Growing Up as My Mother’s Enemy

Some kids grow up knowing their parents love them unconditionally. They feel safe, wanted, and cherished. Just normal. I grew up knowing NONE of that and only recently (in therapy) realising that I was her competition and a burden. My mother was a teenager when she had me, and I was never the “bundle of joy” people imagine. I was the consequence of her choices and in her eyes, the living reminder of a plan gone wrong. She had intentionally gotten pregnant at 13 to trap my dad (17) and to escape her mother, but his parents stepped in and shut that plan down. From the moment I was born, I was the symbol of her failed scheme, and she treated me accordingly. I wasn’t her child. I was her scapegoat & her meal ticket for eighteen years. Her verbal punching bag. Her person to blame when her life didn’t look like the fantasy she thought she deserved.

In her mind, I was the bad guy in her story and in every story; the villain who ruined everything. She never missed a chance to let me know it, either through a cutting remark, relentless beatings or another round of lies she’d feed to anyone willing to listen; and there were always people willing to listen.

She was charming when she needed to be. She knew how to twist a story until the truth disappeared entirely; her only life accomplishment.

Looking back through the lens of psychotherapy, she checks every single box of a textbook sociopath; zero empathy, endless manipulation and constant victimhood.

I was never allowed to have my own truth, she controlled the narrative, and in her warped narrative, I was the problem and I HAD to suffer as much as possible without leaving physical 'evidence'. It’s hard to put into words the kind of damage that does to a child. The constant second-guessing of your own reality, the confusion of being punished for things you didn’t do, the anger of never being believed because your abuser wears a mask of a holy rolling Christian so well in public, and the deep, soul-crushing grief of knowing your own mother looks at you with hatred instead of love. It wasn’t just painful, it was soul-destroying. It was the kind of environment that makes you shrink yourself to survive, yet still leaves you feeling like you’re never quiet small enough to avoid her wrath.

The best thing I ever did for my mental health was to cut ties, not just with her, but with anyone ignorant enough or unwilling to see the truth. People who believe her lies don’t deserve a seat at my table. My peace costs too much to let them in. I was always accused of thinking I was 'better' than them, which was untrue then; but now? I am. I always was & I deserved better.

Walking away didn’t erase the pain. It didn’t erase the years of abuse, or the damage to my trust or my body, or the ache of never having a mother who was capable of love, but it gave me space to heal, space to breathe, space to remember that her version of me was never real. I am not who she says I was. She never knew me. I wasn’t the villain in her story. I was the child she couldn’t control, couldn’t manipulate (after I matured) and couldn’t destroy no matter how hard she tried and trust me, shes worked it from ever angle imaginable, and surviving that? It's taught me how NOT to BE and that IS my victory.