I'm a 15 year old INFJ (if that helps) girl, still living with my narcissistic single mother and my little sister. I've been doing some research and just joined reddit a few days ago and now I feel like I know enough to communicate my problem. My mother parentified me slowly but surely my entire life, I've realized. When I was younger, it was normal almost, I had a normal amount of responsibilities, like setting out my uniform every night, making my bed, etc. But when I turned 6, two things happened: my sister was born and my brother went to prison. Looking back that was kinda the start of it all.
As my mom focused on taking care of my sister, I was responsible for more and more. My brother used to make breakfast for me on school mornings, and now I did that for myself. At 7, I got a key to my house to get in, because my mom was still working when I got home from school. My mom taught me how to do laundry and simple cooking (cereal, microwave hot dogs), and from then on I did my own laundry and made my own snacks when I got home from school. As my sister got older, it was my responsibility to do her laundry and make her food too. It didn’t really get started until about 4th grade. I was doing the entire household’s laundry, making dinner, and keeping the entire house clean (taking out trash, dishes).
A description of my mom: She frequently made and “forgot” rules she made in order to make sure I was in the wrong in every situation (I drank her expensive Fiji water once: “You ALWAYS ask to get ANYTHING out of MY refrigerator. I interrupted her while she was on the phone to ask for something out of the fridge: “Oh my god, you don’t have to ask for EVERYTHING out of the refrigerator EVERY time!”) She gave me life and for that I had an unplayable debt to her. She frequently threatened, “I gave you life and I can take it away.” She LOVES to shop. When I started taking tap classes, she bought me a $9 pair that gave me blisters and told me I was ungrateful for asking for a better pair, and that she couldn't afford it because she was paying for the food I eat and the bed I sleep in. Then she went on an hours long shopping spree. She took a room in our house for her dressing room, and it’s full of expensive jewelry and purses, and clothes. She says I should be grateful she didn’t give me up for adoption. Her birthday was around the time of one of my friend’s, and I asked her to take me to the store to get supplies to make the present. From those supplies I made a secret surprise gift for her. She saw the gift I gave to my friend (a flower shaped bath bomb) and when I gave her hers (crumbled bath bomb salts — the flower mold didn’t turn out as expected, so I crumbled them up and put them in a pretty jar with a bow), she wondered why hers wasn’t in a flower, and said I cared more about my friends than her, and that I didn’t give her what she wanted (she asked for me to clean the whole house as her gift), and that she never gets what she wants. She absolutely REFUSED to believe me when I said that I made the present with her in mind, she thought she was getting leftovers from the other present, and when I started crying because she just wouldn’t believe me, she asked if I was on my period. She still hasn’t used the bath salts. I’m always asking for rides from people because she won’t drive me, and now that I have a job I have to buy everything for myself, and if she gives me money, I just have to owe her. She never comes to any of my shows and when I told her I wished she would come she said she can’t because she’s too busy working to provide for me, and that she wishes she had 2 hours to waste to sit around and see a show. She doesn’t look up from her phone when I talk to her, and she responds in “hmmm”. She’s very ambitious, right now she’s in graduate school and is always stressed out. It undoubtedly comes back on me. My dad is in the military and has always been present in my life even though he and my mom are separated. But she definitely takes it out on me if she’s mad at my dad. If he doesn’t pay his child support for the month, I get no money to hang out with my friends or to buy tickets to events or things like that. She blames my dance lessons for me not getting all my chores done, and threatens to pull me out unless the house stays clean. God forbid she pick up a dish to help out, she’s too tired from working.
My relationship with my sister: When I was little, I thought that the way you treat people younger (and therefore inferior I thought, my mom was big on “seen and not heard”) than you was to belittle them and make them do things for you. So I began to treat my sister how my mom treated me, and my mom called me a bully. She thought she had to protect my sister from me and said things like “Don’t speak that way to MY child”. I KNOW she treated me like that because she didn’t like seeing so much of herself in me. Since I was responsible for everything around the house and a 5 year old is messy, I began to resent my sister for making messes and not helping out to clean up, and my mom thought that I was always trying to “control” my sister. She would pray in front of my sister to God to remove the “spirit of control” from me. My sister adored my mom because Mom didn’t tell her to clean up or yell at her for being messy, those tasks were reserved for me, and my sister resented me. She did at first love me, I was her big sister, but I pushed her away, I didn’t know what to do with affection, I had never had that, so part of her resentment was my own fault. Eventually my sister began to use my mom’s bullying tactics toward me. I am a creative kid and I always got good grades. My sister didn’t do so well in school (schools weren’t very accommodating to her autism). My mom was always trying to sign her up for plays and activities to get her to be good at something, and when we were at the performance for said things I had to make myself as small as possible, lest I be accused of usurping attention from my sister. My mom was a relatively young mother, she had me at 26. I understand if she wasn’t perfect when I was younger. But she grew as a mother as time went on, so while I had this angry, stressed, abusive mother, my sister got a more experienced one, so I was forced to watch my mom raise my sister totally different than I was. It’s always been a little bubble with my mom and my sister in it, and me just watching. They have cuddle time and movie time, and I’d long since given up on trying to do that when I was little, my mom hated for me to touch her. They go to the movies together, or go out to eat before I get home, and come home without anything for me. My sister to this day doesn’t listen to anything I say, and I get easily pissed off. I can go from relaxed to screaming at the top of my lungs at her, and my mom still thinks I bully her, regardless of what my sister did to provoke me. She only disciplines her when there’s no deniability in what my sister did. When I cry because I’m so frustrated, my mom mocks me and says I’m an ugly crier.
Anyway, I had all the responsibilities of an adult and none of the respect, because my mom believes children are inferior to adults. I was expected to keep the house clean with no help from anyone else, I became a maid for my family. They began to just leave dishes wherever and expected me to get them, and if I complained, my mom said I was lazy. I got angrier and more depressed, by 5th grade I was researching ways to run away and painless ways to commit suicide. In middle school, being an INFJ made it hard for me to make and keep balanced relationships with people (that’s a whole ‘nother story), so I’ve never had a friend. That’s not to say I don’t have people I joke with that generally like being around me (this is a sob story, but I’m really fun to be around), but I’ve never had a true person I can connect with, or tell all this to. As I got older, I stopped being sad and more angry, and it’s made me work harder. I’m getting straight A’s and taking AP courses to get into a good college and away from my mom. I’m sorry if this is really long and all over the place, but has anyone grown up with a family like this? How did you survive and how did you cope after leaving? Should I cut my mom totally out of my life when I get older? I’m afraid to open up because every time I have, Mom uses it against me. How do I know who to open up to without being hurt? I want to have a relationship, I'm really lonely, but guys my age aren't really ready for me to open up to them with this, and if I can't open up, what's the point in having a relationship at my age? thanks guys.
Submitted December 05, 2016 at 08:41AM by broccoletti http://ift.tt/2fY9sVv raisedbynarcissists
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