Family

Eh... This is not a happy post. You want happy, scroll up or down.

So, I mentioned (very briefly) in my last post that you can love your family out of a sense of obligation, more than any actual tenderness. I realized tonight just how deeply I meant that.

A lot of girls, at some point, will come to serious disagreement with their mother. I've been living in a constant state of disagreement with her crazy ass for years, now. I was talking with my brother tonight, and the conversation turned to her. I moved out almost two years ago... Okay, I got kicked out almost two years ago. He still lives there. It's not a happy arrangement. It wasn't a happy arrangement when I still lived there. Or when my step-dad lived with us, before my mother forced him into a divorce.

My brothers and I have come to the conclusion that she is seriously abusive. And I don't mean that she hurts my feelings every now and then. I mean she has beaten all of us and uttered words that no normal mother would ever consider. For instance-
I've been disowned three times.
She's asked me how many other men were in the room when I had sex with my first boyfriend.
She's accused me of having forgotten about my birth father, since I still consort with my step-father.
She's threatened me with exorcism.
She's spanked me. Now, this may not be too unusual, unless you take into account that I was twenty at the time, and the offense I committed was telling her to "get the fuck out of my room" when she barged in on me changing.
She's grabbed me by the hair and pulled me into a closed-fisted punch.
She's pinned me down on the floor and slapped me back and forth across the face.

Here's what she's done to Liam-
She's punched him in the torso and head.
She's KICKED him.
She's told him that he's going to fail in school, in the Navy, and in life.

These are just the ones he's told me about.

As you can probably tell, this has been going on for years. All of us have, at one point or another, been her physical and/or emotional punching bag. Liam, the youngest, is turning eighteen and graduating. Soon, all of us will have the option of cutting her out of our lives. And I'm really afraid that my brothers are going to do exactly that. Sean, the middle brother, will probably get sick of her trying to force religion on him soon. (He's becoming a stark and cynical atheist, in contrast to my mother's Irish Catholic.) As adults, we don't technically need our mother. So I'm worried that what's left of our family is going to fall apart soon. Something would have to change, and the change would have to be drastic, to stave that off.

The question of the day is- How do you convince somebody who doesn't want help, or maybe even doesn't know what they're doing wrong, to go to therapy?

I know what you're thinking. "How could she NOT know what she's doing? How could she not know that she's wrong?" Right? Eh... My mother wasn't born like this.

My father died of a brain tumor. He was a brilliant surgeon, and he and his wife had just bought a new house for their two children, plus the one in the oven. He was symptomatic for about two years before he finally collapsed at work. Those symptoms included verbal and physical abuse, severe mood swings, and general loss of lucidity, to name a few. He tried to kill my mother more than once. Once they finally realized what was happening, all the other doctors at the hospital started giving her pity handouts. She was in no position to refuse- not with three children. So she swallowed her pride and took what she could until it was finally over.

My mom's been through some bad stuff. I think it's knocked loose a screw or two. The way I see it, she's become a control freak, desperate to keep her world from going to pieces like that ever again. I just don't know how to tell her that it's going to happen again if she doesn't let go!

I think I'm going to ask a doctor. The way things are, just talking to her makes me love her less. I don't want to sever our connection. I don't want the only feelings I have left for her to be obligation or duty. But we are going to need some serious therapy for that to happen. If I have to tranquilize her and drag her to the shrink, so help me, we are going to try to fix this. Maybe we'll make enough progress for her to attend my brother's graduation.

*sigh* I just needed to get that off my chest. Now, for something completely different!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GbagLB4To