Going through boxes of pictures to save from our flooded basement and I found a stack of pics of mother's "new family", the ones she replaced me, my husband, and my kids with when we went no contact with her for fourteen months in 2017-2018.  She even bragged to me all about them, about her "new daughter" and "new grandkids" after I (reluctantly) came back into her life in 2018.  She HATED this woman up until then.  It was all just a game to her.  Everything.  Since my adoption in 1979.  Since her birth.  Life is nothing more than a fucking gam to her to win or lose.  That's it.  There is no in between. 

This woman is her old friend's daughter.  Her friend had passed away while I was no contact with my mother (actually two of her friends from her posse had passed away during that time) and since I was no contact with her, she connected with this friend's daughter, who happened to be married to a drug dealer (part of the reason why she hated her).  The woman also has four children, who she lost custody of, all four to different people (foster parents) due to neglect and abandonment.  But there my mother was, putting all their pics on her fridge of this woman and her random children as though they were one big happy family (never mind that the woman left town shortly after I came back, abandoning her kids, once again).  The funny part was that when we moved, I took the woman's phone number, which was proudly posted on my mother's bulletin board and changed one of the numbers on it to a different number, and when my mother tried to call her, she always got the wrong number.  And the woman never called my mother again, so it worked out quite well.  

I'm not even angry my mother kept the pictures, as she still was talking to her when we moved and those pics have been in our basement since 2020.  I guarantee you she 100% doesn't even remember she still has them.  It's just a shitty reminder of how easily I was replaced and how I never meant anything to her, I was just an object for her to use and abuse, and I still am.  The difference now though is that I am aware of it and I don't care anymore.  She's not my mother, she's the old woman I take care of.  I have a job to do and so I do it.  The pictures are of another life I once had.  One where I had a mother that replaced me when I walked away from her.  And that's okay.  I wasn't coming back, so why not?  That woman in the pictures is so broken from her own abuse and narcissistic DNA running through her veins that she lost custody of 4 out of 5 kids (the 5th she ran to another state to give birth to so they didn't take that one away).  So I don't even really hate her.  I just hate that she replaced her mother with my mother and my mother replaced me with her.  But they are two very broken women who have no sense of anything, really.  It's sad, when I really think about it.  My simple-minded mother felt so abandoned (she has abandonment issues...though I have no idea why) that she ran out and filled that void with another person.  To be angry about it is like being angry at a child for making stupid choices.  They don't know any better.  

The hurt I felt about all of this stems from a place of "she did this to ME", but in reality, she didn't do anything to me at all.  She did this because of HER and the way her broken little brain works.  I was the one who did something to her.  Granted, it was well-deserved, going no contact.  But I abandoned her.  And it caused her pain, even though when she feels pain instead of being sad, she runs out and tries to get revenge (which is what I learned to do growing up and had to unlearn that throughout these years).  Replacing me was her revenge, as well as filling a void for her narcissistic supply.  She needed someone to let her feel like a victim and that woman gave that to her.  But it had nothing to do with me at all.  Not really.  

Because I am not replaceable.  But see, my mother wouldn't know that because she doesn't know me at all.  On the surface, yes, but not the real me.  My entire life with her has been me reacting to her behavior.  So that's all she knows me as: the part of me that reacts to her.  That's it.  And in an essence, that part of me is really a part of her.  She controls it, and knows how to control it well.  She knows if she does A then she can cause me to do B.  That's the only part of me she knows.  So in that way, I am replaceable.  But that's not really me.  That's her perception of me.  And she can take that perception, the part where she can elicit certain responses and behaviors from someone, and put them on anyone she wants.  She can get to know how certain people react and use it to her advantage.  She could have replaced me with a hobo on the street, it wouldn't have mattered to her.  Because to her, we're all the same person: an extension of her.  So in reality, I have no reason to let her behavior in this hurt me.  Because she didn't replace me, she replaced the part of me that she controlled.  She even treats her cats this way, playing favorites and scapegoats, controlling them all in any way she can.  It's quite insane how she can get her narcissistic supply from just about anything.  It's also quite funny.  "If I don't have people to control, I will use my cats!"  I feel bad for her cats.  Even though I don't think they even realize what's going on.  Or maybe they do and they just don't care as long as they get fed?  LOL  

So I will burn the pictures, to say goodbye to the part of me that was hurt by this action.  Because those parts of my life are now happily over.  And now I can move forward without all this junk stuffing up my life.  The junk is being burned, being thrown away, being donated, and whatever is left is being stored safely away from our house and our flooded basement.  And away from what was, towards what will be.  It feels like a fresh start for the first time in a very long time, both physically and metaphorically.  Everything always brings me back to this song: