The Manipulative Mother
When I tell people I have had three scholarships in my life, 2 academic and 1 music they are impressed. When I tell them I studied piano for 12 years but stopped short of Grade 8 (the highest grade), they are impressed. When I say I won every form prize in my junior school, won competitions for speech and drama, poetry reading, the bishop chorister’s award and played the lead ‘Alice’ in Alice in Wonderland, all before the age of 11, they ask me why I don’t do any of it now? But of course I don’t normally tell anyone these things. Because I didn’t win them. My mother did.
My mother cared much for my education and my accomplishments. We were a team she and I.
‘I want you to play the piano.’ she said. ‘Music is one of the greatest pleasures you can know. I was deprived of piano lessons when I was little, but you must have them. I want you to have it all. But you must practise. 30 minutes every day.’
That’s a long time when you’re 5 years old. But when I didn’t, she’d get angry and remind me of her deprivation. She wanted me to be grateful to her. My fingers practised… and my teeth bit into the wood of the piano. I gnawed away at it, the instrument that I had been forced to play. And that I hated. The varnish wore off where I bit it and helped me cope because I could see physical proof of my hate. Hate that I couldn’t share with her (or anyone else), because every time I did, she’d trot out the story of how she would have loved to be in my place. The only respite I had was on holiday. Until she bought me an electric organ for Christmas, because she cared so much that I would suffer from lack of practice.
Then there was the singing.
‘If only your father hadn’t thwarted my career. I was a semi professional opera singer when we met. I could have been great. You will have the chances that I never had.’
I had singing lessons. I was in the general school choir, the special school choir and the church choir. She joined the church choir – despite her ongoing feud with God for making her infertile – because she cared about spending time with me…and drowned out my 11 year old voice with her powerful mezzo soprano. I made it to Grade 5 for singing on her impetus; you can train your ear and your technical skills for these things but singing actually requires a good voice…which I didn’t have.
In academic work, it was similar. I lived in terror of the parent teacher evenings, never sleeping on these nights, waiting for when she’d come back home. To tell me that I hadn’t been trying hard enough, that I was a failure. My ingratitude. In my first school, I was too advanced. She’d taught me to read at 3 years old, which meant I was bored at school. They moved me to a different school. But the same thing happened. Home schooling from Mum meant I was bored and consequently made little effort. The teachers started sending notes home, which I tore up. I was 6 years old. But eventually it caught up with me…
‘We asked her to write an essay about her weekend.’ They said. ‘And she wrote three lines saying she watched television. Don’t you do anything with your child?’
Her shame was overwhelming and my punishment severe. A withdrawal of love for some weeks. But she decided I needed to be moved again because I was more academic than the kids in the state school system. And of course her reputation as a perfect Mum had been sullied.
In my next school, she diligently studied with me at exam times. Drew up schedules, made all the notes for me in every subject, coached me again and again until I was word perfect. I won the form prize every year and was top in all my classes for 4 years. In the last year of junior school I won the second scholarship for 10% fees (instead of the top one for 20% that I’d already got). I hated the girl who won the 20% scholarship. It was because of her, my mother didn’t love me as much.
The cracks were showing though. The strain of having to be top of the class meant that I had started to resort to stealing at school in an effort to break out of my prison of the perfect daughter.
‘Don’t you buy anything for your child?’ said the Head Teacher to my mother when they found out about the thefts.
Her humiliation, both for the loss of the scholarship and my stealing, meant that I was moved to my fourth school. An even more prestigious school famed for their excellent academic record.
On paper, I have the perfect mother. She sacrificed all her time for me, her career for some years, her money, sent me to the best schools, encouraged musical and academic endeavors (notably, she did not encourage art or sport – she had nothing to contribute in this area). I was the proof of her fantastic mothering skills. And as an adoptive mother, it was doubly important that she prove herself. The prizes, the scholarships, the distinctions in all my exams. This was the girl she loved. Because as a brilliant reflection of her mothering, I made her love herself. Finally she was loved. But the price of getting the love was high. Because my mother was a grade A manipulator. She persuaded everyone – including me – that she only had my best interests at heart, whilst in reality…it was all about her. Her huge insecure ego needed feeding.
It was around that time I started to pick out my eyelashes. I found out years later that it’s actually a ‘syndrome’ called trichotillomania but usually manifests itself with the obsessive pulling out of the hair on the head. It’s caused by severe stress and anxiety. I believe I pulled out my eyelashes (instead of my hair) in an effort to avoid detection, the first creation of a secret life. I have pictures of me with ‘bald’ eyelids for about 2 years, but my mother never noticed (nor did anyone else).
As she drove me forward in her ambitions, I started deceiving her about the little things and then the big things. I had a secret life. One where I didn’t have to be perfect. And one which she would hate and hate me for it. And as she started to find out more and more about the daughter she didn’t know, the smoking, the promiscuity, the lying… she started to hate me, withdrawing her love and approval – thus perpetuating the duality in my character. for years I had striven so hard to please but I couldn’t maintain the image that she’d created for me. There was a remnant that half-heartedly tried to cover up my behavior as a last ditch effort to gain her love but by 15, I’d given up trying to be what she wanted.
