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Posted on by Heather Scarbro Dobson

This is going to be a really heavy post. It may have to be a two-parter. Or a several-parter. I don’t know. We’ll just see how it goes.

I’ve done quite a lot of navel-gazing these last three-and-a-half years. It’s not hard when there’s a pandemic, the kids are at school 40 hours a week, and all the house chores are finished. When I cut off contact with my mother, it felt like a death and the first thing I did was make an appointment with a therapist and begin counseling. My old therapist had taken a leave from work due to health reasons and she suggested someone new. Michelle was nice, effusive, and helpful, but then after six months, she uttered the words I did not want to hear.

“Someday, when you re-establish a relationship with your mother…”

You know, how when you watch Scooby-Doo, and Scoobs and Shaggy are running away from the scary ghost or monster, and they start backpedaling, and their legs just turn into blurry circles? My brain was doing that. That simple phrase absolutely terrified me. I felt so healthy, so happy, so relieved to be away from her and now? Now I was supposed to someday talk to her again? Have my boundaries violated again? Feeling less than worthy again? Being used again?

I’m not proud to say it, but I ghosted my therapist and haven’t returned to her since. Or sought any other therapist in the intervening years. Instead, I read. Write. Watch. Absorb.

I found communities online where others went through similar experiences with their parents. I began reading books about parents with borderline personality disorder. And I kept a journal where I would write down what I had learned while also trying to put memories on paper to remind myself, “This is why I no longer talk to Mom. This is why I need to be a separate entity from her.” I wanted to understand myself and her. Why this happened. And try to be self-aware enough that I don’t repeat the “sins of the mother.”

Through all of my reading, something interesting happened about six months ago. While reading yet another post in a borderline personality disorder subreddit where the OP lamented the horrible relationship they had with their mother, they used the term “emotional incest.”

Lord Jesus. Here I am, a native West Virginian who staves off jokes of being married to a cousin by jokingly telling people, “I’m from West Virginia and I did NOT meet my husband at a family reunion,” and I find out I may have been a victim of emotional, or covert, incest.

IN.CEST. Y’all.

*Sigh*

In the simplest of terms, emotional incest is when a parent uses one of their children as an emotional spouse. There is no physical relationship. No actual sex or rape or molestation. It’s all emotional. Mental. The parent “parentifies” their child. They expect their child to provide them with the emotional support a spouse would normally give. The more I began to read up on emotional and covert incest, the more I realized that I wasn’t just my mother’s daughter. I was my mother’s completely and utterly enmeshed spouse. For well over 40 years.

It’s really hard to wrap my head around. This little-talked about type of emotional abuse is damaging to a child and when I started learning more about it, I realized that ohmygodthey’retalkingaboutme. The invasive parent in this type of relationship is enmeshed with their child in order to meet their own needs that are not being met in their adult relationship. Meanwhile, the child is often treated as “all good” and is favored to the exclusion of other children or, in my case, the other spouse. The needs of the child to develop as an individual, to make mistakes, to receive structure and discipline, are neglected because, surprise surprise, it’s all about the parent here. I’m supposed to make her happy not the other way around. As the invasive parent turns to the child for their emotional needs, the left-out spouse is shut out of this exclusive bond and may turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms (in my dad’s case… FOOD) in order to deal with his or her unhappy home life.

Yeah. It’s a lot to take in.

And then? I started reading up on the behavioral signs that could point to someone having been a victim of this type of abuse.

