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Ebola Roulette posted:I guess I just keep hoping she'll somehow turn into a normal mom. I often find myself wondering when that expectation will die and leave me in peace.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:17
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Thanks thread. Checking in - two years estranged from my mother as of yesterday. The pandemic certainly helped - I was furloughed my first day of a new job in March 2020 and the year just went downhill from there. I'm certain that my mother didn't try any theatrics because she didn't want to assist me financially in any way. Now that I'm back on my feet, I worry that she's out there plotting. Thankfully she lives 600 miles away, doesn't have my phone number or address, and I'm well prepared to explain to the local PD about her mental health and substance abuse issues if she tries to show up on my doorstep (again.) One thing that has kept me strong is retribution - i.e., there is no scenario where I care enough about her where I would willingly engage with her again, because her narcissistic retribution for leaving will be colossal. The longer I stay away, the more I never want to deal with her abusive manipulative poo poo again, and I cannot imagine what boundary she would cross if she had half a chance. She's attempted to contact my work before, she somehow infiltrated my previous therapist, and has absolutely tried to seduce my personal friends. I'm past the point of 'forgiving' her - I try to not let her & her actions live in my head rent-free, but i will never engage with her again for any reason or under any circumstance. I dont want revenge, I'm past thinking she would ever even acknowledge any of the things she's done, I just wish she would drop dead randomly so I could feel safe  Time is on my side there - she is an overweight woman in her 60s who drinks like a fish, eats a mountain of junk food, has type 2 diabetes, and is a colon cancer survivor. I don't know if she even has the mental faculties or wherewithal to gently caress with my life from that far away, but I still worry Vampire Panties fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Aug 14, 2021 |
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Aug 14, 2021 19:02
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Vampire Panties posted:I don't know if she even has the mental faculties or wherewithal to gently caress with my life from that far away Oh, she does. Here's to you, great job
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Aug 14, 2021 19:55
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Poo In An Alleyway posted:I often find myself wondering when that expectation will die and leave me in peace. Likewise.  I think I'm making progress the longer she's not in my life, though.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:03
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Lieutenant Dan posted:Likewise. Same, but it’s what I’ve come to refer to as the ‘Free Churro problem’. As long as she’s alive, I feel like there’s still some glimmer of hope, some microscopic chance, that she’ll suddenly have an epiphany, realise that she hosed up, will apologise to me and mean it. But as soon as she dies, that hope dies with her.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:10
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Ebola Roulette posted:I guess I just keep hoping she'll somehow turn into a normal mom. This is hard. It’s what I’ve been working on in therapy lately. Mom comes through every once in a long while and it just makes it impossible for me to accept that this relationship is never going to not be what it is. A terrible dysfunctional mess of my trauma and lived experience that doesn’t match her perception of what happened. (She’s never intentionally harmed me, she says) So many things are broken and so many things have happened that just cannot be changed or made up for and I just still can’t give up the hope that one day I’ll call and she’ll be the mother I want and need. When what actually happens is new and fancier trauma. (“How dare you talk about being assaulted with people you want to and not the people I think you should,” and the browbeating me while I’m having a trauma response to the situation, for example) Honestly, my grandmother was far worse and I have plenty of mental scars from her that I will carry with me forever. I have a much better relationship with her than with mom though, because Alzheimer’s has fundamentally changed who she is. Now she’s this funny, witty, genial old lady who listens to me. It’s kind of hosed up, but her losing her memory kind of gave me the grandma I wanted- at a terrible price, but still. She went from someone I had near zero contact with to one of my best memories of family from my wedding in the span of three years. It’s a big hosed up knot to work through. Sometimes knowing what my mom is dealing with for my grandmother’s illness feels like me getting a sneak peek into my own future and it’s horrifying. I get nightmares sometimes about my parents getting sick or one of them dying and having to go back to that house and that town. Neither hold anything good for me and I’ve worked so hard to be in a place where I don’t ever have to go back.
