I've rarely considered the possibility that other people's behaviour may have triggered my poor reaction. Perhaps a "mea culpa" syndrome I learned as a Christian?
When a teenager, I was--at times--a real bitch to my mother, and the guilt about that comes back to haunt me every once in a while. Most of my bitchy tantrums had to do with disbelieving anything Mother said.
She claimed something was dangerous, for instance, and I ridiculed her. Then she swore at me or slapped me.
I've come to understand, though, that I had good reasons for distrusting anything she said. She was a pathological liar. When she was sick, for example, and she was lying silently in bed, she started moaning the moment she suspected someone was around. She knew very well how to look as if she was dying.
I was only nine or ten when, every time she became sick, I looked at her, turned around, and mentally classified it as acting.
She also lied about many other situations. There were lots of stories she told that as soon as I started to think for myself I dismissed as huge lies. There was absolutely no reason why I should believe anything she ever said. The truth rarely came out of her lips.
One time she came to our bedroom, early in the morning, and from behind the ajar door said she'd been in a car accident. I laughed. "Yeah, right," I said.
Then she opened the door and I saw a two-inch bleeding cut on her forehead. I still feel guilty about that.
Of course, there were lies she said that I did believe. I am not sure that I have completely gotten her half-truths out of my system yet. Who she truly is and what her life has really been like I will never know. But it is little wonder that every time I mention awful stories from my childhood she denies them and gets really angry.
In fact, that's the main reason we can't have a relationship. She wants me to delete from my mental records every unpleasant experience I had in my life at home and go around saying that I was the happiest child ever.
It appears that my mother failed to make me into a liar like her, and she can't forgive me for that. Seeing me, I believe, makes her face reality, and she can't stand it, so she hates me.
Isn't compulsive lying a symptom of sociopathy? I think Mother should give herself to science. She would make an excellent subject of study.
As for me, it seems only logical that I would distrust every person in the universe. I find it incredibly difficult to believe anyone is trustworthy. I'm going to raise this issue in counselling, as it seems foundational to many of my troubles.