People-pleaser (Oh. All day. Every day.)
A need to be invisible (I HATE. DESPISE. Talking about myself. I don’t like “tooting” my own horn. I hate writing this fucking post, tbh.)
Self-advocacy is nonexistent (Yep yep. Don’t like asking for stuff.)
Difficulty understanding and finding yourself (This. ALL of this.)
Inability to share authentic feelings with others (If I share my true feelings with you, you’ll turn on me like Mom did.)
Can’t say no (See number one.)
A reduced sense of significance (I don’t matter because I never mattered. Only she mattered.)
Very judgmental of others (I won’t say it to your face, but I’m judging you. Because I had to judge her and her moods and make sure she was always happy. And I hate that about myself.)
Attracted on some level to narcissistic people (I have a trail of narcissistic people who used to be friends but I gradually became self-aware of them and quietly said good-bye.)
An unrealistic view of what a family should look like (It’s taken me 26 years to figure out what a family is supposed to be. Thank goodness they all stuck around long enough.)
Anger and rage toward the enmeshed parent (I can’t even describe in simple words my incandescent rage toward her that I have kept bottled up inside otherwise for many years. If quiet rage was punishable, I’d be in prison.)

Yep. I just ticked right on down that list. Every. Single. One.

When your mother tells you, as a teenager, that she hasn’t had sex with your father since 1982…
When your mother tells you, as a kid, that her father abused her, sexually propositioned her, that she married your father to get away from her family…
When you later discover that those are all lies and that she’s told you all of that so that she guarantees she’s the only person left in your life and you have no choice BUT to turn to her for emotional support…When your mother expects you to call her, every day, without fail, and is cold to you when you don’t…
When your mother bitches to you about anything and everything your father does, no matter how big or small, and makes fun of what he does and who he is…
When she wants to be included in everything you do and say with your friends…
When she gets offended that you don’t like the same things she likes…
When she makes you feel guilty for taking time to yourself, even if it’s a one hour nap, and yet berates you for not spending enough time away from your husband and children to be with her…

I could go on and on and on. But I think I’m probably boring you with the details.

On the flip side of all of this is my father. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I’m now pretty pissed with him. Why didn’t he stand up for me? Why didn’t he tell his wife, “Hey, this is wrong!” I realize that he, too, was pretty damaged, but dammit it’s been 24 year since he died and I’m angry. And I can’t yell at him. And I’m feeling guilty because I’m feeling angry.

I don’t know why my mother was like this. Was it her own mother? Was it environment? DNA? Was it a random aberration? Like, she was raised just fine and turned out this way just because? Was she enmeshed with her mom because her mom was enmeshed with her mom… because some great-great-greatx10 grandmother started the whole generational shit show? Did Mom marry my dad on a whim, figured out she didn’t love him, and took the chickenshit way out by enmeshing me instead of divorcing him? I don’t know. And I refuse to get the solid answers I need because it would mean talking to her. And I will not sacrifice my well-being in order to do that.

One of the many videos I’ve watched from licensed therapists who talk about this condition mentioned that in order to repair the damage done by emotional incest, one must establish boundaries, advocate for yourself, parent your children the opposite way you were parented, yada, yada. But one item on the list is, “Talk about it and share your story.”

So. Here I am. Sharing it.

Hi. My name is Heather and I was a victim of emotional incest.

*The title of this post is taken from the title of the titular X-Files episode “Home” where Mulder and Scully discover the Peacock family who practice extreme inbreeding. I don’t know. I love the X-Files and I thought, “Why not name this post after an episode that involves incest?” My brain isn’t right, y’all.

Middle-Aged Motherhood Truths

Posted on by Heather Scarbro Dobson

One of 14 photos of Amelia after she stole my phone.

Being the mother of teenagers is weird as hell, y’all. It’s just crazy.

My niece is the mother of three little ones and is in the boat I used to be in a decade or so ago. Whenever I talk to her, I look back and think, “Wow, I was there. Here seemed so very far away. And yet… I’m smack in the middle of it.” In a way, this post is for her. But also? This post is for the me ten years from now that will be a mom of full-fledged adults. Because THAT shit will be absolutely cray.

I’m convinced that Jarrod is trying to get a head-start on his infectious disease vaccine career. Why? Because whenever I step into his room, there’s a smell. Not a “those socks haven’t been washed in two weeks and take a damned shower” smell. More like an “aren’t those the chicken nuggets we bought for dinner last week” smell. Yeah. From time to time, I’ll stop in to his room, gesticulate wildly in the general direction of everything, and yell something about, “WHAT IN TARNATION IS THAT STENCH?!” (Note: Yes, I say tarnation.). Eventually, I’ll find a bowl full of curdled milk and moldy Cheerios that I had no clue were even in said room in the kitchen sink and the nuggets will still be sitting on his desk, in front of the keyboard he looks at every evening when he plays video games. I just keep telling myself that someday, he’ll discover a cure for teen angst amidst all of that old food.