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Aug 14, 2021 22:23
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I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I truly thank you all for sharing your experiences. It has made me realize that even if I had issues dealing with my dad all up during my childhood this thread has helped me put it into context and perspective. I love you all! And I hope you all can love yourself for what fantastic brave and strong persons you truly are. Supradog fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 00:12
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I also still have a faint hope that things might change with my mom and sister. I've been reached out to, but it was the same language, tone, and expectations as before. I don't want to get entrapped in the same patterns, and for me that's really easy to do thanks to my people-pleaser personality. I need distance until I know I won't be guilt-tripped and manipulated again. The rest of em can die for all I care. Monsters.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:39
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Picnic Princess posted:I also still have a faint hope that things might change with my mom and sister. I've been reached out to, but it was the same language, tone, and expectations as before. I don't want to get entrapped in the same patterns, and for me that's really easy to do thanks to my people-pleaser personality. I need distance until I know I won't be guilt-tripped and manipulated again. I too am a people-pleaser and it’s a tough cycle to get out of. At 36 I’m still trying to undo a lot of that. My dad still tries to parent me, a husband and dad of two, and I’m constantly agonizing over the right decisions. Ultimately the decisions my wife and I make regarding our family are the most important and the welfare of my family comes first. My dad can and will try to strongarm us into whatever it is he wants us to do or think, and we do our own thing. It’s tough, but doable. Likewise, as a people-pleaser, you are doing awesome just putting yourself first, that by itself is huge.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:52
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What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel.
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Aug 15, 2021 16:45
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Sisal Two-Step posted:What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel. It's taken years but I've transitioned out of emotionally thinking of my abuser as my father. It takes a long time though, but it comes. Having a step son helped me in devaluing the importance of blood relationships for me and was a big turning point in leaving the guilt behind. I just recently found out my father is... I don't know what the gently caress is wrong with him but he communicates at like 10 words a minute, no one knows why because he refuses the help from preachy doctors who think they're better than him (lol, his words). It's not my problem, and I don't really care - it's taken 10 years to get here though.
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Aug 15, 2021 17:02
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You ever have random crap come back to you thanks to a dream or something? On a ski trip in January of my freshman year of high school, I broke my left arm, which kind of overshadowed the rest of the trip. At the very start of the trip as we were driving up my father got a call from the school, saying that I had not turned in a registration form he had signed (he had just decided gently caress the school calendar, we're taking a vacation in mid-January even though we just got back from winter break and have another break coming up in February, that's for suckers, we need to go when no one else is off so we don't have to deal with crowds of lesser mortals). He spent most of the rest of the drive berating me for this and threatening repeatedly to turn around and just go home (I really wish he had...). He vowed when we got back that he would alter the form and sign me up for that elective "Intro to Keyboarding" class I had declined. Because sure, let's punish just forgetting to turn in a piece of paper by forcing me to waste an entire period of my schedule for a year. He followed through on that threat, and even called the school to make sure I didn't try something like re-editing the form. It was so loving miserable. I had been using computers since I was 4 or 5, I was already fluent with my typing; meanwhile, to this day he is still your typical one finger hunt and peck boomer. He always did this grand ceremony when report cards came in the mail. We all had to stand around in the kitchen while he looked down on us and taunted us for a while saying poo poo like, "Are there gonna be any surprises in here this time?" before finally opening them and slowly reading out each grade and dragging that poo poo out needlessly, inevitably ignoring the long line of 95+ scores to focus on the one 93 that slipped 2 points. That year it had an added layer of suffering because he had to gloat over that loving keyboarding class appearing on the list. It took a while to realize what an abusive prick he was in a lot of ways, but this one was blatantly obvious at the time. As an added bonus: It's because of this that I missed out on a single AP course of the very short list my school offered, AP European History. Missing out on the GPA boost those classes give hurt my rank when graduation came since that's based on weighted GPA; the 8 people ahead of me were all the ones who took every AP class and didn't miss one. Naturally, I caught poo poo for not being valedictorian despite his actively sabotaging this out of spite....a very normal thing to bring up at your child's graduation.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:11
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I still have nightmares about what amount to dealing with any vaguely challenging situation with my mother. As far as I'm concerned, the real thing I'm just done with, except when absolutely necessary.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:27
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I still have a problem where something will remind me of my childhood and all these pieces will slide together, then i'm mad for weeks. Like how my dad wouldn't let one of my moms brothers sleep in the house. when he was over he had to stay in his van, and my dad made sure to tell me never to go any where with him or get in his van (and he tried a couple of times, trying to lure me and my cousin with old hustlers). One day one of my aunts daughters disappeared for about fifteen minutes and her and my mom lost their poo poo and kept asking me over and over if i'd seen her near the van. At eleven i couldn't understand what everyone was upset about, we were in farm country so sh was probably just playing in a field nearby (she was). Why the gently caress was my mom so goddamned adamant that i spend time with this guy? Or when i was in college i used to go visit my grandma a few towns over, after visiting her a while i would go spend time with my younger cousins and sometimes some of their friends would come along. my mom and aunts got really bent out of shape about one girl from the trailer park hanging around, she was maybe fourteen or fifteen and they were telling people they thought she was pregnant with her stepdads baby (she wasn't pregnant). eventually they spread so many rumors and talked so much poo poo she was pretty much ostracized. at the time i was super mad at the idea that they thought i might sleep with a fourteen year old. then twenty years later i'm cleaning and find a picture taken outside the little convenience store in front of the trailer park and all i can think is "man, those adults were REALLY mean to a straight up child who might have been raped".
