My Mother Died And I Feel Nothing

My mother died that day.

I didn’t feel anything. Maybe a little heaviness, but if I were to define the word heaviness, it means “heavy with nothing.” No tears, not one. And certainly no sadness. The relief I thought would come didn’t have much effect, and even though I sat down and gave myself a chance to feel whatever emotions might be coming around the corner, the truth was and still is… I don’t feel anything.

You can’t pretend not to feel anything when your mother dies. This is not an act one can do to stave off tears, nor is it a kind of self-protective coping skill designed to help the newly bereaved. This is what it feels like to be the adult child of an unloving mother with severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder, who freely abuses her children verbally, sexually, mentally, and emotionally, daily.

Although it may not have been as powerful as a tsunami, relief came; I knew once and for all that, the woman who had spent most of her life trying to destroy mine was finally dead.

Her last words to me were three years before she died.

“Fuck you, Ruby. Go to hell. Your love is worthless to me.”

When I was a child, I used to say that my mother’s last words to me might have been: “I hate you.” Sixty years later, I was able to see the prophecy fulfilled. After a lifetime of trying to please her, help her, love her, and heal her, I made it clear that I was truly worthless to her.

My mind melted hearing those words. I had seizures over the next few months and even lost my sight for a day. Her words had finally done what they had always intended to do: destroy me completely. I turned away from her, from her world, her tortures, her insults, and her utter disgust with me – her only daughter. You walked away to save my life.

There are no good memories to look back on. If she did something good for me, or rather, if she allowed me to believe that things were good and that I might be happy, it was because she was setting me up for a fall. She liked to give me a false sense of confidence so that at the right moment she could throw everything away. This was a pattern I recognized very early on. It was premeditated and well-intentioned; Her strikes were precise, military, and always headed towards the kill. Everything was personal and there were no boundaries.

Most people love their mothers. I wanted that, so much. I tried but it seemed that having a loving mother was not my destiny. decent. I survived. I did my best. But for people like me, survivors of unloving mothers — and there are millions just like me — we find little compassion because we are stigmatized by the all-encompassing mother myth, which looms large and has no compassion for the abused.

“Oh, but she’s your mother…”

The mother myth, along with the mother taboo, is the idea that because she is “your mother,” she gets some kind of success; Her actions can never be judged wrong, no matter what she does, because she is “your mother.” So when victims of abuse openly express their feelings, or lack thereof, over the death of their unloving mother, there is no one to tell them “It’s okay.” There is just this insistence on guilt and invalidation of the pain that the victim has experienced all her life. “But she is your mother…” The myth of the mother supports the idea that she gave you life, and could even set that life on fire if she wanted to.

We live in an age where we are under a lot of pressure to be the “bigger person.” We have to rise when they fall; We have to forgive and forget… Hate will eat us alive and love will save us. Superlatives and meme inventory. Where is the reality? I wouldn’t accept abuse from a stranger, so why would I take it from my mother? Is being the bigger person how submissive you are in the face of naughty abuse? Sorry, not me. What happened to me was not good.

I’m not sure when we decided that we all needed to be perfect people, but it sure would have been a disservice at a time like this, when my mother had just died. For me, to feel anything other than what I feel, at this point, would be a lie I’m not willing to live. My mother is dead, and while I’m not screaming “Ding dong the witch’s dead” I’m being honest with myself. Her death leaves me with more air on this earth to breathe.

Only a few days before her death, I came to terms with my true feelings, and wrote what I call a “confession.”

The confessional stated the freest words she had ever spoken:

I hate you.
I will never forgive you.
I look forward to hearing about your passing.

We don’t allow ourselves the truth, do we? We have bought into this lie that words like “forgiveness” are a magic wand that will anoint our hearts, yet no two people can define the word forgiveness the same way. Reserve a tolerance for spilled drinks and childish quarrels between friends. Would you forgive the person who killed your child or raped your friend? And if you are a healthy, self-loving person… why on earth would you forgive such a thing?

We’ve learned that we need to forgive so as not to carry the burden of someone else’s memory, but does anyone forgive and forget? Would you forgive the person who ruined your life, or at least try to do so every chance he got? And if that person is your mother, does he get a pass simply because he gave you life? Will you forgive this mother forever, even if she deliberately tortured you?

Not in my book. Because I’m a realist. I live in the here and now, and if I want to live as a healthy person, I can’t keep sweeping my feelings under the rug until the world around me feels comfortable with my state of development. I’m so tired of having to be the bigger person so the cultured world can accept me for who I am.

The truth is, I hate my mother, I will never forgive her, and now that she’s truly dead, I can take comfort in knowing that.

Hatred is not active. Don’t eat me alive. And unforgiveness doesn’t give me cancer either. I’m okay with owning my reality. Being real frees me. I’m glad my mother no longer has to suffer herself because it was painful for her to be consumed with hatred for her children. Or maybe not. Is the narcissist aware of his personality disorder?

We throw around the word “narcissist” like we throw away memes. It has become an insult, rather than a word that represents the very serious condition. My mother was a classic, verbally abusive narcissist. We, children of verbal abusers, do not get the same kind of attention as those children who have been physically abused, but as many of you know, the words that come from mothers’ mouths are the words that can make or break your entire life.

However, verbal abuse is not limited to words alone; It’s about bringing someone down emotionally, destroying their self-esteem, making them afraid to live, instilling insecurities in them, and for abusers like my mother, it’s about the thrill of building a child up so that the downfall is more satisfying. My mother was only happy with me when she could determine the right moment to attack, and that right moment was always when I was happiest. Then she could pour her venom on any success or victory I might achieve.

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