2 posts in one day...

need a place to vent. recovery friend is standing on my last nerve today and i need to organize my thoughts so that i don't have future amends to make...

it has also triggered mom memories and for that i am grateful, but i have been re-living some of my most painful memories with my mother this morning.

my daughter's best friend is this woman's daughter. and yesterday she called needing help getting ready for her graduation. my friend had taken a shift on the day her 8th grade daughter graduated from middle school. this young girl had no one to help her get ready for her grad and her grad dance and she asked my daughter to help. i knew my daughter might be stepping into a land mine, so i suggested she come here, instead of getting ready by herself alone at home.

i have sensed that this woman, who has lived in our community just under a year now, leans toward narcissism. last night it was confirmed and i watched as she humiliated her daughter in my home, blamed me for it and made it all about her. i relived moments of my own teen years as i saw the daughter fold herself into tight places, her joy of the event stolen and her mother shame, blame and excuse herself for taking an extra shift on her daughter's big day.

i had volunteered the night before to help her. it was brushed aside and was told she wouldn't need any help. i took the little time i had with my family before my meeting last night and cared for this girl. i fed her, flat ironed her hair, gave her little hippy braids to tie back her hair, painted her toes and finger nails - the whole spa treatment. mom came just as i was finishing her nails and crushed us both and had a temper tantrum in my home in front of my children.

i awoke this morning to a "i'm sorry you" email from her and it just iced the cake. i want to blast this woman a new one, but know that will only succeed in driving her further into her martyrdom and blaming. so i'm processing here so that i am calm enough when the next interaction happens...

this has re-framed so much of my childhood - helped me see why i feel responsible for everything around me. so much blame. so much shame. so much martyrdom. because mom was so sick it masked a lot of her worst behavior. her life sucked and we all knew it. but the blame for that suckiness was never her own. she never took responsibility for it. she always put it on me. always.

looking back i am amazed at how clear certain events are now. any large event that cast any light on me (or off of her) was regularly highjacked to be all about her and how difficult her life was because she had to help me with mine. she then used every excuse in the book to make her behaviour okay and mine intolerable.

this daughter is a joy. she is so helpful and sweet. she is being remade into the mother in this relationship and it's so obvious to me in watching this that is what happened to me too. while this was a total pain in the ass, i am so grateful for the living color illustration it has brought...

now where do we go from here?