Humiliation in A Childhood Lost

This will be a quick entry because it’s DH’s birthday(woo!) and I’m running him lunch in an hour.
But the thought that struck me this last couple of days- since my mother has for the past 3 years sent me a piece of mail on her birthday (lol) full of passive aggressive and sentimental nonsense (I believe the two go inextricably hand in hand), that I thought I’d write about it. That thought has been around humiliation. Because, my mother is fundamentally ridiculous. She’s absurd. She has, for the past 35 years of her adult life, without exception asked of me understanding, identification of the ways in which she was wronged, hurt or harmed, and additionally asked grace, forgiveness, guidance, and nurturance for those ails. From me, her at first tiny helpless infant and then her small child, and then her grown child.
All the while, with an exacting and oftentimes vicious insistence that I, as that infant, small child and grown child, take responsibility and complete ownership of every mistake that I make. At the very same moment that she asks me to parent her through her victimhood as a child, she brutalizes me, violently controls me, and offers no parenting all the while.
This, I believe, is not a particularly unique case for my generation. But, the fact that it is so commonplace makes it very difficult to discern. We all, I think, have the very understandable temptation to compare our own lot to our contemporaries, and judge our situation based on how far we are from the average. In this context, there is nothing at all to complain about in my parent’s treatment of me. They are in some respects far more brutal, and in some others, far more learned and sophisticated. But on average, they are very average.
However, I have rejected the average standard in favor of the rational standard.

The reason behind my mother’s particular viciousness was, I believe, her absolute worst-case scenario was to be humiliated in the eyes of her peers, society, her family, or whoever. No one laughs at the lion as it stares them down in preparation to maul and consume them. The antidote to being humiliated for the absurdity of her choices in life, was to be threatening. In this, my mother’s incredible empathy was her greatest ally. She was a master at finding what matters most to people, and then gaining power over it, and using this as a battering ram against them. I experienced this. Perhaps to a deeper degree than anyone else, since I was her daughter, and no one else in the world is as big a threat to her vulnerabilities as I am. My brother, perhaps, comes in second.
I happened upon this insight when I noticed that I felt genuinely amused by my mother’s outright hypocrisy and now-harmless threats contained in her recent mailing. It reminds me of the scene in The Lion King when Simba tries to roar and the hyenas all laugh hysterically at the absurd attempt to be scary.
And I realized that, this is my greatest defense; laughter. Genuine recognition of the comedic, and the security and lack of fear to laugh at it. Unironically, that is my mother’s Achilles heal.