The Flat

We left my Granny`s Front room when I was two years old to live on the 12th floor of a high rise block of flats, at the time in the 1960`s, they were highly sort after accommodation. We lived there about 4 years, moving to a council house when I was six. 

 As an adult, thinking back about my Mothers life, I realised she was never without a source of support. She would of been 40 when we moved to `The Flat`, I refer to it in that way because all my life, when she spoke of the past, the 4 brief years we lived in The Flat seemed a highly significant and stressful time to her. Up until then she had lived at home with her Mother and Brother, two of her sisters visiting fairly regularly. She was never alone and was helped financially when she failed to hold a job down for long. When my Father came on the scene she never worked again and he then became her primary carer when she needed one or boyfriend and entertainments manager when she was on an upper. Such were the highs and lows of life with my Mother. 

 Needless to say, finally leaving home at the grand age of 40, with a 2 year old child to care for, a husband that worked long hours and a home to run single handedly was a huge wake up to call to her.

She struggled to make the transition after being used to her Mother on hand to help with me and only having one room to keep tidy. No doubt the days were long, the hours passing slowly, with me to keep entertained and out of trouble and also keeping her from her reading and naps. When Geoff finally came home, tired and hungry, he was perhaps more taken with firstly fussing over his blue eyed, curly haired, two year old daughter than his burdened and bored wife...no wonder then she referred to me as Dear Little Amanda through gritted teeth when no one else was about. 

 There were many tales from life at The Flat, having to use a rubbish chute and how it smelt, power cuts when the lifts would be unusable and we were either stuck on the 12th floor or faced with endless flights of stairs, the communal wash room in the basement of the block, where you had an allotted time to use a designated machine and dryer, people arriving when they felt like it or late {like her}, arguments over who`s turn it was and missing clothes, or hand washing in the sink and using an airer on the balcony, a balcony that terrified her in case I should climb up on something and fall over the rail.  The real terror there was more like she couldn`t trust herself not to have a quick nap and leave me unsupervised.  Every story fraught with drama and inconvenience. One day in The Flat she would begin and off we would go...

12 Nappies

`12 Nappies in The Flat that day` was the beginning of a story she would punish me with for over a decade. It was humiliating and I have had to go through a long process over the years to firstly begin to face it, come to terms with the humiliation and embarrassment it made me feel, cope with feeling filthy and a nuisance and then anger, when as a Mother myself I understood how vulnerable I had been at the time and lastly empathy and forgiveness for the little child I was then. 

 A long mental list was kept of my past crimes by my Mother, she kept one of my Fathers too, come to think of it, for everyone really. When she raged she would dip into the list at random for ammunition, it had no rhyme or reason, I could be late home at 15 and find myself being told off for letting go of her hand when I was 4 while crossing the road one day, such was my Mothers logic and such was the wrath and memory of a Narcissist wronged.

 So she would be furious over something I had done and so she would scream  "12 nappies you ad on at the bloody Flat that day...BLOODY 12....OW the `ell did ya think I could keep up with washing em....keep `avin to change em all the time...all that bloody washing......" {typing this it has just occurred to me that`s maybe why she got me doing my own washing from such a young age and then having to take days off school to do the household wash too, maybe it was revenge, see the post Wash Day to reminisce more} I`ll also add that because of the stories of the time share laundry facilities and the tales of hand washing at the sink I was triggered to feel even more guilt. The fact I was a small child and neither responsible for their living circumstances or the fact they did not own their own washing machine escaped me, after all it just had to be all my fault.

 I would be so shamed when she bought this up, I felt so dirty, like I could not contain my bodily functions, that I was a filthy child who was somehow delayed in learning to use a pot or toilet. My face would burn red and I could not bear to hear her go on about it, imagining all the work I caused and seeing how even then, years later, she was still enraged about it. It went on from as far back as I could remember, up to when I got to 13, when I was beginning to realise my Mother was actually bat shit crazy. So I got brave and quietly interrupted her one day, mid rant. "Mom, I was a very little girl when that happened, I was only about 2, I don`t think I could of helped myself, I don`t think its fair you keep telling me off about it all the time now".  I waited for her to explode.....

 Instead her expression changed, she frowned and began to think, her hand going up to her face while she considered what I had said...I waited some more.. maybe it was a delayed explosion this time... And then she replied, calm as anything " Yes, you are right Amanda, I don`t think I`ll bring that up any more" and just like that it was not mentioned again....until The Armageddon Phone Call, years later.

 What she was actually doing then, was working out that whilst the topic may have been ideal to shame me over for years and years, while I was too young to tell anyone, now I was older and there was a risk that instead of being the victim of the story she may now be perceived as being unreasonable and not a very nice Mother, should I dare to tell others. Well, as a Narcissist, she could not have her image tarnished in any way and so just like that she decided the topic was no longer fit for purpose and set it aside. Not an ounce of remorse was expressed or any regret shown over the hurt and humiliation she had inflicted over the years.