Joe’s mother is a cruel, strange woman. No one has ever been more mean and hurtful to me than she has and my relationship with her ended almost two years ago after she verbally attacked me. The things that she said to me in the midst of her rage were incredibly hurtful, based on false information and projections. She used everything she knew about me to attack me, including my sexual assault, calling me a “victim” and telling me that if she could give any advice to her son it would be “to fucking run.”
What’s even stranger is that Pam was my biggest fan when Joe and I started dating; she told people that I was “the one” and she showered me with gifts and affection. But deep inside our relationship there was a ruthless and terrifying hatred for me that she slowly fueled as I let her in to my life more and more.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to talk about this incident without reliving it; strangely, it’s been more traumatic to me than some of the other things I’ve gone through in my 24 years. It was hurtful and deeply upsetting… I’m not usually the person that people dislike. And I certainly have never been disliked by a boyfriend’s mother before.
I went through many stages of dealing with the incident, first it was sadness and shock. I was trembling and silent when she unleashed her venom on me, unable to form a thought, let alone a sentence. Then, my emotions changed to indignation and anger, as I recalled every sentence she spoke to me and retaliated in my head, finally able to respond. My fully formed hatred for her wasn’t too far off, and soon I was able to dismiss her with the single sentence: “I think she’s just a bad person.”
Many, many conversations with Joe, Mom, Robert and other friends have started to reshape my perspective, motivated largely by the resolve to rid myself of bitterness. Bitterness is what fueled Pam’s rage in the first place and I refuse to ever intentionally hurt someone the way she did. I need to let go. It would be easier to cling to my black-and-white version of her persona, but that would also make me similar to her. It’s always more difficult to choose the right shade of gray, but that doesn’t make it less right.
I’ve started to humanize her again. Whether it’s allowing my mom to gently paint a different picture of Pam’s life than the version I have stuck in my head, or it’s me and Joe noticing how socially awkward and strained she can be in groups, or it’s Robert describing personality disorders and the psychosis that accompanies them.
There are a lot of reasons for why Pam tried to hurt me by every means necessary… not the least of which was her anger at the girl who took her son away from her. But I also believe that Pam has borderline personality disorder, a disorder that allows room only for severe, black and white understandings of the world around the individual. A person with BPD may have an unstable sense of self and a quick transition between love and hate for the people around them. Pam fits the bill.
Part of me is grateful for this idea of a psychiatric diagnosis to help explain away her bizarre outburst towards me, but another part of me wants to just make her a terrible person, with no explanation for her behavior. I’m leaning towards the former, with the goal of letting go the things/people I can’t control. She’s stolen so much energy and time and emotion from me already, and I need to be free of her hold on me. I never want a personal relationship with her again. I can’t trust her and I think she is venomous. But I don’t want her to come between Joe and I, or between me and the rest of Joe’s family.
I don’t know that I am in the forgiving state of mind right now, but maybe someday?