Where Do I Put My Rage?

How do I put into words the feeling that comes with realizing I've been mistreated and abused my whole life, but I mistook it for affection? How do I explain the confusion that can get so heavy it is physically paralyzing; the confusion caused by thinking I was a bad person my whole life even though I never broke a rule. How do I wrap my own mind around the fact that I've never had a personality or identity of my own, one that was not disgustingly enmeshed with the identity of being my mother's loser daughter, even though I was good at literally everything I tried?

For now, all I seem to have is rage. I don't have words or neat little explanations to explain to people how I could have gone from weirdly obsessed with my mother to wishing I could press charges. I don't have black and white, cut and dry examples of how she was abusive, all I have is how I feel, and how I feel is angry. Pure unadulterated rage, blood boiling, skin burning, fire breathing rage. I know beneath that rage is pain, but it's so specific and so intimately detailed that just thinking about breaking it down and analyzing it in order to heal has me overwhelmed and confused again. I know now, mostly through trying and failing multiple times, that explaining narcissistic abuse to someone who has never experienced it is like explaining what it's like to move things with your mind. People look at you like you are absolutely insane, and most definitely assume you are lying. When it comes to covert narcissist mothers it's even worse, because the levels of abuse are sociopathic.

On the surface, a covert narcissist mother is a dream-like angel. She knows all the right things to say, and says them in a voice that is like candy coated in honey. But what outsiders don't see is that what is being fed to their own child is actually candy-coated poison. For those that haven't experienced it, when you think of your own mother and what makes her so special and wonderful, you know it's the little things. The little details you can't explain to other people - maybe it's the way her voice sounds when she tells you to be careful, or the way she always remembers your favourite food and has it around for you. Maybe it's the way she knows exactly what to say when you're having a bad day in order to make you fell better. Well a covert narcissist mother is like the opposite of that. She remembers all of your insecurities and brings them up at the most inconvenient times. She's always there during your worst moments to give an extra little kick while you're down, and she uses a hateful tone of voice that only a person born from her womb can truly feel the pain of. She belittles your accomplishments and interferes with all your relationships, but then praises you publicly as if she's the world's most supportive mother. She insults you covertly to other people in order to manipulate how they see you, and if you get mad at her she will always play the victim (and win because she's had a head start). If you choose to set a boundary or want a personality of your own, she will start a smear campaign in which your entire reputation is ruined before you have a chance to scuff hers. She will tell people you're a thief and on drugs, and she won't care about how far from the truth it really is. She will salivate with joy while watching you fail, and stew in misery if you have a chance to succeed. She steals your whole life and then discards you at the drop of a hat.

I've seen this abuse described as "soul rape", and I think it's the most accurate description that holds the correct intensity of this feeling. It is an intrusion on your whole self. Forget physical boundaries - it's the emotional, psychological, and spiritual boundaries that are capable of making you feel insane. It's ingrained into your very DNA, it's how you were taught to exist. Your mother comes first, and don't you dare question it. Don't you dare have an opinion or desire of your own. You can't choose what clothes you want to wear or what kind of haircut you want, and if you do you're called selfish for weeks. You feel safer sad than you do happy, as your joy makes you a bigger target for her mocking you, so you change your whole personality in order to not be a happy person. It affects every single decision you make, from what you eat to how you eat it. It makes you doubt every single ability you ever had, because she undermines you the moment you show any strength of your own. She won't teach you any life skills or assist you when you're struggling, but she will laugh behind your back at a;; the things you can't do to take care of yourself. She won't feed you nutritious foods or even care when you're not eating at all, as long as you don't complain to her about it, and when you're too skinny she'll mock you for that too.

It took me until I was 33 years old, just the last year of my life, to even understand I had a separate personality. My entire life was devoted to doing and saying and being what she liked. (And I still somehow have the reputation of being selfish and controlling of her, all because I finally tried to separate myself as a fully grown adult.) Everything was about her, and how I could be more like her. She took everything from me, even the littlest of things (especially the littlest of things). Growing up if a boyfriend gave me flowers, I had to leave them in the kitchen, where she spent most of her time, "so we could all enjoy them". Pretty sure they weren't purchased for "us all" to enjoy them. If I accomplished anything and it was met with the typical bratty "I wish I did something with my life..." I would immediately follow up with how it actually wasn't that great, and how I was actually super flawed and her life as a mother was much much harder and took much more skill. I had a whole career and house of my own at 25 years old, and I still felt like I wasn't enough because I never got my mother's approval. I look back now and I can't believe how I felt about myself then. I BOUGHT A WHOLE HOUSE BY MYSELF! And I still felt like a whole loser. My mother, who insisted it was normal she have a key to my home, would creep around while I was at work and then find things to be mad at me for. She'd even get my sister involved in this weird jealous hatred towards me. The kicker for me was after an almost-attempt at suicide, the means in which I'd meant to do so were still in place in my basement. My unfinished, unused basement. A few days later I got an angry text from my sister, saying how dare I "leave it set up for mom to see". My mother had no reason to go into my house, let alone my basement, which had nothing down there at the time. Once again, my mother was the victim in one of the worst moments of my life, and not only was I neglected in it, I was being condemned for it. I could have gotten through it without anyone even knowing, but because my mother was seeking a reason to people how awful I was, it became a whole new, more complicated trauma to work through.

The rage comes from decades of painful social anxiety in which most of the time I didn't speak at all, and my mother using it to her benefit in the darkest of ways. Lying in front of me, knowing I'd never speak up. The fact that she admittedly grew up with the same social anxiety, being unable to speak or eat around others, and then growing up to be a mother who mocks her daughter for the same. Telling stories about how she was fired at her waitress job because she was too afraid to take out the dessert cart, but yelling "bullshit!" when I told her I was so afraid to use the staff washroom I would pee in a Tupperware container in my car. She used to get mad at me for the missing Tupperware, but I'm still lying because that's what's convenient to her image. I'm making it all up for some reason, because that's what makes me the loser and her the hero. It's painful to think of the years I spent begging her to understand, not realizing she DID understand, she just didn't care.