Mother's with mental illness

I think most of us have been shocked by the Casey Anthony court case in recent weeks. Most people have mothers who love them so it's so unreal to think of a mother who could get rid of her daughter. Unfortunately this happens more often than you know because it happens in a less violent way.

I've searched for answers about my mother who was good at presenting herself as a mother who loved her daughter to those looking on...almost like a play or story she made up. Behind the curtain the demon came out. She suffered from a mental illness that most people don't even know about. Narcessistic Personality Disorder is a person who loves themself extremely and cannot connect to any other female who might step in front of her, even her own newborn. 

Before she died at age 83, she told me she hated me the day I was born because my father stopped loving her and only had eyes for me. She said she didn't want the competition in her life. She didn't kill me but what she did was just about the same because it killed me inside. She ignored me, locked me away, gave me away.

By the time I was 3 she had managed to make a small child into a child with no expression, sad, lost and had killed the connection to my father who was not allowed to show any love towards me. I can only remember small flickers of what happened to me but when I look at this photo I know all possibilities of happiness were already gone.

I don't think she ever hit me, but what she did in words and lack of touch was so much worse. I spent a life time seeing mother's and daughter's who loved each other wondering why I couldn't have just one day to know what that felt like. It was painful all my life. When I got that phone call my mother had found herself alone, old and she needed me to take her in and pamper her because without constant praise she fell apart. It gave me the chance to just ask her why she did this to me and why she couldn't love me. Her answer confused me at first and made me angry that I had suffered a life away because she was jealous of a newborn.

Since then, I have been able to deal with it as a mental illness that she couldn't help, and even if she had mental help along the way, there is no cure for this personality disorder. I'd like to say I forgive her at the end of my life, but I haven't gotten there yet. I wonder who I would have been if I had the natural love of a mother. In the end, my brother who she loved and covered him with everything I wanted, ignored her and in his own selfish way, left her to die alone. I don't know him because she cut us off as siblings in the very beginning.

When everyone was saying Casey Anthony killed her child so she could party, I knew that wasn't the case. She did just what my mother did. She dressed me up and in front of everyone she was the perfect Mom while all the time her hate was so great she was planning a way to end the competition. As sad as it is to think of this beautiful child gone from life, she won't suffer at the hands of a mother who just can't love her, who looks at her with hate and a heart of ice. I'm not sure which is worse, death or living with it. No one can help us when we end up with a mother who has a Naressestic Pesonality Disorder because they hide it so well while they are sucking up the praise that comes with being a good Mom. Casey couldn't just give Caylee over to her mother because she would have lost her mothers praise and love. I'm sure Casey was thinking her mother should have been the one behind bars because it was her fault...the fault of loving anyone more then Casey.

I don't know what happened to my mother. She was the middle child of 8, lost in the center between the babies who got attention and the older sister who was beautiful. I was told by one of her sister's that while they learned to stitch she went off with the boys to the swimming hole. She also was the only one who left home at an early age to a city far away. Was she born like this or did it happen to her at an early age?  I am trying to understand this and hope I find a way to forgive her.