Driving. My 4-pound, 6-ounce baby is driving.

Amelia and her friends will FaceTime each other at all hours of the day and night. No lie. I will go downstairs to check on her and there, on her side table, will be her phone, plugged in and charging, with an active FaceTime call. On the screen will be several of her friends, all sleeping. It’s like a virtual slumber party. They will talk all day and into the wee hours. No one will hang up. They’ll just stay on the call, each falling asleep at different times, eventually waking one another up when they regain consciousness the next day.

Tyler and I will be in the family room, watching whatever TV show has piqued our interest, when Heath will march in, cracking his knuckles, ready to talk. He will launch in to his most recent computer creation, whether it’s an ocean liner he’s created on Roblox or a new flag he’s designed. He will pace the floor, nearly wearing out the carpet, sometimes for ten solid minutes. We’ll pause whatever we’re watching and just watch and listen, interjecting every now and then with “Uh-huh” or “Cool!” And then he’ll go silent, walk back upstairs, and Tyler and I will just look at each other, shrug, and realize we’ve been witness to another Heath drive-by. He just designed a new flag for Cherokee County and emailed the county commissioners telling them about it. Not that there’s been a request for a new flag, he just thinks the current one is rather ho-hum. (Cue “Sheldon Cooper’s Fun with Flags” intro music.) Also? He’s on reddit. And it’s a never ending cycle of each of us texting the other with funny memes and cat videos we’ve both found on said web site.

Apparently, sleeping with a hoodie around one’s neck is all the teen rage.

All three of them sleep in. And when I say “sleep in” I mean “there are some weekends when it’s 1PM and I go to their bedrooms and hold my index finger under their noses to feel for breath because I’m worried they’ve passed in their sleep.” When we’re all kids, don’t we all make promises to our future children? That you’ll never repeat the sins of your parents? Mine have always been that I will let the kids sleep in on weekends/holidays/summer and not force them to accompany me to the grocery store. But, sometimes? When they sleep in until the wee hours of the afternoon? It freaks me out. And not only do they sleep in, but the boys will sleep in their clothes. They eschew pajamas. They shower, put on clothes, go to bed, and roll out the next morning. I mean, it’s brilliant? But I’m waiting for the day when they have jobs and are calling me to ask how to remove sleep wrinkles from a tie.

The most common phrases uttered in the house:

Chill your beans! (Jarrod. To me. When I complain about the old food smell permeating his room.)

So, there’s this video on TikTok… (Amelia. All the time.)

OH MY GOD, JARROD! (Heath. Most days.)

YOU’RE DAMAGING MY CALM! (Tyler. Typically in the evenings. When the kids and I get riled up.)

No lie. You guys are the G.O.A.T. (Me. To multiple members of my family. Even when they leave Cheetos ground into my purple carpet.

The 13th Floor

Posted on by Heather Scarbro Dobson

“What floor are we on, Papa?”

Jarrod stood there, in the elevator, one hand on the door making sure it stayed open, other hand poised over the buttons, index finger extended and ready to press the floor we needed to access for our stay.

“Fourteenth,” Tyler responded.

“Technically,” I replied, “we’re on the 13th floor.”

All three kids looked at me quizzically.

“Well, it’s supposedly bad luck for hotels to have a 13th floor, so if you look on the elevator button panel, there’s a 12th floor and a 14th, but no 13th. Technically, though, the 14th floor is the 13th. So, we’re on the 13th floor.”

“Huh.” Amelia said, “That means that we’re in room 1313 because our room number says 1413 but if the 14th floor is actually the 13th floor, then we’re in the most unlucky room in the building.”

“But, only if you’re a Templar, Amelia.” Heath stated.

“I need a drink.” Tyler muttered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You always told me that you worked the hardest during our summers in Lewisburg. That it was you who did all the canning and the summer garden work around my grandparents’ house. You always made sure to point out that my aunt, your sister, did nothing, that she was lazy and acted like a princess, making sure to do just enough to stay in your father’s good graces and make you look like the bad guy.

Except, that wasn’t it at all. Turns out, you were the daughter who needed reminding that in order to reap your share of the bounty, you needed to sow. You were the one who acted disgruntled every time you were reminded to get up and do your share. Your sister was the one who was always there, ready to throw in a lending hand and willingly do her part. Meanwhile, you did just the absolute minimum while telling everyone the opposite.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know what drives me nuts?” Tyler asked one morning, feet propped on the ottoman, enjoying his last few minutes of freedom before work.

“What?” I responded.

“The fact that the Chick-fil-A hash browns box can hold 16 hash browns but they only throw in like 12. Sometimes 10!” He held up the open box to show that he had lined up the offending rounds of browned potatoes with a large space to the left where five hash browns should have been.

“Well,” I looked at him over my reading glasses, “they’re not actually counting them. They just throw handfuls in there. They’re in a hurry because every high schooler in Towne Lake is running there for breakfast in the morning and the crowds are horrendous.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he harrumphed, “if it can hold 16, there should be 16 in here. Bunch of liars.”

“Bless your heart.” I muttered for the 1,000th time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Your father always made fun of anything I ever did.”

“What?!” I exclaimed, not believing I had just heard what she said.

“He did! Any time I made anything, he made fun of it.”

It was the 20th anniversary of my father’s death, always a hard day for me. And now she was remembering him with a lie.

“He did no such thing. He was always proud of everything you did.”

She grumbled under her breath and nothing more was said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Lying is the worst,” I’ve always said to our children. “Don’t lie to me or to your Papa. We will always tell you the truth. Even when it’s difficult or uncomfortable. We expect the same courtesy from you. If you lie to us, that is worse than anything else you could possibly do. A lie is a betrayal of self and of our ties as a family.”

I try, really hard, to make sure they don’t lie. But, I know they do. It’s in our nature as humans to lie in order to cover our butts.

Did you practice piano? SURE!

Mom face activated. Teenager skulks into the living room and actually practices.

Did you do your homework? UH-HUH!

Mom face re-activated. Pre-teen heavily sighs, picks up his backpack and pulls out his homework folder.

Honestly, though, those lies don’t bother me. It’s the big ones that would kill me. If they ever lied about loving me, I would die, and I know I feel that way because of the lies of my childhood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I looked into the stands. I stood in the center of the football field, my last band festival as a senior and as drum major. I could see my mother and my father, but not my grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. We were in Lewisburg, at the local high school, where they all lived. But, none of them were there.

As usual.

You chalked it up to none of them liking us, especially me. I got it. I was the weird grandkid. The odd niece. The strange cousin. I was used to it. But it still hurt.

Later, though, I found out that no one was there because you never told them about it. For six years, they asked and you never responded, never let them know. They never saw me out in the middle of the football field. They never witnessed me win a trophy, salute the crowd, or conduct until my arms ached. You purposefully lied to them and removed them from my life. I still can’t discern the reason for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gaslighting is a term I didn’t hear until I was an adult. According to Psychology Today,

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed.

Gaslighting is lying. It is projecting. It wears you down. It confuses you. It makes you dependent. It makes you feel crazy. It’s manipulation. It’s abuse.