‘What kind of monster are you?’ She’d say. ‘I understand now that nature is stronger than nurture. I can’t fight your genes.’
Eventually she couldn’t stand the bad girl any longer and I was sent to boarding school – the fifth school – (albeit with a music scholarship). But it didn’t last long. Without any possibility of love and approval, I no longer needed to be the perfect daughter. Rootless, directionless and without any knowledge of who I really was, and even what I really wanted I found an outlet in sex and alcohol… which shamed me into leaving for my sixth school. I’d started to copy her pattern of running away from trouble.
I don’t believe in blame. I don’t believe in anything but acts and consequences. It was my destiny to go on this journey to understand myself, my mother and see the plight of others around me. My situation is not uncommon and that is why it is so insidious. Insecure parents, who mould their children into perfect reflections of their parenting. But I am privileged to be able to know it, although it’s taken me a long time to realize this. My heart breaks for my mother. A woman deprived of love herself, growing up in a poor environment, desperately insecure and playing second fiddle to her brother, the first born and adored son. And for her to then discover she was infertile. How she must have wept. How it became an obsession to become a mother, a perfect mother at any cost. No matter how hard she tried, she failed. And now, that we haven’t been in contact for 10 years or so, I weep for her some more. For us. For the child I could have been. For the mother she tried so hard to be. And for her now, a woman who has lost her only child.
When I look at my children, I wonder how my issues will be borne out on them. I hope I will be able to give them the ability to be themselves. To support their choices, even if I disagree with them. To let them experience life. And in this respect my mother has given me the greatest gift on earth. The experience of what not to do.
Article first published on Huffington Post 30/08/2013
Category: Childhood & Adoption
So, you are not going to take responsibility for any of your poor life decisions? I read your whole post from beginning to end, and while I think your mother may have been pushy in many areas, it’s not like she ever pushed you in a bad direction. She seemed to push you toward success, and you simply rebelled. If I rebelled toward every directive that my mother ever gave me, I’d be a hot mess. However parenting is about directing your child. Perhaps your mother pushed you out of frustration – not for her own lack of self, but for fear of what you were becoming. She obviously did NOT want a bad future for you, so it seems to an outside reader that you are blaming your mother where you should blame yourself. No mom is perfect. None. I had to practice piano 30 minutes daily as a child, and I hated it with a passion, however, I didn’t EAT the piano because of it. Nor did let my entire life revolve around it. I freaking practiced 30 minutes a day, hated it, and then played outside and forgot all about it when I was done! I also didn’t go out of my way to embarrass my folks when they made me do things I didn’t want to do. That’s part of being a kid – you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to do. It sort of seems that she helped set up the perfect future for you, and you ruined it with your selfishness. Also, it has been proven that nature is stronger than nurture through studies of twins raised separately across the world. You had a good mom. You need to accept the choices you made, and clean up your own mess.
You are incorrect about “Nature vs. Nurture.” Both play a role in forming an individual, and it is impossible to measure how much or how little one or the other plays. Certainly having a traumatic childhood with an emotionally abusive mother would affect someone’s attitude towards life, regardless of that person’s “nature.”
The author’s mother didn’t just make her do things she didn’t want to do. She repeatedly ignored her child and made her love conditional. If her child didn’t live up to her strict standards, she was ignored. This is not being a good mom.
I grew up in a strikingly similar situation. I practiced piano 30 minutes a day, then later an hour, then later two hours. I stuck with it longer than the author did, and further repressed my emotions. My musical training mostly involved learning classical sheet music. In my teens I started to gain a love for writing music and my interest in playing classical dwindled. As I started doing worse at local competitions, my mother told me I wasn’t creative (something she used to tell me when I was a child, for some reason) and urged me to go back to practicing the sheet music. She knew what was best. My happiness didn’t matter. She didn’t see herself as creative, so I couldn’t be either. I just had to work hard and succeed where she failed.
Of course it was more than just the piano. It was swim team, academics, church, succeeding more than my cousins, and through it all constantly pretending to be part of an emotionally stable family. I remember countless times I would fail to immediately understand a math concept as a child and complain or ask to take a break. This, of course, was not allowed. If I started crying, that meant a spanking. As we grew older things like “talking back” that would earn a reprimand from most mothers would earn 2-3 weeks of being grounded to the house, or a week of “solitary” in our rooms, until we admitted we were wrong.
No one is perfect, and many people make mistakes. But my mother knew exactly what she was doing. The consciously tried to forcibly mold me exactly as she pleased, and when I started to take my own shape, she tried to shove everything back the way she wanted.
I know how my mother was. As you were not in my position (being not me, and not my mother’s daughter
, you cannot know. But you are entitled to your opinion.
Your comment sounds like it has a lot of anger in it …If you are angry at me about my feelings about my mother, it obviously strikes a chord with you! It’s your choice whether to force your child to do things against his or her will (perhaps mother knows best – and after all who knows?) but I certainly won’t be. That isn’t parenting to me.
But I am not angry for my childhood. Not in the slightest. We all have our own paths. Mine involved the dynamic between my mother and I. As did hers…and I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have that experience.