It's like the Audie Murphy Show, written by, directed by and starring herself. She's the archetypal judgy preacher, heroine, vamp, good-time girl, pretty baby, martyr, victim, ingenue, goddess, little girl lost all in one performance and she adopts different characters with dizzying speed. Within an hour she's flip-flopped between wise moral judge, street preacher, seductive showgirl, pathetic needy child and back again. It's exhausting to watch let alone try to keep up and figure out what my role is supposed to be in response to her lightning costume changes. And each and every one is faker than funny money.
So, weird speech patterns. My mother converts all -ing words into -in. She pronounces my like muh (as in muh husband). She knows correct pronunciation but chooses to pronounce words in silly ways.
She uses odd phrases that she thinks sound like a teenager. Sue and Bob becomes Sue 'n' Bob. I haven't used that since 1976.
She condescending puts down people from southern regions, then fakes their dialects and colloquialisms which sound exactly like what it is, posing.
Her language is exaggerated and garish. Every tiny ache is "excruciatingly painful." I mean tiny like hangnails. Literally.
She'll fake cheer super loudly things she knows nothing and cares even less about. Just to draw attention to herself. She shouts "AMEN" when radicalized right wingers engage in their hate rants, like on Jan 6 riots.
She repeats a lot of cliches but uses them wrongly. To any ailment you may have, it's always "been there, done that." Which she has not in fact been or done. And which demonstrates that not only is she dismissive of any ailment but her own, she isn't even listening or she'd realize we all know she's not had shoulder surgery.
The expression she coins herself are the worst. She loves her little pet phrase "rude, crude and lewd." Said in this smug exaggerated way about people. She once said that about Simon Cowell not because he is but because she thinks she sounds so witty when she says it. She gets a lot of strange looks.
She mimics her golden child, who also uses corny expressions when she's around my mom. Alone she talks like a normal person.
She'll do this giddy teenager thing, randomly. Suddenly, she'll pull an idiot prank and screech with laughter like a maniac. She threw a pie in my face and in my young son's face at her work picnic.
She let my sister stage a food fight for her graduation party. Then later when we saw some kids food fighting, she pontificated with righteous indignation how sinful it is to waste food and how ridiculous they looked. Seems she forgot about the pie thing.
She literally lays around all the time, too exhausted and feeble to get the mail. She'll dodder around and feign dementia but then when you take her out to eat, boy does she find her energy. She runs up to the buffet.
She likes to play cool kid. She'll jumps up, in the middle of conversations and proclaim she's bored with the adults. She did this at another of her company picnics. Suddenly she's rallying kids, who haven't even finished their lunches, to go outside and go sledding. I don't think my mother has ever sledded in her life. No one else was ready and we warned her to wait for us. My poor young son (the same one who got the pie in the face) went with her and she took them both down the bloody luge run. They both got hurt when they hit the end. Because she was too stupid to know it wasn't meant for that. But guess who had to be rushed to the hospital, all eyes on her for treatment. I'm still mad at myself for going along to help with her self-induced emergency and not taking my son to the hospital.
She calls private body parts by creepy street terms than swoops down on anyone with pearl-clutching self-righteousness if they use slang. She's outraged and "calls them out" (a favorite pastime of hers) when she herself uses even worse ones.
She'll use overly jocular Sarah Palin-ish slang. And she will claim she's rebelling against the supposedly strict upbringing. Which was no different than most kids of the 1950s. What she actually does is to act as weird as possible to stand out and thereby get attention. She says she never grew up, thinking she's cute and clever. She just sounds ridiculous and immature.
She'll do this "gotcha" things where she will engage in conversations, feigning sympathy and saying things to entrap people into trusting her with confidences. Terrible idea. She will then publicly turn on them and "expose" them.
She has shared intimate details of her own sex life with me since I was 8.
She has announced at family gatherings, things about me that were very private. Like when I got my period and started growing pubic hair.
She shouts at the top of her lungs "AMEN!!!" in churches she visits that do not do things like this.. She's not affirming, she's drawing all eyes to her and also attempting to shame them for not "loudly praising God." She's not praising God either. It's just a performance.
She goes places with a set expectation of how others are to treat her. But she doesn't tell them. She sets them up, waits for them to let her down, pouts and theatrically huffs off. She thinks she being grand, but she's just grandiose. She "tests peoples' sincerity" as she puts it, by walking up to complete strangers sticking her hand out and stands there waiting (as you do). Then says the person "refused" to shake her hand if they fail her little test.
She believes she's God's little KGB comrade and it's her job to ferret out liars, generally by some kind of entrapment. She'll twist situations and conversations to "catch people" in what she calls untruths. Imitating her husband (well, now ex) she'll pause for effect, waiting the drumroll, and say dramatically "I knew it! The man was lying!" It takes one to know one.
She always took other kids' part over me, in a weird, smirky way. Even when I was in the right. And she did it in a particularly vicious and vindictive way, making sure I felt very stupid. She'd say "you should be ASHAMED of yourself." When I wanted to keep using a TV tray at a family gathering that someone was trying to take from me. She said to the kid "it yours and not hers (mine) because it has your name on it." (two little screws in the side) Neither mother or dad had seen to it I even had anything to eat. My aunt had had to do that. It was all so baffling that I can hardly retell the story without thinking I must have made it up. No one's mom acts like that, do they?
She's very above-it-all and cynical. She'll give her scornful, narcissistic smirk and start in sarcastically undermining and invalidating everyone. That's no generalization. She can't stand competition. Even from children.
She walked into our bedroom without knocking, just barreled through the door. one morning when we were sleeping. We didn't even know she was in the house. She'd just let herself in.
When she comes to visit, she stands in the yard yelling "I'M HERE!!!" like she expects some kind of red carpet to be rolled out. Which is exactly what she does expect.
Things come up missing all the time when mother is around. Including money. I caught her rifling through my wallet once. Or she accidentally on purpose breaks them. When I wonder aloud what happened to the missing items, she tells me I'm too materialistic and I should just forget it. This from the person who expects to be repaid for whatever she does and be given free what others give to her. So I know they grew legs and went home with her.
She stage whispers behind her hand, snarky rude things about people. She body shames openly. She's loud enough to be heard and she knows it. But God forbid anyone point out that she's getting pretty pudgy.
She arrogantly sneers about people she says are "showing off" and "flyin high." She does this when someone else is receiving attention and/or accolades. You can tell by the nasty gleam her eye and the exaggerated voice that she's jealous, bitter and trying to undermine them.
She calls her going on 50 y/o daughter "my kid." She's embarrassingly "overprotective" yet I was sent out alone to play, blocks from home, starting at age 4.
She talks about her golden child, nonstop. She sings her praises and scoffs at others' (my) enormous accomplishments. Everything is about Joanie. Joanie can do no wrong. Every ache is magnified while everyone else is kicked to the curb when they have major surgery. She's classic Munchausen's by Proxy. People act very uncomfortable when she does these awkward things. I feel sorry for Joanie.
She tries to outshine people at their special days. She tried to upstage her sister at her wedding. She even steals the limelight from the deceased at their own funerals. She interrupts eulogies and laughs inappropriately. No one, dead or alive must receive notice when mom is in the room.
When she meets someone as bombastic as herself (which isn't often), she has an interesting deflection move. She suddenly gets self-righteously, superior and haughty, sneering, muttering and poking fun at how loud they are. And then immediately reverts to loud when they're gone.
Did other people besides me not see through her shenanigans? I don't know. She gets a lot of weird looks, that's for sure. I fell for it because, as my husband says, I was groomed to. I knew no other version of mother.
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