My Parental Alienation

I was about 7 when I remember first questioning my father. My mom would make claims about my dad and his family hating her and mistreating her. Whether she genuinely believed it or not, she sure had me brainwashed into thinking they hated her too.

As a young kid, I would lock myself into rooms and bathrooms during visits with my dad to talk to my mom the whole time about wanting to go home. I didn’t really want to go home, or really have any issues at with my dads family at all, but I fed off of my moms behavior and adapted it as my own. And, why wouldn’t I believe my own mother?

I started to try to make life as miserable as possible for my father. I played hurtful games and would scream at him for hours about how he couldn’t possibly love me because he doesn’t love my mom. These conversations would get nowhere because when my dad would try to defend himself or comfort me, I would scream over him and hang up if the conversation didn’t go my way. I didn’t know why I was doing this even, I wasn’t mad at my dad for anything he had done to me, but I felt like my mom needed my support.

Happy Canada Day! – Love, Jersey Boy 😇

My mother had a “victim narrative”, in fact, I am pretty sure that she has BPD along with many other mental illnesses. Anyway, my mom had this way about her that sucked most trusting people in immediately. She loved to tell sob stories about being a single mother to a daughter with a dead-beat dad and a disabled son with another dead-beat dad. She would also talk about being the most selfless person in the world, and how she gives and gives and receives nothing in return, especially not any appreciation.

As a daughter, I felt it was my duty to undo all of the injustices done to my mother. If she had a falling out, she would cry to me about it and say that she had no support until I would agree to harass the person(s) she wasn’t getting along with. She had me planning to egg these peoples houses, slash peoples tires and “peanut butter” their windows, all because I was underage and would get in much less trouble. If these plans would come up in conversation with other people, my mom would laugh and say that I think up the craziest things.

Basically, I was manipulated into being my moms puppet and ruined many of my moms and my own relationships due to years of supporting her instabilities. We would constantly be losing people in our lives and on more than one occasion we were alienated from my aunt, uncle and grandmother (my moms family) for years at a time. My mom would use my brother and I as leverage and would have us try to charmingly convince our family that my mom wasn’t crazy. If they didn’t want to reconcile with my mom, we were forced to become estranged from these family members and would have negative stories about them drilled into our heads.

At a certain point, I had just turned 13 and mine and my dads relationship had become too rocky. He had never given up on seeing me, in fact, he moved a few blocks down from my mom to be able to see me more and be closer to my school and friends. I was getting in more and more trouble at home, I was getting older and more independent, and so when I said I wanted to do something with dad she would have a melt down for hours and leave me feeling confused and upset. It was so painful having so much tension about my relationship with my own dad, so unfortunately at that time it was just easier for me to cut my dad out of my life.

From 13-17 I didn’t see my dad and only had minimal contact with his side of the family. Occasionally by phone-call and a yearly public visit (if allowed by mom). When my mom would go through my phone and see long phone conversations with my grandparents or dad, she would snap. She would say that I was betraying her and playing both sides, even though I was really just confused. I wanted a good relationship with them but would curse and scream at my family to leave me alone and to contact my mom if they wanted to see me. She never believed that I supported her when she wasn’t around and would punish me for “disrespecting her”. From here on out the punishments just got worse and her tolerance for me only got thinner. She had to do something to keep me within her arms reach because I was clearly becoming less responsive to her usual meltdowns and suicide threats.

Around this time is when Brandon came into our lives; I was constantly compared to him and told to do better. I was torn down daily, told that I was useless, disrespectful, troubled, lazy, a thief, a liar etc. After years of hearing these things, I kind of became them. I wasn’t happy at home and was rarely let out anyway so when I was allowed out, I went wild. I went from being a loyal, trustworthy and kind-hearted friend to a lying, stealing and hurtful enemy to people around me. After getting into trouble at school and a little with the law, I was doomed, to my mom I was a criminal and a write off. Before I knew it, my mom hated me and really buckled down on the emotional, verbal and mental abuse.

Things got real bad from here. I had no privacy… My mom already had all my passwords from the start, but she started sifting through my apps, text messages, photos and more to find incriminating things about me. There was never too much for her to find other than the odd sexy text to my bf or a funny inappropriate photo of a friend but she would still find a reason to ground me for lack of appreciation to her. She would put tracking devices on my phone and car keys, and would frequently have people from my school update her with pictures and explanations of what I had been doing that day.

In my next post I will introduce my partner Jack. He came along during the most stressful time of my life, when I needed him the most and he’s been my rock through it all.

I want to take this time to thank any of my readers for your patience while I was away from my blog. I dipped into a bit of mania and have been disassociating all month. It just wasn’t the right time for me to write and I apologize for anyone who was looking forward to my posts. I will be writing more often!

Love, Your BPD Companion!