Today I realized that my mother's emotional abuse of me about eating stems from her own shame about food.  The hard part is how I can reconcile that with me becoming anorexic from age 15-17 (and beyond, off and on) due to my hatred of my body after years and years and years of abuse from her (as well as the abuse I started receiving from my boyfriend at the time during those years, too)?  But here is something I never thought of before: I think my mother was literally starved as a child.  In fact, I think my mother and her brother and sister were all starved.  If you look at pictures of them as children, they were all skin and bones.  She even used to tell me about how everyone called them "Those Skinny McCafferey Kids" when they were kids.  Did nobody ever ask why?  Because my mother has always had a deep shame about food for as long as I've known her, I just never realized it until now.  

"I was the first one at the table for dinner and the last one to leave."  This was something she always told me as a kid.  I always thought it meant because she ate slow.  My grandmother ate slower than anyone I have ever known in my life.  But she also ate like a bird.  And until my mother moved in here, she would literally give her cats more than half of her dinners (which I put a stop to, and made a rule that no cats were allowed on the table when anyone was eating--so the started feeding my dogs).  And now, if she finishes her plate, she always says "I didn't share with the dogs because I was a PIG!!"  Or "Sorry dogs, some PIG ate all the food so you can't have any!"  She constantly calls herself a pig if she finishes all her food.  Which is ludicrous, because I give her normal-sized portions.  I think I finally understand why I have an affliction about eating the last bite of my own meals and will literally get nauseous if I try to.  

Geezus.  

Funny, how when you understand something, it can lessen your own anger for it happening to you.  Not that I am giving her a pass or anything, but since her IQ is lower than dirt, I can see how she could equate her own abuse into abusing others.  Again, not giving her a pass on this, but at least if I can "get it", I don't have to take as much offense.  

I can hear your anger.  I can feel it.  "No, it's still not okay!  My mother can't be excused for what she did to me!"  And I agree.  There is a line we just can't cross that says "just because I've experienced pain doesn't mean I should inflict it on others".  And we don't, do we?  But they do.  And they enjoy it.  It makes them feel better about themselves in some way.  It's that "mean girl" bullshit that they never outgrew.  "If the world is laughing at the person I am picking on, the they aren't laughing at me."  I've done that a few times in my life, in school.  But as an adult, I found that type of behavior immature and horrendous.  So for some reason, they are so stunted, that they just don't grow up.  Maybe it's their sociopathy that keeps them acting like a child?  It has to be.  That gross little part of the human experience that gets a kick out of making others look and feel bad or stupid just so they don't feel that way.  

So I am with you that they don't get an excuse.  But I will reiterate: we can't fault a potato for acting like a potato, because it's a potato, what else can it be?  We don't have to forgive it, or accept it or like it or put up with it, but we can at least try to understand it.  And I am beginning to understand the motivations behind my mother's behavior.  At least some of them.  Someone, most likely her mother, shamed her into believing that eating was a shameful act.  And she carried that with her, all the way until today.  As a child, my mother would get up at midnight and gorge herself on food.  Every single night.  She would barely eat all day, then eat a normal dinner and then go to bed.  And then get up out of her sleep and eat tons of food, in the privacy of her kitchen in the dark, sometimes with me.  She'd call them "midnight snacks".  Corn on the cob was a thing we ate a lot of at midnight in the summer.  Ice cold and covered with thick margarine and salt.  The thought of that makes my mouth salivate, because it was so good.  That little habit never took with me though, I never did the "midnight snack" thing on my own, unless I was coming home from work at midnight, which I sometimes did.  But other than that, I never have gotten up to eat leftovers in the middle of the night.  I think she's outgrown that act, too.  But it was for my entire childhood she did this.  It was as if there was no shame if you ate in the dark, when others were sleeping and nobody would know.  But most of all, it was like it didn't actually happen if it happened during the witching hour.  

How ashamed of yourself must you be to save your hunger until the darkest part of the night?  It wasn't like she ate all day and then gorged at night too, like a normal person with an eating disorder.  She'd starve herself all day, as though the act of starvation was a noble and made her look better than others.  Funny, how I adopted that exact sentiment (minus the "looking better than others" thing) without even realizing it.  Except I didn't eat at midnight.  I just didn't eat.  I always thought it was him.  I thought he was the reason I quit eating entirely.  Little did I know that it had been brewing in me for my entire life.  That I had been witnessing some strange form of anorexia/binging in my mother for my entire freaking life.  

Can I forgive her for this?  Can I say "Look, she has a low IQ, she's dumber than a box of rocks, so how was she supposed to deal with this shame all by herself with zero ability to be introspective or kind?"  I mean, she really doesn't know how to be kind...not really.  She can fake it, but she really has ZERO idea of how to act like a normal person life.  Her sociopathy has stolen every single iota of humanity from her.  It has since the start, perhaps since the moment of conception.  So, how else was she supposed to deal with her own shame around food other than trying to push it off on me?  Hurt people hurt people.  

I am not giving her excuses.  She abused me and created horrible things inside of me, such as anorexia and body shame and so much more.  BUT...I just plain don't want to care about it anymore.  I just want to stop caring what she thinks of me, period and instead, work on healing the damage she's inflicted on me.  I am 45 now.  I don't have time worry about what a 75 year old crazy and stupid person thinks of what I eat anymore (she was still abusing me on this until 2021...actually, it got worse after moving in here together).  

I can see more for what she truly is: a sad, sorry, broken shell of a human being who feels tremendous amounts of shame all day, every day, even now at 75 years old.  And I feel bad for her.  I can't fix her, but I can fix the parts of me that are broken because of her.  At least on this part.  And maybe on other things, too.  But for right now, I'll just concentrate on healing my food issues (which I have a lot of).  And I can work on letting go of my own shame, because it really was never my shame to begin with, it was hers that she pawned off on me.    I can see that now.  All these comments each day about how she's a PIG if she cleans her plate, and whatnot.  When she says that, my heart aches, because no child should be called a pig for eating food, no matter how much they eat.  That's fucked.  Or maybe my dad called her that?  He did used to fat shame her as an adult.  It was sick.  Maybe that's why she fat shames strangers to this day?  Because people only fat shame others if they feel bad about themselves.  

Sigh.  I just don't know.  It's a sticky place to be, to want to just let something go, but at the same time, not let someone off the hook for being an asshole your whole life about something.  

One day at a time, right?  Today, I have compassion for her, hearing the way she talks about herself.  Tomorrow, I may be angry again, if she tries to fat shame my son again.  Though, I think I will say something to her like "You must feel pretty bad about yourself if think that's appropriate to say to another human being, much less your grandson."  That should make her stop for a bit.  If I say that every single time, she may just stop completely.  

We'll see.  My son is getting pretty annoyed with her, and has yelled at her to stop being naggy a few times this week, so maybe he'll just say "Wow, grandma, that's rude as fuck."  I'll high five him if he says that LOL  

Okay, time for bed.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Let's hope she'll be good.