Laceration №7, processed further

Recognizing my mother's grooming for what it is.

I used to think that my mother's attention toward me was "kind" because she was the only one who "cared" about me. I saw that she spent much more time with me than an average mother and although I felt like I should feel thankful for that, I simply could not, no matter how much I tried. I wanted her to disappear and I wanted to not have anything to do with her. I see that my mother purposefully exploited the fact that no adult around gave an f about me. She used it to her advantage that no grownup would protect me from her.

It was the sad truth: many relatives watched her obviously ill antics and assaults on me and did not say or do anything. I bet she even tested around just how far she could go without anyone batting an eye. She'd squeeze me, bite my neck and suck on it and lick my ears around others — relatives and strangers alike — without receiving a single comment. So she did it all the time. It was painful to me, I screamed for her to stop, squirmed and pushed her with all my strength and ran away as soon as I could. No one ever told her to stop or to leave me alone. They just stood waiting for her to finish doing whatever she was doing to continue conversations with her. I think it wrecked me further that even when others were around, it was all the same. Those people were like moving stone statues. It feels extremely painful and sad to realize there is no other explanation to their passivity than them simply not caring AT ALL that I was born and that shit was happening to me.

My mother used to tell me I was an unpleasant and an unusual child, that others do not like me and that I make it difficult for anyone to feel care for me. I believed that and assumed that was why no one wanted to do anything with me except my mother. And she herself would act like she only does it out of pity for me.

I was a perfect victim of grooming given this situation of non-care. People usually think the groomer must be someone not too close to the family, enticing the child with the attention they are not getting from parents. For me, the groomer was THE family. On the outside, it looked like no one can sexually abuse or groom me because my mother was always around. But she was not around to protect me. She was around because from the very beginning of my life she was grooming me into being in a relationship with her.

Knowing this, a lot of her confusing behaviors and reactions make more sense now. Although her grooming worked — I was only a little child after all — it was far from being satisfying to her. I hardly ever responded to her with joy, I resisted everything and avoided her as much as possible. I kept my boundaries to the best of my child and later teenage abilities. The issue for me was that she did not work, was always around and therefore attacked me nonstop. She was obviously sexually frustrated and most likely wished to have regular full blown lesbian sex with me. She'd often call me stupid because I'm as if not understanding something very obvious "in the air" that anyone else would get much better than me. But she would not explain what it is. I had to understand it on my own to become “normal”. At regular intervals, she'd go batshit crazy over a little thing and scream at me at the top of her lungs about how stupid I am for at least 40 minutes straight. I had to listen and cry else she would go on for hours. She'd yell about how I live all my life wrong — how I am not the person I should be and how I do not do what according to her I am supposed to do, like “being pretty for others” — and she’d storm around the house, yelling and scream-crying about how her life is ruined because she does not get what she needs and how no matter what she does, "it" does not work out. Then she'd calm down and when I was small, she'd even say "sorry". She'd also say she does not know why she acts out of control 🥺 Aww, poor thing.

One thing I recognize as part of her grooming now is her schemes related to movie-watching. Firstly, she did not allow me to go to the cinema or watch something with other children and disliked me watching any "modern", entertaining stuff on my own, so I hardly did (she was always around to notice and raise hell.) According to her, I was supposed to watch movies only with her, and they had to be ONLY romance. Mostly the 70s and 80s romantic movies that she watched in her childhood and youth and wanted to rewatch with me. It was still never just chilling and enjoying some screen time together. There was a specific purpose that my mother voiced to me directly: she wanted me to understand her "ideal of romance". It was relayed as a sort of responsibility for me, on the same level as completing homework and washing dishes when requested. At certain points throughout the movie and at the end, she'd eagerly ask me for commentary. What do I think, what do I feel. Isn’t this stuff amazing? Isn’t this what life is about? I told her every single time I dislike these types of movies. They are not what I enjoy watching and I do not care much for the plot or the characters. When I did comment on certain things, it was never the "right" thing. After watching, we almost always got into a fight or an altercation about how I "do not get it". It used to confuse me why she keeps making me watch this stuff with her when she doesn't like what I say — she could watch it on her own all she wanted. I told her that many times, and she'd respond with a fake inviting smile, telling me I "must" be there when she watches them.

Another thing was how she'd sometimes tell me we will watch a movie and I'd want to get over with it asap and offer to watch it soon. But every time, she'd agree to watch her romance ideas only in the evening, even if we both had the time earlier. It HAD to be evening and it had to be dark. I suppose she hoped to set up "the mood" before we go to bed. She'd also time her movie requests "randomly", asking me to just go and watch a “perfect” romance with her while I was busy with something else just because she herself was suddenly in the mood for it. Usually I refused and we had another altercation. I feel relieved I rebelled against her nonstop and I see now it pissed her off into insanity that I avoided going down many dangerous paths with her simply on my gut feeling alone, without understanding what exactly those dangers were.

I also now recognize that her getting mad at me in the middle of a conversation as if "out of nowhere" was often because I failed to respond to her flirting and hidden requests. I used to think she was simply unstable. But I don't think a truly unstable person would manage to act so purposefully malicious and calculative every day of their waking life.

Every day. Every day she was there, engaging me, giving me no time and space to myself. Occasionally getting her ways.

Our conversations were usually vague and weird, with many double bottoms, and I could see that. I could tell my mother would try to say something else behind her words, but would act stubborn and respond only to what she ACTUALLY said. And for that, she labelled me crazy, nuts, completely unadapted to life and completely not understanding how life works. I am a smart person and many recognized that, and my mother told me often how none of that mattered, how I was actually a big idiot and a fool because I keep failing to understand this one important thing that she keeps trying to make me understand. That I think I am smart, think too much of myself. That I am a retard because I do not understand certain things, the things that “actually” matter.

Well, it could save her a lot of trouble to uNdErStAnD that her daughter does not owe sex to her.

She somewhat lovebombed me, too, telling me I am the best person one time so that she could tell me I am the worst three times more. I chose to believe neither of her sides. Not the kind one, not the evil one. But the point is that I still wanted to and needed to believe in something and all of this was too complicated for me to process at the time. I turned myself off from the reality because I refused to attach myself to it on my mother’s terms but did not know any other ways.

I always felt these and other things were not right and wished for them to stop. I felt I was in a nuts place, in hell. The unfortunate thing was that I was only a child and no one cared. There was no adult who interfered or provided alternatives for me. My mother made it clear I was her possession and others just accepted that and played along. Because many found my family weird and avoided it, they avoided me, too. I had no idea how other people lived. People simply did not approach me, let alone talked to me. It was as if they could sense a brightly burning "untouchable" mark on me. Not only was I sexually abused and raped as an infant and toddler, I was also "taken". I was owned, I was a slave. My entire life revolved around my mother sexually abusing me and obsessively trying to pull me into "more" through incessant manipulations, blackmail, punishment and other kinds of abuse, then abusing me when it did not work or worked differently from how she wanted it.

I don't know why no one cared to stop it. Oh well.

I had a clear mark on me that "romancing with a parent" was my life, I behaved like 100% sexually abused and groomed child, and when seeing this mark, instead of pulling me out of it, adults distanced themselves and recoiled in disgust, making me sink further, as if I deserved that kind of life and chose it and must be punished with abandonment for such "wrong" of a choice.