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Aug 15, 2021 19:58
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WaywardWoodwose posted:Like how my dad wouldn't let one of my moms brothers sleep in the house. when he was over he had to stay in his van, and my dad made sure to tell me never to go any where with him or get in his van (and he tried a couple of times, trying to lure me and my cousin with old hustlers). One day one of my aunts daughters disappeared for about fifteen minutes and her and my mom lost their poo poo and kept asking me over and over if i'd seen her near the van. At eleven i couldn't understand what everyone was upset about, we were in farm country so sh was probably just playing in a field nearby (she was). this dude 1000% molested your mom
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Aug 15, 2021 20:11
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Sisal Two-Step posted:What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel. Do you mean guilt about not fulfilling family "obligations" , or going no-contact? After living away from home for a while, I compared my family's behaviour to various people that I knew like housemates, romantic partners, and friends. And I realised that my family won't even treat me as decently as random strangers. I started to feel angry that my family refused to treat me as well as strangers that they met. Any remaining guilt faded after I went no contact. Holding my family to the same standards I applied to my friends and myself made it very clear to me who should be feeling bad, and it wasn't me.
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Aug 15, 2021 22:00
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Starting therapy has caused me to realize just the extent to which my mom pushed her bullshit on me and parentified me. Just working through the levels of shame I feel for the slightest thing is almost exhausting.
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Aug 15, 2021 22:56
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Sisal Two-Step posted:What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel. I felt guilty when I was low contact with my mum because I saw other people having normal, caring relationships with their parents and I felt weird because that wasn't possible for me. Now I've gone no contact, that previous guilt has disappeared and it's been replaced with a less intense sort of guilt that I've made the choice not to associate with my mum anymore. But my anxiety has gone down heaps. I'm going to therapy to work through my feelings which is helping. But I suspect that I will always feel some baseline level of guilty because society wires into us that family is family no matter what blah blah blah
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Aug 16, 2021 00:43
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My dad wasn’t quite like that, but there were a lot of drawn-out lectures that were yelled at me, much of them close enough I could feel his spit in my face. Sometimes these lectures would go on for hours. gently caress that. It never changed anything. My grades started going from straight-A’s to down the shitter once my parents divorced and never recovered, partially because of the way my dad handled it, and partially because I was depressed and not getting therapy while taking the wrong meds. My mom wasn’t on me about my grades at all, and my dad made up for that—I used to run home each day and check the mail for progress reports before my dad and stepmom came home because they would make me feel like I’d murdered someone just because I had a D in something.
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Aug 16, 2021 00:49
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lol yeah my parents always got on my case about grades constantly when it was an easy way to put me down. but they mysteriously stopped caring about my education when it came time to pay for university
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Aug 16, 2021 01:27
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Hard same on that. Hours long lectures starting in 5th grade about how poorly that B reflected on my character, but when I was getting ready to transfer from community college "You have 4 siblings. That's too many to save for." I finished my degree by applying credits from my Navy training. There's a number of schools that would waive everything not covered by the GI Bill if I went for a masters, but the thought of ever being in a classroom again makes me sick.
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Aug 16, 2021 01:52
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WaywardWoodwose posted:
That question has been baffling me more and more as I've gotten older. My dad literally tried to murder my mom, and afterwards she pushed my sister and I into having a relationship with him. When her dad died maybe 6 years ago(?), she wanted to talk to me, and she told to reach out to mine and make amends so I 'wouldn't have any regrets'. Let me tell you, I have zero regrets being zero contact with him and pretending he doesn't exist.
