Hello, all. This is a throwaway since one of my sisters follows this subreddit. I've been a lurker here for a little over a year, I think. First time posting. :) I may delete this post in a few days or a week simply because I don't want the possibility of any other family finding it. I really want some perspective of this situation because I'm not really sure what I can do to make things easier on myself as my mother becomes more and more controlling as I get older and closer to freedom.
To give a bit of back story, I'm a 16 year old gal, youngest of 5 children, all my siblings and I 'home schooled' or 'online public schooled'. Two of my siblings (soon-to-be 20 yr old sis, 22 yr old bro) still live at home with me and mom. We never really got to experience the socialization that children need to learn how to properly connect/make friends with others and grow. Luckily as each child grew up, the younger ones were allowed more socializing than the others. Me and the second youngest, one of my sisters (one who lives with me), were able to go to church a lot and interact with other kids around or at our own age.
However it was always held over our heads and threatened to be taken away if we didn't act better or if we didn't stop fighting (as siblings tend to). To be honest, I think it was because she didn't want to pick us up and drop us off. The church is literally 5 minutes from our house, so that tells you a lot right there.
Surprisingly, I'm not religious. Never really have been. I went to that church for 8 years, stopped going for a year (for reasons I wont mention to keep the post shorter), and very recently started going again. Simply just so I could socialize with kids my own age instead of always hanging with my older siblings or their friends, or in-laws. I wouldn't have any in-person friends my own age if I hadn't gone. By the time I was 14 my youth pastor was giving me rides to and from church because I knew she wouldn't want to take me and it wasn't worth the trouble.
My siblings would say that my mom isn't an N. I'm not entirely sure. My sister who I introduced this subreddit to says that she thinks mom is just very FLEA ridden because of all the abuse she experienced in her life that she never really healed fully from. (she is 51 yrs old now) My extended family has always been awful and abusive towards her, but especially and mostly when she was a child. My father didn't help at all- he is an N and isolated her as much as he could during their 16 ish years of marriage and had quite the temper.
I don't know how all he abused her or the extent of it, I just know that he was abusive. He had an affair (a long one I believe) with my now step-mom and left when I was 7. I stopped going on visitation weekends when I was 11 because of step-mom. It wasn't all bad, of course I was happy to have him back in my life and he never mistreated me during that time. He just let his wife talk badly about my mom, get drunk (and possibly high?) around us, and let her send my sister to bed without food (she sneaky ate dessert) when sis wouldn't eat something she made. she knew that my sis is very picky about food. To be fair, my mom shit talked my dad a lot in front of us, but yeah. Understandably so, even if it wasn't appropriate at some of our ages. She did her best to protect us from the blunt of his anger and to keep us with her during the custody battle. But he won visitation in court, and again I was happy to have 'dad' back.
I've seen him a handful of times since then and he seems to regret a lot, has made a lot of progress, seems happier. I chat with him every now and then on facebook, but I doubt I'll ever become close to him so I'm not worried about that small amount of contact. Long since come to peace with all that.
I just remember my mom being very emotionally distant and neglective after he left. She sort of gave up on teaching us, so we mostly cheated during school. I'm lucky that my online public school teachers helped keep my math scores just below average and I was naturally a pro at reading/writing/etc like all my other siblings were (we liked to read and write). I remember telling her that I wanted a mental evaluation at 12-13 because I knew I had anxiety and other issues. All she did was tell me that 'you think you have it bad? I have it TONS worse.' and went on about that a bit, and also told me about what 'real depression' was like. I had tried to reach out to her during one of the most depressed times of my life (it was pretty fucking bad) and all she did was minimize my needs and tell me that my problems weren't bad enough for me to deserve help and care.
Onto the issue at hand before I turn this into an even longer post!
My mom has yelled at and guilt tripped me and all of my siblings about cleaning the house for... forever, really. She's used it as a way of 'rationally' saying no to what we want to do.
Almost 3 years ago, after my sister got a job, I was dumped with doing over 90% of the house chores. If I didn't clean often enough, or clean enough of the house, I was yelled at and punished and guilt tripped. My sister slowly began to help me less and less until it was a very rare thing. In fact, my sister sometimes dumped her one and only chore of feeding/watering/taking care of the dogs onto me without asking. She usually asks now, but if she's spent the night at her boyfriend's and immediately gone to work from his house the next day, I feel bad for the dogs and feed them since she usually doesn't come home until 11-12. They'd be starving by the time they were fed, and I doubt that's good for any creature.
