Finally got clarity on why she (likely) has BPD after a lifetime of not being able to fill in the blanks...
Our uBPD mother (70's) is pretty clearly BPD. Classic waif who shows all the other archetypes, but always through the waif filter. She has been a victim of life and still is. Her fears of abandonment have controlled her life, simultaneously pushing everyone around her away. Her emotional blackmail/manipulation was well honed and is a weapon she has wielded to her benefit both personally and financially throughout her life. Not that she is well off by any means, but she has survived well enough without hardly every holding down a job that entire time, owns a home despite almost never having a job, etc...so clearly has managed to use her emotional manipulation to manipulate people around her, from her kids to friends to family, to float her along.
Several years ago I finally realized that she had BPD - I was aware of the emotional manipulation/blackmail decades before that, and had un-enmeshed myself, but had not fully stopped caretaking her emotions when we did interact.
When I realized she had BPD, and finally put a name to her special kind of abuse, I started to wonder "why" she was that way. The way she talked about her childhood made me question if there was a lot of things that simply weren't being said, but she never shared enough to really fill in the blanks.
Yesterday, we got together as a final lunch before I move back out west (putting much needed distance between us as she has really gotten it into her head that my proximity meant I would be her physical, financial, and social caretaker in her elder years, despite the fact that I have only ever told her "NO" - that hasn't stopped her from believing it would happen). She fully intended to set my life on fire to keep herself a bit warmer as she aged, under the guise of "family," firmly believing she is "owed" all of that from her kids (who she will leave nothing).
Anyways, in our conversations, she was sharing something that she had been talking to her niece about, in regards to her (possibly dying) older (by 14 years) sister, who my mother has felt has always resented her, pretty much her entire life.
When my mother was 3, so just a toddler, their oldest sister, who was just a couple years older than my aunt, died in a car accident. Aunt was VERY close to her older sister.
Niece shared that when this happened, grandma (their mother) went into a DEEP depression, basically shutting herself away. The entire family responsibilities got dumped onto aunt who ended up having to care for the entire household, caring for her mother who refused to do anything (even care for herself), ended up being a mother to a 3 year old who wasn't her responsibility, ended up playing wife/maid to their father, and HER grief was completely dismissed this entire time.
My mother, the toddler, was basically abandoned during her childhood - aunt was still in school and stuck trying to run a household, so mom ended up in daycare and with babysitters, and when she was old enough for school, and aunt was off to college/leaving home, mom ended up picking up the household duties (which mom does NOT describe in this manner - in her description she was just doing her chores and doing things to please her parents - filling in the blanks I now see, she was desperately trying to get some parental attention and earn something that resembled some kind of love by completely sacrificing her own childhood as well).
Grandma basically went from depressed and back to work, never really becoming a mother to our abandoned mother.
Mom claims she was a huge "daddy's girl" but it sounds like he was pretty distant as well - guessing he gave her some kind of attention for basically waiting on him hand and foot (this was the 60's), and then he died when she was in college as well. So the love she could "earn" passed away...
Getting this information was HUGE for getting an understanding of WHY our mother is the way she is. It doesn't excuse her abuse or her treatment of her own kids or family, but I've always questioned what in her family made her that way when it seemed like her sister's side of the family was never quite as messed up (not healthy, but not quite as bad).
It doesn't change anything really, but does "fill in the blanks" on why our mother is the way she is, when otherwise she seems intelligent, smart, observant, but everything in her life has been clouded over by this blackhole of emotional need inside of herself that she refuses to face or admit to....she sometimes thinks she wants people to be honest with her, but all she really wants is validation of her POV (typical BPD).
Getting the clarity was just - refreshing I guess. At least it helped me understand the why behind it all.