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Aug 16, 2021 01:53
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Sisal Two-Step posted:What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel. anti anxiety medication is pretty sweet for thinking less about the things that dont matter
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Aug 16, 2021 02:03
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The nebulous idea of "family", "happy family", and "blood is thicker than water" is a terrible thing. Most particularly when it is performative. But also in cases like described above when it is internalized.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:06
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After all the lectures and poo poo, I wanted to join the army out of high school. My dad insisted I couldn’t do it unless I went to ROTC. I was eighteen and could do what I wanted but he had a lot of control over my life then, and I exerted control by doing what I wanted to do under the radar. What’s hilarious is that he apparently forgot about all the lectures he gave me about my lovely grades—my grades weren’t good enough for even the local universities so ROTC was out of the question and I knew it. So I enlisted DEP and they paid me to go to college and I had a set date two years later to go to basic training. One day a few months into that, my parents’ housekeeper for some goddamn reason went under my bed to clean (I suspect she was told to) and found an LES stub under there and I got a very cold call from my stepmom confronting me about it. I got another lecture later on because I kept it from them and they went on a cruise and we didn’t talk for months. All because I exercised some control over my life and didn’t crawl back and apologize for it like they expected. That expectation always came with the expectation also that I would reverse what I was doing and “get back on track with what I’m supposed to be doing” aka what my dad wanted me to do.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:14
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Mx. posted:anti anxiety medication is pretty sweet for thinking less about the things that dont matter Oh for sure. Unfortunately, if I get on a higher dose, I start suffering from insomnia. I could change my meds again but Zoloft is otherwise great for me... Anyway thanks for sharing, goons. I've booked myself an online therapy appointment today and hopefully will get started on breaking some toxic cycles.
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Aug 16, 2021 13:38
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Picnic Princess posted:That question has been baffling me more and more as I've gotten older. My dad literally tried to murder my mom, and afterwards she pushed my sister and I into having a relationship with him. When her dad died maybe 6 years ago(?), she wanted to talk to me, and she told to reach out to mine and make amends so I 'wouldn't have any regrets'. I think it's biology. We tend to bond and desire bonds with the people who raised us from a young age. That said, just because it's  doesn't mean it's good. My biology tells me to eat 157 cookies a day and jerk off every hour instead of working. It's up to our higher functions to regulate what the lizard brain has access to.
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Aug 16, 2021 13:48
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Sisal Two-Step posted:Anyway thanks for sharing, goons. I've booked myself an online therapy appointment today and hopefully will get started on breaking some toxic cycles. I'm excited for you! Good luck in therapy!  I've got anxiety that thankfully has lessened since I got my physical health in order, but I think back to when they piped anti-anxiety meds into my IV at the hospital and for 3 days I had, like, crystal clear non-anxious vision and knew immediately what is and isn't important. I miss that (but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be on that level of meds on the reg).
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Aug 16, 2021 15:21
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Lieutenant Dan posted:I'm excited for you! Good luck in therapy! That sounds like either a beautiful heaven or a terrifying hell, and I'm not 100% sure which.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:28
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When my grandma died, my mom pushed me to reconnect with my dad because she sorta regret not reconnecting with her mom. I had to remind her repeatedly that her mom was an absolute monster, and the fact that she's in Hell is a net positive for the world as a whole. The dead bitch beat my mom as a kid because my mom dared to make friends with a black kid. My only regrets are that she died in her sleep, and that her grave is too far away for me to piss on.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:51
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Danaru posted:When my grandma died, my mom pushed me to reconnect with my dad because she sorta regret not reconnecting with her mom. I had to remind her repeatedly that her mom was an absolute monster, and the fact that she's in Hell is a net positive for the world as a whole. The dead bitch beat my mom as a kid because my mom dared to make friends with a black kid. My only regrets are that she died in her sleep, and that her grave is too far away for me to piss on. they say when you breath your last breath the atoms in it go out and mix with all the air on earth. every time you breath you have one atom of caesar in you. so in a way every time you piss you are pissing on that grave
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Aug 16, 2021 16:58
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i bet you could the internet to find someone to pee on her grave for you ~the wonders of the web~
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Aug 16, 2021 17:04
