My Mom Used to Steal My Perfume. I Didn’t Know She Was Gaslighting Me.
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Family, Mental Health, Self, Life Lessons, Parenting

It’s a little bit ironic, but my mother is the person who first introduced me to the 1944 film Gaslight. She and I never had a particularly close relationship, but for several years, we watched old movies from the local library.

It was the only thing we really did together. Growing up, we were very poor. My mother never had a paying job and instead relied upon welfare and subsidized housing.

At home, she left me alone most of the time, preferring to do her own thing — cooking, studying the Bible, or sleeping — while she told me to stay in my room. I had a sister who was five years older than me, but our mom did a lot to discourage us from building a relationship. As soon as she was in high school, my sister spent as much time as possible away from home. I was a little bit afraid of my sister, too, since our mother was constantly telling me how bad and rebellious she was.

As a result, my life was incredibly lonely. I spent most of my time cooped up at home and read a great deal in my room. I welcomed any opportunity to watch movies with my mother. She was never interested in any of my movie choices, but luckily, I enjoyed enough of her selections. Sometimes, she’d watch a miniseries on television, like Masterpiece Theater on PBS.

However, watching movies with my mother isn’t something I remember too fondly. It could be awkward. Anytime there was even a hint of love, sex, or romance, I was scared that my mom might take my interest in the film the wrong way. From the time I was about eight years old, she lectured me about the evils of sex and warned me not to be “boy crazy.” She even warned me against masturbation before I understood what it was by telling me that demons would possess me if I touched myself.

If we watched a film with any kissing in it, I was careful to avert my eyes until it was over. This fear about my mom thinking I was too interested in sex hung over my whole childhood.

When she played Gaslight, I was still too young to grasp exactly what it really meant. I knew it was a movie about a man who drove his wife crazy by making her think she was going crazy. My mom had a tendency to internalize all depictions of victimhood. Any time we watched a film with abuse or toxic behavior, she had a story to tell me about how it related to her life, and how other people — everyone — had been so cruel to her.

I believed my mother and all of her stories, no matter how far-fetched they seemed. I believed her when she told me that my father tried to kill her and that he didn’t want me, or when she said my grandmother thought we all wanted to poison her food. I even believed my mother when she told me that God spoke to her. About her, about me, about anyone.

And anything.

It’s funny. Now, when I watch the movie Gaslight, I can’t help but be enraged at all of the red flags I missed when I was young. If you’re acquainted with the film, then you already know the husband was a suspicious man long before he married Ingrid Bergman’s character. As a child and teen, I couldn’t see that, however. All I saw was my poor mother who’d been victimized and abused for her whole life.

Like a lot of women, I have a complicated relationship with my mother. But although we were never really friendly, I trusted her to want the best for me.

For a long time, I saw her as the most unselfish person I’d ever known. She pointed out everything she’d ever done or “given up for me,” and I felt guilty for even being born.