visiting this subreddit feels like swimming around the edges of an atoll. my cousin showed it to me about a year ago; i found out last month that she did it in the hopes that it would help me feel less alone.
i think my mom might be a narcissist. saying so is terrifying, and every time i think it, i can't help but doubt myself. it makes me feel sick. i feel nauseous writing this all out right now, but i really need to. i need help. i need to vent. i need advice.
from the age of 13 onward, i started to realize something was wrong. i started wanting to leave. i dreamed about a little apartment i could afford, with a plant on the refrigerator and a cat and someone who cared about me. a place where i could close the door to my room. a place where i wasn't scared of the sound of doors opening or closing.
i can't really remember what made me feel that way. i can't remember why i associate door noises to fear. last month, my cousin told me my mom used to hit me. she used to pull my hair. some part of me isn't surprised. some part of me says, that's not so bad. a lot of parents use corporeal punishment. it's normal. some part of me says, get the absolute fuck away from me, mom.
that's the part of me that remembers her hitting me more recently. i'm 20. last year, she caught me procrastinating and beat me over the head with the binder i was supposed to be studying from. this year, when i refused to show her my skype history, she dug her fingernails into my arms and dragged me to the stairs; if my dad hadn't run up screaming stop! stop! enough!, i felt like she would've thrown me down them. the year before that, i fell asleep on the couch with my boyfriend holding me. when i woke up, she called me a whore, and slapped me across the face for being angry about it.
are these things normal? do normal parents do these things? i have no idea. i have nothing to compare against.
i remember her pushing my dad around when i was a kid. one thing sticks out in my mind: she shoved him into a painting hanging from a wall, and it almost fell off. i brought this memory up once, and she said you're remembering wrong, i didn't push him hard at all. don't make things up. i felt guilty for thinking ill of her. i felt guilty for believing my brain. but the vividness of the memory hasn't faded. i remember where i was standing. i remember the sound of the frame scraping against the wall.
around when i was 14, my grandfather died, and my mom fell into a "depression". so did i, sort of. i don't really know what to call it or how to qualify it. i noticed i felt numb, empty, desperate, angry, afraid... i guess i was distant. i told lies about when i was going to bed, staying up at night reading and talking to randos on the internet, trying to find something to make me feel better. to make me feel less alone. every time my mom caught me lying, it was terrible. i don't remember any specific instances. i think i tried my best to forget. but i kept staying up past my curfew.
once, after my mom and i argued (i have no idea what we argued about), i spoke to a friend about it after school the next day. when i got in the car, my mom asked what we had been talking about. stupidly, i was honest, and said i wanted someone to talk to. my mom was furious. she said it was a violation of her privacy, a violation of our family, and lashed out at me with sarcastic remarks about how i "needed to talk to someone about my bitch mommy" for i don't know how long afterwards. even years later, she would occasionally throw a comment like that into any random disagreement we would have, or close an argument with a similar comment (that's right, go and tell all your friends what a bitchy, nasty mom you have!!). in retrospect, i couldn't have even if i wanted to, because she took my phone away as a punishment almost every time. i guess she meant the next day in school.
taking my phone away remained the punishment of choice. we live far from the city, and far from any bus stops. we have no neighbors i could be friends with. sometimes i stay up so late that i pass out, lying in bed with my phone in my hand; whenever she finds me like this in the morning, she takes my phone away for either the next day or the next week depending on her mood. she forbids me to leave the house, regardless of whether i've made plans with someone or not.
ordinarily, i'm only allowed to go out once a week. twice a week, once in a blue moon. and i have to be home by 1 or 2 latest (keep in mind i live about 1h30 away from the city i go to school in / where my friends live); im never allowed to sleep at anyone else's house. i have few friends for this reason; it's hard to maintain relationships with more than a couple of people when you only get one chance weekly to see anyone in person. most people end up forgetting about me, drifting away, thinking im a flake because my mom changes her mind last-minute about me going out, etc.
my mom often complains to me about how shitty my friends are, despite the fact that she knows nothing about them. she tells me that they're all lazy, have low IQ's, are a bad influence, are druggies, are awful, are ugly, etc. she wants me to "make better friends". how she expects me to do this is beyond me.
besides, i love my friends. they've stood by me despite how unavailable i am. they're good people. they're not stupid, they're all doing well for themselves (in school, working, one of them lives on his own, etc., and none of them are drug addicts). they love me so much it amazes me sometimes.*
i get flashes of clarity / confidence, in which i feel strongly that i need to leave. i need to move out. i need to be free of the anxiety, of the paranoia, of the nausea. there are so many other things i haven't written about. i remember her calling me a snake. i remember her driving me to the house we lived in when i was little to "bury me" because i was as good as dead to her. what kind of person says that to a 15 year old kid? a 15 year old kid who's trying her fucking best, who doesn't do drugs, who barely leaves the house, who does almost everything you fucking tell her to, who desperately wants your love and approval? what the fuck is wrong with you?
that being said, every time i have a flash of clarity, i realize i need to move out. ive had enough of these flashes to plan it thoroughly. i have a roommate. we found a place. a friend of mine will cosign, or my roommate's parent will cosign for us both. i have enough money for the first few months, and i can get a part time job pretty quickly. my friends are incredible, and have told me they'll help me with food or rent if i need it.
the problem is, when i move out, i'm scared my parents will stop paying my tuition. the solution i initially thought of was government student loans, but a problem has come up:
my mom runs a small business. when i was 16 or 17, she listed me as an employee to dodge taxes. i didn't actually work for her company. they opened a bank account under my name and paid my salary into that account, and did whatever they saw fit with the money. ive never seen a lick of it. however, as far as the government is concerned, i've been employed and salaried for like 3 years, and have more than enough saved up, and am still making more than enough money to get by and pay my own tuition (i live in canada, in a province where tuition is really low). tl;dr: they see no reason to give me a loan.
im so scared. i don't know how to solve this. i don't want to rat my parents out, and besides, i dont even know if it would solve anything. i don't know what to do. i just want to tap out of life. help, or at least tell me im not crazy, or tell me if i am crazy
Submitted July 26, 2017 at 01:53AM by gotFuckt http://ift.tt/2uX0MF1 raisedbynarcissists
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