Labels

Gladys, at the blog Postcards from Purgatory, recently wrote a post about labels (You Don't Have to Wear that Shirt).  And a recent conversation with my friend, Kara, sparked some memories of the labels my mother has always applied to me:  anxious, over-sensitive, high strung, over-complicated, semi-neurotic, jumpy. 

I've long felt conflicted when my mother would come to visit.  Long before information on NPD floated to me (really by chance, and I thank God for that every day), I always felt like I had to become a different person when my mother was around.  I can remember telling my husband that I felt like I was reduced back to a child.  But not just a child, the child she had decided I was.  She had refused to see the changes in me.  She had refused to see I'd become different and that I wasn't who she thought I was.  I always felt such a huge sigh of relief when she left, as I felt I could shrug off the "costume" she would force me to wear.

The "me" around NM and the "me" around my friends was so different.  I really struggled with why that was.  It caused me a lot of inner conflict as I struggled to define who I really was in my early 20s.  It made not sense to me that she defined me in ways that many of my friends and my DH didn't.  This to me was a huge red-flag.  (And on a coordinating note, I recently pointed out to DH that the person he suggests I am when I have conflict with his mother - bitter, judgmental, angry, looking for a fight, suspicious, waivering in personal integrity- is the OPPOSITE of how he generally describes me.  That I can't really be this completely different person with her that I am in ALL other areas of my life.  He often describes me as caring, and thoughtful, and kind, and full of integrity and moral strength.  So, if he maybe gets a different picture of me around his mother...well, maybe those "labels" aren't coming from me.)

It's so easy to believe those labels when they come from your mother.  Of course, she is supposed to know you better than anyone.  She has known you since before birth, knows the core of you, and is supposed to understand you in the special way a mother knows her child.  Believing that your mother is purposefully and willfully labeling you with negative labels is disheartening, to say the least.  It was so easy to live up to those labels.  To become anxious and agitated and stressed in her presence. 

For what it's worth, I am a bit of an anxious person.  During my teen years, I lived in a battle field  filled with suicide and a sister hell bent on destroying herself and an absent mother.  NM used to use my anxiety and anger against me at these moments.  She told me it was WRONG for me to feel that way.  I've only come to realize lately, that those were normal reactions for me to feel at the time.  And now, when she's around, I do think I become anxious and stressed.  Not because I'm an anxious person, but because she STRESSES ME THE FUCK OUT.  She is difficult and neurotic and stressful.  Duh.  No wonder I feel those things around her. 

I did struggle with clinical anxiety for awhile in my late 20s.  I couldn't go a moment without stressing that my DH was going to die (get hit by a car, get an illness, or some other calamity).  I stressed about death all day, every day.  I had panic attacks.  But I did get better and I changed.  But NM continued to label me, continued to view me through her lens of who I was.

I was thinking back to me as a child.  I don't think I would describe myself as anxious.  Sure, my family life was volatile and unsettled.  I didn't always feel relaxed.  But I don't think I was a fearful, nervous child.  I participated in school plays and choir concerts.  I often had solos or the leads.  I never felt particularly nervous or anxious being on stage.  I didn't have a lot of phobias as a child.  I was a bit cautious and not a risk taker (but NM was really controlling and didn't let us out of our bubble a lot).  I remember being confident enough in myself and my abilities to disagree with adults when I felt wronged.  I wasn't afraid to speak up if need be. 

As an adult, I don't think a lot of people would describe me as overly anxious.  MIL does.  But she uses it to "explain away" why I am not close to her or why I don't do things she wants (like when I didn't invite all 30 of her relatives to my baby's first birthday, I heard from an aunt that MIL said that it was because I "get too stressed out and can't handle it").  It's, most likely, also the reason she gives people as to why I don't let her babysit.  Fine by me, if it keeps her away from my kids. 

I'm organized and efficient.  I wrote out directions for my mother to the hospital when I was about to give birth.  She laughed at me, as did my step dad, telling me I was being over-complicated and controlling and.. on and on.  It was because I was a nervous nelly.  The real reason I wrote out those directions was so she wouldn't be harassing my husband during my labor (when he should've been paying attention to me) by acting helpless and needing directions to the hospital.  It hurt at the time that my step father and mother would make fun of me like that.  But, lo and behold, NM "lost" the directions and kept me on the phone for half an hour while she "struggled" to find the damn hospital.  Shocking. 

NM and step dad like to laugh at me as I get ready for birthday parties, telling me how anxious I am.  As I run around trying to do all the work myself and knowing that it will be nothing but drama from all of the "adults" involved.  The label me as neurotic.  If I refuse to allow the narcs to babysit or am unwilling to leave my kids for long periods of time, I'm overprotective and anxious.  If I get upset because the offer up a special activity for my kids (before talking to me) in order to manipulate me into driving for hours to visit her, I'm controlling.  When this happened, they laughed at the fact that they knew I'd be uncomfortable with their "offer".  They teased me and chuckled at how upset I was going to be (like two little conspiring twits).  They set me up to either react and be called controlling or not react and capitulate to their passive-aggressive bribes and manipulations of my kids.  (And as a side note, NM expected us to visit, but told us we couldn't visit until work was completed on her house.  She kept bugging me to come, while also saying the work wasn't yet done.  She blames me for not coming, but she won't let me come.  I wonder how in the hell she rationalizes that in her head.)

I'm learning to cast off these labels.  To define myself by who I see myself being (and how the majority of others see me) instead of wearing the personality she wants me to have.  I've come to conclude that these labels she gives me are tools she uses to hide her own bad behavior behind.  She uses them to make herself feel better.  She projects all of her anxiety and neurosis on me so she doesn't have to look at herself.  She describes me as neurotic to explain why all our interactions go to shit (or are distant, as they are now).  It gives her an excuse, an "out". 

I don't think she (or my stepdad) will ever allow me to be someone other than what they label me, but I've decided I don't really give a shit.  I could be Mother Theresa and they'd never see me differently.  So, why bother anymore.  I am what I am, and they can take it or leave it.