by Leah Curtis

Created on: June 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

My mother isn't a very nice person. I say this not with malice but rather as a sad observation. My mother can, and is, a nice person most of the time but it's the times that she's not that she wrecks havoc on her children's lives. It has affected me profoundly because my relationship with my mother has affected my relationships with all of my other family members.

Up until I was in my mid thirties I thought I had the perfect family. Nice parents, nice brothers and sisters, only a few problems here and there. I didn't live that close to my parents and I didn't see them very often, which is probably why I chose to romanticize how perfect my family was. It was and it never had been. I just chose to remember it that way. In my mid-to-late 30's I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and my world, as I knew it, fell apart. My parents also moved ten minutes away from me, to "help" me, as they put it. My mother certainly did help me. She helped drain my bank account and began to use me as her own personal ATM machine. She had developed a fondness for bingo and casinos. The problem was she didn't like paying for her own habits and I was on sick leave from work and after all, as she told me day after day, they had moved close to me to "help me out". Medication eventually stabilized my illness and I confronted my mother about my status as her personal bank machine. She was absolutely shocked. How dare I think that? We didn't speak for a month.

There is a pattern here with my mother. Whenever my mother starts screaming and yelling everyone runs for cover. Except me. Up until 5 years ago I did as well until our above mentioned ATM fight. Once I had stood up to her I couldn't back down anymore. Now that's not to say that everything is perfect between my mother and myself. I absolutely hate to admit this because it makes me feel so unloved, so used, so utterly hurt and bewildered but during my depressive episodes, times when I have barely been able to get out of bed, my mother has gotten me to agree to pay their mortgage on their formerly mortgage-free house (gambling doesn't come cheap) and make their car payments. I know I don't have any legal obligation to do so but if I've agreed to do something I feel I have a moral obligation to follow through. It makes me sad that my own mother would use my illness against me and wait until my defences were all but non-existent to get me to agree to something that under normal circumstances I never would have agreed to.

I didn't write this to say what a shrew my mother is. I love my mother deeply. I just don't like her a lot of the time. I don't like anyone who takes any kind of joy in being mean just for the sake of being mean. When she calls me a mental case and tells me how all of my brothers and sisters hate me she later tells she only said that because she was mad at me for something or other.

My parents have been married for over fifty years which is a big accomplishment in this day and age. I know my mother loves me in her own way. I love her as well. However, I do think it's time for her to move near one of my other siblings to "help" them out now.

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