In the above quote, it talks about cult leaders using gaslighting and I remember last year telling Tyler, “I’ve been a member of the Cult of Mom my entire life.” The cognitive dissonance was strong and I had a horrible time reconciling my experiences to what was actually true. I don’t like to throw around PTSD because there are so many people out there who suffer from awful forms of PTSD. Soldiers, physical abuse victims, victims of violent crime, those are the people who have PTSD. But I’ve discovered that my depression and anxiety are milder symptoms of PTSD. Those are my reactions to having been gaslit my whole life. I always wondered why a ringing phone sent me into a state of panic, why an authority figure in my life wanting to talk to me freaked me out, why I was constantly negative about myself and didn’t feel worthy of love or good things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slowly, but surely, I’m healing. I don’t expect it to happen overnight. It’s been over a year and I realize that I may never be “over” any of it. I’ll just be able to deal with it in a more healthy manner. There are still moments that will make me pause. Like last night, watching a woman out to eat with her mother, having easy conversation and enjoying each other’s company. I know I’ll never have that, and that’s OK. But it still makes me stop, think, remember, mourn, and move on. Each and every time.

My whole life, I lived on the 13th floor. Instinctually, I knew it was the 13th. I could count. But the most important person in my life kept telling me it was the 14th floor. And I gave her the benefit of the doubt. But not any more. I know it was the 13th. I’m proclaiming it was the 13th. She can stay on the 14th floor without me. I’m done.

Cognitive Dissonance, Eggshells, and Guilt

Posted on by Heather Scarbro Dobson

I don’t talk about Mom a lot online. Last year, I posted that we were no longer in contact and I’ve reached out to a few mutual friends to help me keep an eye on her simply because she’s no spring chicken. But, other than that, unless you’re a close friend who I talk to on a regular basis, I’ve been radio-silent.

I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

I’ve spent the last 13 months reading books about borderline personality disorder, subscribing to Facebook and Reddit groups that allow for safe spaces to post about borderline parents, and going to therapy. Well, scratch that. Therapy only lasted six months because my therapist started talking about reconciliation and Christian resource books and talking to my mother again and I tried to put the kibosh on that but she kept saying those words and so I canceled my next appointment and never went back. Yes, I ghosted my therapist. I figured it was for the best. And I’ve been too lazy, and frankly a little scared, to look for another one.

Reconciliation is a no-go for me as there is nothing to reconcile. Living with someone who has borderline personality disorder is about setting boundaries and keeping those boundaries in place. Except, like a toddler, the person with BPD will constantly push those boundaries and you, the loved one, will spend your life walking on eggshells. As reddit user u/NothingIsEverEnough succinctly stated, One book says “stop walking on eggshells”, I immediately called bullshit on it. The book teaches you how to walk on eggshells with lesser damage, but you will walk on eggshells as long as you’re in the relationship.

I’ve walked on eggshells for over four decades and I’m done, ya’ll.

So, instead of therapy, I call Toni, talk to Jodi over our property line, text Stefanie, and drink more coffee.

Yes, Heather, you made the right decision. Toni tells me.
Your mom pinned something on Pinterest, so she’s still alive. Jodi informs me.
I got your back. Just let me know who I need to cut. Stefanie says.
You are amazing and you are so smart and beautiful and talented. Everything you do and say is brilliant and I love you. Coffee will whisper to me.

I know that coffee is lying but three outta four ain’t bad.

I have a notebook that I bought last year that I use as a silent therapist. In it are neatly written pages of memories of my mother’s lies and mental illness. It’s probably not healthy to have it, but whenever I think, Maybe I’m being too harsh. I just need to call her and apologize and not leave her by herself, I just pick up that notebook and re-read it and remember why I have established this No Contact  boundary and why that needs to remain the status quo. I also read it to remind myself that I have borderline personality tendencies and that I need to fight that and not react as a person with BPD would react. Any time I find myself overthinking a situation, misreading a social cue, or worse, splitting, I pick up that notebook to stop it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky nailed it when he said, “I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.”

My goal is to, someday, burn that book and the memories written in it. But not today. Today, I need it.

I guess, through all this rambling, what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to have blog posts that seem to start in the middle of a discussion, that tell a story halfway through. And those are the posts where I’m working through my relationship with my mother, myself, and our shared mental illness. If you don’t want to read those, I totally get it. If you read and have nothing to add, that’s fine. If you read and decide that you have words of wisdom to share with me, by all means do so. I just need a safe space, outside of my notebook to share my life with my mother. I hope you all understand.