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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I had a really challenging relationship with my mom. She was incredibly strong, incredibly smart, and had at least some narcissistic and/or borderline personality disorder characteristics. She also, I think, really wanted children, and I think she wanted us to be happy, at least as subsets of her self -- not as people in our own right.

But that sort of inkling of how it could be, and her drilling it into us from childhood that only she loved us, that we could not trust other people, that she knew best? That made it really hard to develop a sense of self and a map of the world that was realistic and accurate.

I had a lot of the ambivalence that I read in your story. It helped me to remember that when we love someone, we take pleasure in their happiness and feel pain when they are sad. Those times when she vindictively took pleasure that something didn't work out (even if she wouldn't admit it, the satisfaction was clear) or when she was jealous of and minimized my success? That wasn't love. That was pathology.

It was a pathology woven into her self-identity. She wouldn't go to counseling (I bet you can list the reasons with me!), and she could not seem to bring herself to change. And she rewrote history -- she couldn't acknowledge some of the things she had done, so they never happened.

When I was older and on my own, I had to make the choice to be more distant. I didn't contact her for a few months after I left home, but we did work back into a relationship together. I think you *have* to be realistic about what will happen from contact. Can you talk every weekend, say, and come away from it feeling at least neutral? Or will you end up feeling worse? Doesn't matter what she intends -- if the latter, it's not doing either of you any good.

You might need to go "no contact." You might find a balance at some other point. Either way, know that taking care of ourselves and maintaining healthy boundaries is a gift we give every single person in our lives. Nobody can do that but you, and without it, it all falls apart eventually.

Be good to yourself. Give yourself time to think about it, and make the choices that make sense to you, with or without input from others. You will know what you need. Then pay attention to what happens, and adjust your course. Sometimes it's a moving target.

The other thing that helped me was the Desiderata: http://mwkworks.com/desiderata.html

Find what helps you, and good luck!
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