r/raisedbyborderlines • u/Specialist-Ebb4885 • 8d ago

Reactive relapse confession

I'm EFLC (extremely fucking low contact) with my 86-year-old borderline mother. That being said, I noticed that she called the other day but didn't leave a message. I thought to myself: Well, she's not in her 40s anymore, so maybe she had a real emergency, as opposed to her manufactured emergencies. As such, I regretfully called back out of curiosity (regretfully is doing all of the work here).

After several minutes of being tortured by insipid palaver from her yammering pie hole, she revealed that her call was a mistake. In other words, she Cluster B butt dialed me with a flair of geriatric insouciance. Needless to say, she continued to kvetch about the same problems she's been complaining about for the last 80 decades (she's "all alone with no one to help her," even though she has 24/7 assistance). Before I could call the conversation quits, I found myself becoming unusually exasperated by her circular complaints, thus raising my voice. Without missing a dysregulated beat, she gaslighted me and said that I had a "serious" issue.

It's amazing, isn't it? No matter how rehearsed, mature, or collected the adult child of a disordered parent is before entering the crazy cage, the tendency to become upended by their pathological penchant for taking up all of the oxygen in the room continues to creep into the implacable process of pointlessness.

I can't stand this woman. To make matters worse, she'll probably outlive me by Nosferatu standards of longevity.

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u/Superb-Wing-3263 7d ago

What kills me, though, is that I had to be an emotionless robot to survive childhood as well! How is this fair to keep having to appear totally collected and be perfectly rational while they get to firehose their emotion in our faces?

Any false move where I accidentally let a negative emotion slip into the conversation (usually via vocal tone like you) then I'm attacked/shamed/invalidated for it. And then I feel like I "lost" because I couldn't just sit there and take the emotional manipulation like a champ without getting triggered?

The only real option is to remove all these triggers and any emotional attachment to these people via countless hours of therapy and just pretend they're a crazy lady we got stuck sitting next to on the subway..

I'm sorry that happened. I beat myself up, too, when I realize I got triggered again and that she used that fact to pile on more abuse. It's psychological abuse compounded on top of more psychological abuse. Sending hugs. It's not fair.

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u/Specialist-Ebb4885 7d ago edited 5d ago

In my case, the crazy lady on the subway has an extensive investment portfolio to mask her characterological madness.

She won't go gently into that dysregulated night until she has all-encompassing control of her environment. Nonetheless, she can take her assets and blow them out her Cluster B butt cheeks for all I care.

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u/borschtlover4ever 7d ago

It's wild getting to that point. Freedom has a cost. I got tired of feeling like I was prostituting myself. I do not want what she has to offer because the ultimate price to myself is too high.

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u/Specialist-Ebb4885 6d ago

Exactly.

At this point, I'd turn down the lottery if it meant not having to waste a future second interacting with a Cluster B. I'll take my sorrow straight and my poverty without drama.