A few days ago The Telegraph published a lengthy piece called “I discovered my mother had been lying to me my whole life” and since then it has been haunting me.

As Telegraph content is usually paywalled, here is a brief summary of the article:

There was a middle class family, which lived on the outskirts of Nottingham: it consisted of a hard working Dad, a lovely stay-at-home Mum and a young daughter. The Mum is the main character here: she’s tender, and frail, and she also suffers from all sorts of diseases, mostly neurological, like chronic fatigue syndrome and such. She spends most of her time in bed while her husband is at work and the girl is at school. Sometimes she gets better, but it never lasts long enough, because her sickness prevails.

A few decades passed, and Mum died from the complications of Parkinson’s: her husband had died of cancer earlier. After losing both of her parents, the girl, who is a young woman now, is dealing with the family house and with lots of memories and memorabilia connected with them—photo albums, books and the diaries. Those diaries of her mother that should be preserved, of course, and treasured: what could be more precious than the voice of your beloved one, which you can hear while going through the pages? Or so the girl thought.

The diaries revealed the truth about the Mum: she had never been ill; she lied to her family, indulged by their care and attention; she despised her husband (“he’s too boring and plain”) and she absolutely couldn’t stand her daughter. “This bitch is bloody annoying,” she wrote in one of the entries, “I smacked her. Why doesn’t she just shut up?” The girl was two years old at that time. The mother regularly abandoned her at home, while enjoying shopping and nice lunches on the high street. Once she broke the girl’s arm, but it was only revealed when the girl was at primary school: one of the nurses noticed the old trauma. “You just hit the window in the car,” said Mum nonchalantly, “you were four and a very cheeky child.” That was obviously a lie.

Throughout her childhood and youth the daughter was called ugly, stupid and fat; she couldn’t have friends at home, because her Mum needed a rest, you see. Surprisingly, she did very well at school and later, at the uni: she graduated with distinction, leaving her Mum puzzled: “You are not the brightest one; it’s quite odd that you managed.”

Later, the girl (a young woman, as it’s been mentioned before) met a nice guy whom she started dating. Her Mum left unimpressed again. “What is strange that he has chosen you at all.” That was the guy, the boyfriend, who began spotting some discrepancies in his girlfriend’s mother’s behaviour: she had always fallen ill when the young couple wanted to take time off and to celebrate something, Christmas or Easter. The mother suddenly got seizures (and fell on the fluffy carpet in the corridor). “Something isn’t quite right,” said the boyfriend to his fiancée, and she started noticing it, too. Yet she was too ashamed to accept that her mother was a bad actress, trying to fake all her illnesses and to stage her breakdowns.

Once Mum cheerfully told her that she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s: “now, they give me proper treatment with several nurses!” she said gleefully. The daughter replied, “but Mum, you are… fine?” “How dare you,” said Mum. “How dare you, little bitch,” and she burst into tears.

The mother died from a mild infection soon afterwards: a few NHS nurses had already filed an official complaint at her false diagnoses. It didn’t go anywhere, because she had passed away.

The daughter wrote a book about her life with a mother who, most likely, had Munchausen syndrome: so she was indeed ill, but not in the way she faked it. The main question, the daughter asks, is simple yet complex: to what extent did mental illness shape her mother’s personality? She could easily distinguish between right and wrong, that’s for sure, but she didn’t want to. Was it more of sociopathy then? The daughter doesn’t know. But what she knows for sure is that her mother wanted her diaries to be read: perhaps this way she could control her narrative even from the grave. But the daughter decided to stop it, and rightfully so.