I don't even know where to start with this. Tw death.

[treesgrowslowly]

Easterncappy,

I am so so proud of you.

You are navigating one of the hardest situations we face as humans - how to protect ourselves from the very person we were supposed to be protected BY....

...The term "mind****" doesn't even begin to cover it. 

I am so glad that your therapist can see and affirm for you, that you are walking the journey out of PD parental abuse hell. And you are going to be ok. You really are. You are doing the things we do to be ok.

Patrick Teahan has a video on highly sensitive people and in that video he says that when he works with clients, it is so so common that they are the ONLY ONE in the FOO who saw it and got out. Everyone else stayed in the hell, and one person in the entire family gets themselves out and to therapy.

You are that person in your family tree.

Your child's life will blossom in ways that your messed up toxic FOO members cannot even imagine. From where they sit, all they can live is more of their own toxic stew. They honestly cannot even imagine the sorts of relational, emotionally rich, emotionally safe experiences you and your child and partner will feel together over the next many years.

Deep inside you was the awareness that you were NOT going to put another generation through what you went through. Your mama bear protective self has served you well.

I can promise you that the older you get, the further this is in the rearview mirror, the more you will feel so so grateful for the part of you that walked away from all of the people who did not protect you.

Watching your child grow up in love and feeling safe is going to continue to be very healing for you, and a source of on-going strength.

Much admiration. I admire your work to heal and recover.

Until your child is old enough to say it to you, let us be the ones to thank you profusely for giving that child the childhood you never got. And giving yourself this life you are building for yourself, with real peace and emotional safety.

You deserve to feel safe and protected. Always.

Trees

[moglow]

EC, I'll venture the belief that you can feel sorry and have compassion for her, whatever pain, confusion, etc she's dealing with and STILL know that the two of you together are not a good thing. One doesn't necessarily preclude the other. Bear in mind that I also believe you can love [agape, love for all mankind] and still not like the person very much. For me that means not wishing them ill, not wanting them in pain or suffering, and recognizing my own limitations at the same time.

When my Dad [stepfather] passed away, we'd just lost Daddy a few short months before. Mother CLUNG to me, as if I was some rescue for her. There was no recognition or acknowledgment of what I/we [my brothers] -her children- were also going through - that we were also grieving, struggling, facing our regrets and painful memories. All of us were having a hard time, but she expected that we "be there for her" whatever that meant and whatever she demanded. More often than not, we were told long after where we'd let her down. That information would have been good to have when we could actually have helped, actual conversations of what was needed. No, we were supposed to know, all while dealing with our own stuff and life in general.

But to come at you this way, that your father had passed ... Granted there is no "right" way to share such news, but appearing like that and pounding on doors with stranger in tow? That's not it. The presumption that "she needs your help..." is one person's opinion, put in place by this same mother. That's not your stuff - it's theirs. You don't have to take it on.

[easterncappy]

 

This morning I got a text message from the local hospital system saying something along the lines of "(Cappy's mom's name), please let us know how your recent visit to Urgent Care went!".

There is some context that needs to be explained here, lol.

My mom would always fake mystery illnesses if SHTF and she felt like she couldn't weasel her way out of it. One time, she invented a new diagnosis just to get out of work. She would recruit me to falsify medical documents and whatever. I'd have to take her to Urgent Care a lot over things that weren't really happening.

For those who don't know, Urgent Care is sort of like the Emergency Room except for things that aren't emergencies, like an infection or sprain or bad allergies. It's significantly cheaper and quicker than the Emergency Room. My mom had no problem spending $60 to be able to put on a show about how deathly ill she is. Although, being an immigrant, I guess she didn't fully grasp that no one thinks what's going on with you is that serious if you only went to Urgent Care about it. They did not have these in our country and the actual Emergency Room is a bit out of the price range for just trying to get attention.

That all being said, I'm not her emergency contact. She has her own phone number. The message was addressed to her first name. So I'm thinking that after the police told her to not contact me anymore, she thought using my phone number as *her* contact information at Urgent Care would get through to me. I'd know that she's oh-so-ill and having another one of her "heart attacks" (common event in the past, Urgent Care would send you right the hell to the Emergency Room if they thought you were having a heart attack, but each time I had multiple reasons to suspect nothing was wrong with her to begin with\).

As one of my friends said, "she's willing to jump through all sorts of hoops as long as it doesn't involve actually reconciling and admitting that this was her fault".

[moglow]

She used your number when she checked in. Consider responding to the text with: this is not and has never been (her) number. Please contact (her) at 123-456-7890.

And block that sender so you don't get her future messages either.

[SonofThunder]

She used your number when she checked in. Consider responding to the text with: this is not and has never been (her) number. Please contact (her) at 123-456-7890.

And block that sender so you don't get her future messages either.

+1   

SoT

[easterncappy]

I did exactly as moglow suggested. Do you guys think this counts as trying to contact me? Her fake medical emergency aside (sorry but it's the PD mom who cried wolf if it's real), she's trying to skirt around being told to not speak to me by the police. I wonder if this is enough for a restraining order. I'll call and ask tomorrow I guess. It technically doesn't count but... it so does.

[moglow]

Technically it's not her contacting you, and I don't know that you could stop her using your number elsewhere either. If confronted im sure it would be "silly me! I must have given EC number by mistake." Block who you reasonably can and keep on truckin.