My brother? Worse. He lives on his couch and when he's not at work, he's playing on his computer. He moved out for a while but had to move back in due to bad roommates and financial issues. Most rooms in the house are closed off due to damage or are filled with my mother's things. Brother sometimes helps out with chores and redirects mom's anger and lets her vent onto/to him, but... He's an enabler to her emotional abuse.
He pities her too much to hold her accountable for her actions. I don't think it's any excuse. I shouldn't have to be my mother's emotional punching bag or care giver. Or parent. I especially shouldn't have had to be those things during stages of my life that I needed someone to guide me and nurture me. I had to be my own mother and guide myself through life with the help of a couple close online friends and an online/long-distance boyfriend. I think I did pretty good, but... yeah. I know she went through that, except much worse, but you're supposed to want better for your children.
Me and my brother-in-law think that they're both (the two siblings) enablers and in denial (bad) about the way my mom has been treating me the past 3 years. They're always making excuses for her or shrugging, or going "ehhh..." when I try to vent to them about her. Lately, I just don't, and if I do it's when I'm really pissed off. My brother-in-law and eldest sister think that my mom projects onto me a lot because I'm living a life she wished she could've had and she feels threatened by my happiness/success. Brother-in-law and I believe that my sister is the golden child and I'm the scape goat.
I've confronted my mom many times over the cleaning issue. Honestly, I wouldn't mind the cleaning so much anymore if I wasn't constantly being punished whenever I forgot or didn't feel like cleaning for a few days. I've tried calmly explaining my side of things to her, I've tried yelling/snapping at her and guilt tripping her back, I've tried a lot. She tends to give me the silent treatment before exploding at me again, or she gives me the silent treatment and then becomes very nice to me until I do or say something that she doesn't like. ...cycle of abuse?
Just to toss it in there, she told me that the reason she didn't try to make my bro and sis help me clean was because 'they're over 18', 'they're adults', 'they have jobs'. (remember that last one lol) Right before I turned 16 I began volunteering at my eldest sisters' job in hopes to get a job there. My eldest sis is the one who suggested it. Two minimum wage, part time jobs opened up there about 5 months after I turned 16.
Eldest sis was very supportive and had patiently explained to my mom many times that I would always have snowy/icy/really bad weather days off and if I was scheduled to work that day I would still be paid, I'd never work later than 6-8 pm. All around, a perfect first job. Mom was pretty cool with it until I got an interview. Suddenly, I wasn't 'responsible enough for a job'. I'd 'better find rides to work and back'. I'd 'better keep up with all the chores'. She yelled, screamed and guilt tripped me the day of the interview for not doing something immediately and I yelled back at her and let her know I didn't appreciate her giving me that kind of negativity when she knew I had the job interview that day, within the hour.
Well. I got the job under a stroke of luck. Remember how one of her excuses to not enforcing my siblings to help with chores was 'they have jobs'? Sure, they work full time and I work part time... But I was still getting used to having a job and struggling with trying to make small talk and connecting with my new coworkers (never been good at that with people I'm not comfortable with yet, takes me time to warm up). I was getting used to new responsibilities. Getting used to dealing with the public and learning all of the massive information at work. And I didn't get a break at home. It just got worse. And worse. And worse.
To the point I snapped and yelled back at my mom multiple times in the course of a month. To the point I started putting my foot down and not budging. When my mom said something like 'work at a job you don't even need' one day before work, I was furious. I asked, 'did you have a job at 16?' 'yes' 'why? you didn't need it'. That opened up a can of worms during our next big fight.
I'd gotten up early and was happy, I'd decided to clean the house up. As soon as I went in there and began cleaning, she started bitching to me and about me to my brother for over an hour. She broke down crying while screaming at me about how awful her childhood was and how she had to have a job because she had nobody else. And how she was forced to watch her sister(s) and clean while her mom and older sister partied every night.
I kept my face emotionless while I scrubbed at the outside of the refrigerator and she yelled and cried and screamed at me. And then something snapped inside me and I yelled at her about how her awful childhood doesn't excuse the way she treats me and that you're supposed to want your children to have a better, easier life than you did. She eventually tried to write me off as an awful child who always has an attitude.