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Rutibex posted:but they mysteriously stopped caring about my education when it came time to pay for university This is what defines my entire adult life. My father had this fantasy in his head that I'd get a job at NASA and they'd just pay off my student loans day 1. I have no idea where he got this delusion. He could afford it, but had me put my entire education on private loans (since he made so much money I didn't qualify for any financial aid despite his refusing to use all of that income to pay). My brother failed out after a year so he doesn't even have the "you have so many siblings" excuse. I graduated back in the height of the huge economic implosion and he just kept deferring payment, despite spending my entire time in college harassing my mom to pay her part (as outlined in the divorce agreement) lump sum before the start of each semester. Eventually we used that up and couldn't defer anymore, and he reluctantly started paying, since I still didn't have a job that could pay my rent let alone that poo poo. He complained about it every. single. month. Sorry you finally have to pay what you've been putting off for almost 10 years  He spent the years following that asking me almost weekly to take him off as cosigner. Never mind that my credit was a negative value and I was on food stamps, he was retiring and trying to buy a house with an aerodrome attached in Pennsylvania. I poo poo you not, he bought that place and retired there while I was about to be evicted from my apartment, and berated me for posting about how grateful I was that my food stamps kicked in and I could buy groceries for the first time in 2 months (because it made him look bad to the rest of the family for not helping me). In the end I finally took over payments once I invented this career in software engineering out of nothing. Amazing how quickly your credit improves when you get paid regularly...I was able to refinance and consolidate and despite owing double what we borrowed I'll be free in just 7 more years and finally bought a house 3 months ago, something I never thought I'd ever do in my life  It's not a coincidence that I was able to cut him off and get away from his bullshit once I had money since that's what he used to control my brother and I our entire lives. Once I was able to cut off that final thing tying me to him (the cosigning on the loans) he had no leverage anymore and he knew it. He did nothing but talk poo poo about every career move I made, I think because he resented how quickly I was advancing and surpassed anything he ever accomplished in his career in just a few years, and that it meant I didn't need him for anything anymore.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:22
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Lieutenant Dan posted:I'm excited for you! Good luck in therapy! Thank you! BaronVonVaderham posted:It's not a coincidence that I was able to cut him off and get away from his bullshit once I had money since that's what he used to control my brother and I our entire lives. Once I was able to cut off that final thing tying me to him (the cosigning on the loans) he had no leverage anymore and he knew it. He did nothing but talk poo poo about every career move I made, I think because he resented how quickly I was advancing and surpassed anything he ever accomplished in his career in just a few years, and that it meant I didn't need him for anything anymore. Good. Let him die mad about it. Congrats on the home!
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Aug 16, 2021 20:24
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Good dads waste a bunch of money by accumulating interest on loans out of spite for their children. This is parenting.
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Aug 18, 2021 12:13
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Or "If you come after me for child support, I'll just quit my job!" followed by "Once they're 16 they'll move in with me because they'll see that I'm better than you!" Definitely had zero interest living with that deadbeat.
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Aug 19, 2021 04:25
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Dr. Stab posted:Good dads waste a bunch of money by accumulating interest on loans out of spite for their children. This is parenting. My mom encouraged me to take out a private student loan (for a semester of community college  ), which she co-signed. To actually cash the check I had to open a joint checking account, and that money lasted approximately six weeks in there before my mom stole it all and blamed me for 'recklessly spending'She hassled me for years because MY loan was on HER credit. I paid back every cent. it took me far, far, far too long to learn my lesson with that psychopath
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Aug 19, 2021 05:37
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Hey, here's a question for the thread: I'm paranoid as poo poo that my parents will call a "wellness check" in on me, since I've stopped responding to their calls/emails. They used to weaponize that poo poo against me in college and I had the cops show up multiple times to my dorm/apartment, which was really demoralizing (especially since I'm mixed race and Very Afraid of Cops). I live in a small town right now and I don't think I can handle podunk small town cops banging on me and my girlfriend's door in the night. Is there a way I can stop this? Maybe leave a message with the local PD "just in case"? Or is that insane? I have a semi-public-facing job that requires me to check in regularly with my team & post publically on social media, so it's really just a way for them to control me, because I'm obviously very much not dead. 
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Aug 20, 2021 16:22
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Call the cops on your mom first *taps forehead*
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Aug 20, 2021 16:29
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Samuel L. Hacksaw posted:Call the cops on your mom first *taps forehead* She lives overseas 
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Aug 20, 2021 16:33
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