When I was young, I had jaw surgery which went disastrously wrong. My mother openly mocked and ridiculed me. She had been indifferent to the precipitating problem and to the surgery itself, but flaunted how much she enjoyed the aftermath.
One night, she attacked me because my lower lip was numb and I literally couldn’t feel a piece of spinach stuck to my lip. She repeatedly pretend-asked, “Are you tellin’ me you can’t feel that?” while laughing her head off. I requested, in a civil and normal tone, that she tell me more nicely in the future. The next night, she re-attacked by making an over-the-top, theatrical production out of “telling me nicely” that food was on my lip, with more uproarious laughter at the malpractice victim’s expense.
Every time I timidly mentioned possible legal action or repair work, she smirked at me hugely and said, “You’re not mad at that nice Dr. Scheetz, are you?” She sometimes said that out of the clear blue sky, apparently just to remind me that she didn’t care. At one point she even made a public speech about how kind and thoughtful and skilled he was — and such a good-looking man, too!
She was indifferent to him before he hurt me, so I could only surmise that she idolized him because he hurt me. That was a painful realization. I already knew she didn’t really care about me and that she esteemed people who had hurt me, but going out of her way to exalt someone who hurt me was just plain malicious.
Because my jaw and mouth were no longer as they should have been, since then I have had to swallow hard. This was visible. Every single time I swallowed my own saliva, I had to gulp it in order for it to happen at all. My mother smirked and tittered, repeatedly giggling that I was “just doin’ that,” cracking herself up at the expense of someone freshly maimed by a surgeon.
Because no substantial repair work is possible, I still swallow hard. Every time. Many times a day.
It’s not a lot of fun to be reminded of what your mother is really like by the simple, human, and necessary act of swallowing. What does one do when one’s own bodily function is a trauma trigger?
I have looked into partial cosmetic repair (functional repair isn’t possible). When my mother learned of this, she actually had the nerve to ask if I wanted her to come out and “help” me during the recovery period. I said no, and reminded her of why — and, of course, she attacked. She instantly and viciously denied, then haughtily proclaimed, “I’d never do that!” She is a wonderful person, and wonderful people don’t ridicule the recently maimed, so therefore what happened didn’t happen.
Except it did. You did what you did, you lying bitch. Even if not a single other living soul ever learns of it, it still happened. The truth is true.