"You know why I always have an attitude, mom? Because I'm constantly being punished for not cleaning enough or doing enough when I do OVER 90% of the house chores and have been for years. When I got my job, you gave me nothing but negativity about it. No 'good job!' or 'I'm proud of you'. Just 'you better find your own way to work and back' and 'you better keep up with the chores'. And you know what? I always have rides to work and back. Very rarely do I not."
She tried to say that she never said that but I immediately shook my head and reassured her that yes, she did, and she knew it. She tried to gaslight me! It ended with me telling her I was done repeating myself over and over and over again, and I started walking off to my room. I heard her tell my brother "I have got to do something about her, she is way too hardheaded".
I immediately backtracked to the room and said "You know what? I want to go to therapy and work this out. I demand to go to therapy." never got therapy. Have told her this one or two more times during or after arguments.
There have been about two more fights that were along the lines of this and some light bickering. I'm currently feeling happier than I ever have in my whole life right now, and I worked so hard to get here. I've reconnected with the church friends. Last January I found a group of people that I feel amazing accepted, respected, loved and inspired by; eldest sister, brother-in-law and a friend of theirs (now a friend of mine as well). We all just click together and relax each other, and since January we've made it a point to try and spend a night once a week to every two weeks together to watch movies, play video games and just relax together. Have a fun time.
I've made it a point to take one of my three days off in a week to spend 4-6 hours cleaning up her house. I started making a list of everything I did (cleaning 5-6 whole entire rooms and writing every single thing I did i.e. cleaning tub, sink, so-and-so loads of laundry/dishes, etc) and giving it to her before I asked to hang out with them. Like a give-take reward system that would prove I worked hard enough to deserve a night of fun. We usually don't even stay up that late and get up anywhere between 7-11 am the next day.
At first, mom was just hesitant. Then she slowly became more and more annoyed that I wanted to spend so much time with them, and that I was cleaning before asking her. Like I was a bad person for cleaning and thinking I deserved something for it. Our last biggest fight started out of nowhere. She agreed to let me go to an art museum with them as a birthday outing for friend and hesitantly agreed to me spending the night. Right as she was going to bed she stopped me as I went to use the bathroom (her bathroom is the only one that is in working condition) and asked me to go over tomorrow's plans, that she had already agreed to, again.
Then she started asking weird questions. I knew she was having second thoughts. she started going all "Well who's going to help me clean tomorrow!! Who's going to help me out??" and I just... ugh. I kept my voice level, I explained things as calmly as I could. My voice shook sometimes but I held on. I explained that I had agreed to help her out. I'd just cleaned all day that very day. I explained that I just wanted one of the three days off I had during the week to relax.
She made another 'at a job you don't even need' comment and I calmly stopped her again and said 'I do need that job. I need to be able to pay for college, I want to move out one day and I need to be able to buy my own car because they wont" as I point my thumb towards the living room where my brother is. Bro and sis use her truck(s) to get to work and back, they don't pay rent, they haven't gotten their own cars yet. (remember how I have to find rides to work and back..?)
She made a comment about how "What, do you think you're like -eldest sister- now? An adult women?" and I was like "...what? Where did you even get that? I never said that."
She's been acting nicer lately because my grandfather recently passed and she's trying to be a better person. (she guilts us though by talking about how he was the last family she had/now she has nobody left/nobody there for her, etc..) She's given me a couple rides to work since eldest sis and I's schedules were opposite for just one week. She seems to be trying, but I don't want to get my hopes up. I understand that her father passing has her stressed out and mourning, but I'm not going to put my life 'on hold' for the next few months and tiptoe around her so as to not set her off.
I've been really nice to her aside from when she takes stuff out on me and when I haven't forgiven her yet (she never apologizes even when she knows she snapped at me for no reason and when she feels bad about it). Sometimes I start hoping that this is it, maybe she's treating me better and being a mom. But realistically I know that the 5% of progress she makes per year is just too slow and I could never have a healthy mother-daughter bond with her. She was just too emotionally distant, neglective and emotionally abusive when I needed a mom most. And I gotta get away from her living situation wise before I can finally shut that door and accept that I didn't get the childhood or opportunities that I deserved.
Any advice or observations that could help me better understand or handle my mom would really be appreciated. :(
Submitted April 04, 2015 at 11:29AM by 1357911Throwaway http://ift.tt/1atz7OU raisedbynarcissists
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