[PunkCroc]

I work in an emergency room and people like her are the ABSOLUTE WORST. We can tell when someone is full of s**t and being a drama queen. No matter how much they play up the dramatics, their vitals, labs, urine tests, ekgs...all come back completely normal. These types are a pain in our butts to deal with in triage because they start asking for extremely specific things that have nothing to do with their claimed ailments (because they don't actually know anything about it besides what they saw on google.)

They also tend to cause the most trouble in the waiting room demanding to know why they're not first in line for a room.

Simple answer is because they're aint anything wrong with you.

[easterncappy]

I work in an emergency room and people like her are the ABSOLUTE WORST. We can tell when someone is full of s**t and being a drama queen. No matter how much they play up the dramatics, their vitals, labs, urine tests, ekgs...all come back completely normal. These types are a pain in our butts to deal with in triage because they start asking for extremely specific things that have nothing to do with their claimed ailments (because they don't actually know anything about it besides what they saw on google.)

They also tend to cause the most trouble in the waiting room demanding to know why they're not first in line for a room.

Simple answer is because they're aint anything wrong with you.

Yep my mom figured out at one point that the Urgent Care will put you to the front of the line if you say you're having chest pains... so they can figure out if you need the Emergency Room instead. One time she made them go through a bunch of chest x-rays, EKGs, etc. and I remember the doctor very politely explaining to her that he doesn't want to say nothing is wrong with her, but there probably isn't anything wrong with her. I also think she genuinely hasn't grasped the fact that no one cares about your injury or illness if you only went to Urgent Care. That is where I went to get antibiotics for a spider bite once... not something I could have even used to get a day off of work, lol. I think she thinks it has the same ring as "I was at the Emergency Room last night"... and even with that one, if it's every other month, who actually cares? It's totally "the boy who cried wolf". Much like learning that my dad died, she had whittled my trust down with her dramatics so much that I did not believe her. And if she had an actual medical emergency, I probably wouldn't believe her then either. I would think that yet again she is taking a spot in the line from someone who may really need it.

Thank you for what you do by the way. One of my close friends is a nurse and she's why I think you need to have the patience of a saint to be any good at working in a hospital. Those people can be vicious and while most are truly sick, some can be really abusive both towards the workers and of the system in general.

One of the real sucky things about my childhood was that I was pretty much assumed to be lying for attention any time I was sick or injured enough to ask to go to the Emergency Room. Now I won't go to a doctor unless I'm bleeding from my ears or pregnant. I admittedly did once go for a panic attack, but I was genuinely convinced I was dying and I wasn't being a hypochondriac. This was at my lowest mental point in having to live with them.

Anyway, not to completely change topics, as I didn't think her harassment today warranted it's own thread. I just want this to be over already. I was hoping she packed her crap and went back to our country already. She is not going to break me but I will need reassurance that I'm not the one going crazy when she is doing things like this.

I am amazed that she thinks this would work. If my dad actually outright dying didn't make me come crawling back, that which I have personally seen turn out to be "I didn't get my way so I need to fake a medical emergency" isn't going to do the trick either. I just want her to stop. I want her to be a stranger and to leave me alone.

I apologize for not replying to all of the thoughtful responses. All were read. We have had religious holidays and a teething 7 month old who wants to kick her feet and play at odd hours of the night, so I don't have the time or energy to always show how much I appreciate people's help. I really do appreciate all of you and I think I would not have had this strength to not fall for my mom's BS if I did not have this forum to reassure me.

[Andeza]

Something we did when DHs mom wouldn't stop emailing and said she was gonna "fight" to keep the relationship was have her served with a cease and desist. Couple hundred dollars for the lawyer to write it up, and he got the private investigator to serve it. Done deal haven't heard a peep. In our state, a cease and desist is somewhat a prerequisite for a restraining order. The courts want proof you tried to get the other person to stop before you went to court.

We never had to see or speak to the in-laws during the process. Just food for thought since you mentioned a restraining order.

We know what she did was intentional. She gave her number to try to sucker you back in. But most people that don't deal with PDs or are still in the fog would write it off as a simple mistake. They don't walk in our shoes and know the levels of odd that PDs are sometimes willing to go to.

It's such a pain, sorry your dealing with it.

[PunkCroc]

Yep my mom figured out at one point that the Urgent Care will put you to the front of the line if you say you're having chest pains... so they can figure out if you need the Emergency Room instead. One time she made them go through a bunch of chest x-rays, EKGs, etc. and I remember the doctor very politely explaining to her that he doesn't want to say nothing is wrong with her, but there probably isn't anything wrong with her.

Yep. We get a lot of people coming from Urgent Care saying they were told to come to the ED because of an "abnormal EKG." They hand us the ekg from UC, it's normal. We take our own EKG, it's also normal. All their vitals are normal. Chest x-rays are normal.

I sometimes think there are probably hypochondriacs or people like your mother who are trying to fake a medical emergency and don't get what they want at urgent care, so they come to the ER saying they were sent to us, when they were told no such thing. They just came of their own volition after not getting some kind of diagnosis at urgent care.

There are definitely some people who are legit though. Like they went to urgent care and they're actually experiencing something serious and don't understand how serious it is, or they don't want to bother anyone and downplay their own situation to not be a burden.