Answered Jan 2, 1019
Everyone who actually has met my mother views her as a dangerous, mindlessly hateful sociopath.
Everyone who hasn’t met her projects their mommy-worship fantasies, and assume her to be a wonderful person. I have been persistently called a liar after describing her actual behaviour.
The most charitable interpretation of my mother is that she has stroke induced brain damage. Which causes a total lack of empathy, unprovoked rage, violence, and unrealistic expectations.
She had at least two known strokes before the age of thirty. And around age fifty, got her head scanned, and was found to have more lesions, where the brain tissue had died.
She knows that she has had multiple strokes, but has directly denied having brain damage.
She ought to have been forceably confined to a secure facility, and never released. I wouldn’t care if it was a psych ward or a prison. But she was never held accountable for any of her actions. And instead, was enabled to raise and abuse three children.
She also had very poor decision-making. As I’ve described in one of my other answers, she expected all of her children to continue living with her, after we were adults. And expected for none of us to ever be employed. And expected my father to continue sending her most of his income for the rest of her life. So effectively child support for children who were actually adults.
She also tried to gaslight me with the idea that I was severely mentally retarded, and that I lacked the minimal intelligence to ever work or live independently. I never believed this, but she persisted for years.
She has directly admitted to having criminally abused all of her children. But also refused to comprehend why anyone might form a negative opinion about this. And has also attempted to minimise or deny the severity of her behaviour. While admitting that she doesn’t remember large portions of her life.
Her level of violence had a risk of going all the way to homicide.
She has basically admitted to lacking any empathy for other human beings. And lacking any insight on the impact of chronic violence, and chronic psychological abuse.
She had a lot of violent fantasies, and loved hyper-violent war themed movies, which she would watch over and over. And would boast that her career aspiration was be employed as a mercenary soldier, because killing people would be fun. She would say this seriously, as if it were a perfectly viable and reasonable plan, and never admitted that it was just a fantasy.
She loved threatening to actually kill her children.
When I was thirteen, a neighbour tipped off the authorities, who started an abuse investigation. They were going to start sending a social worker to our home for periodic monitoring visits. She responded by grabbing all of us children, and moving to another part of the country, and even attempted to leave before my father got home from work that day. She also suggested that she was considering falsely accusing my father of molesting my sister, in order to justify running.
When I was a bit older, my sister started acting out by frequently hitting me, just because she was in a bad mood, and had learned by example. My mother told me that I was expected to tolerate it. My mentally ill brother put me in serious fear for my safety, and it was clear that my mother believed it would be perfectly acceptable if he assaulted me. A solid majority of women utterly fail to comprehend why I removed myself from that situation at eighteen.
She seriously believed that she could continue physically abusing all of her children after we were adults, and that we would just tolerate it. She toned it down somewhat after the legal investigation, and also when she noticed that my brother and I were physically bigger than her, but she never completely stopped hitting.
One time, when i was seventeen, I was driving (because she couldn’t drive), and she waved her hand in my face, just barely stopping short of repeatedly slapping me. While the car was moving, in traffic. So I had to explain to her that this was dangerous, and that she could find herself dealing with other adults if she caused a crash. She actually offered to sit in the back seat, basically acknowledging that she didn’t feel that she could control herself if I was within reach.
She has directly stated the intent to criminally abuse my sister’s children. My idiot sister still has contact with her, but set a strict rule on her kids to never be in a room alone with my mother.
While working in a rest home, she criminally abused one of the elderly residents, but managed to get away with it. And she didn’t even bother to deny this when I confronted her about it.
Both my father and my sister concur with my view that, my mother’s physical and psychological abuse was the main cause of my brother’s suicide.
If I were ever in the same room with her again, she would very possibly physically attack me.
Years ago, I spoke with my uncle (i.e. my mother’s bother), and he stated that, my mother was hateful, and prone to unprovoked violence, even when she was a child. She was born evil.
The last I heard (around 2005), my mother had the idea that I was tapping her telephone to spy on her. And she told my sister that, if I ever come anywhere near her, she will call the police, with whatever criminal accusation she can come up with, to try to cause me to be arrested/charged/incarcerated.
The entire female half of society still treats me like I am the bad person for daring to cut the umbilical cord. About fifty percent will deny that any mother would ever behave like she did. And the other fifty percent will blame me, and tell me that I caused and deserved it. I jettisoned the abusive mother many years ago, but I still have to live with the abusive society (or, again, just the female half). I’ve been told that I don’t have the right or even the ability to stay away from her.
As I said at the start of this answer, the only people who comprehend are those who have actually met my mother. And absolutely none of them want anything to do with her, either.