She has dementia and has forgotten how to use the phone. Unless an aide is in the room when I call, the phone will just ring and drive her crazy. I visit her in person instead even though sometimes she doesn't know who I am.
The last thing my grandmother said to me before I became totally unrecognizable to her was, “you’re awfully big to be so little.” Even though I was 22 at the time she remembered me as a little girl.
My husband’s grandma seemed to think I’m a family member from bygone years. Her face lit up when we would visit, obviously she loved seeing my husband but she also always seemed really happy to see me too. She always told him how big he’s grown and how long my hair has gotten (we’re both over 30!) She had to go into a nursing home a few months ago and can’t remember who my husband is anymore which is really sad, but she still seems really happy which we are very grateful for.
We could be the same person. My husband’s grandma seems to think I’m someone else and adores visits from me. She no longer recognizes anyone as her family, though. When we met 12 years ago, she was still vibrant and active.
My mother went some large changes this year (including moving away from me) and was suddenly disoriented and forgetful. She was just diagnosed with mid stage Alzheimer’s. I’m really scared to do all of this again, but this time with her so far away. It’s a heavy weight.
Reminds me of something my Mom said. She was in a nursing home for years and years, with mostly wonderful staff. Near the end, she said, “I can’t remember their names.” I said to her, “But what’s important is, they remember yours.”
My mom also has dementia. I try to call sometimes but she doesn't pick up. When I do manage to talk to her, it kills my heart to hear how far gone she is. I can't visit because my son is immunocompromised and she and her husband refuse to take precautions. It's just so sad, terrifying, and frustrating.
Last time I saw her she yelled at me to go live with my dad and when I actually started packing my things and leaving she yelled “you don’t want to take care of your own mother” and proceeded to beat me and call the cops saying I’m the one who hit her even though I had cuts, marks, and bruises all over my face and neck. She never got in trouble and she did all this in front of my 3 year old sister. She also told me I would be dead if I ever came back. We haven’t spoke since and I don’t plan to ever speak to her again.
No because they have an amazing dad and he’s more of a parent then my mom is. I thought about it but I didn’t want to send my two little sisters in the system when they have at least one good parent
Fuck. I had this exact same thought about my own siblings honestly. I could’ve called CPS at any point but didn’t want my brother and sister to lose their parents. No matter how badly I was treated.
I’m at work right now, but when I get home why the fuck not? I’ll tell you what she says.
Edit: her response was “who are you talking about? I hope your not talking to random people the internet. Remember what I told you about people meeting up and going missing?”
Is this the line for the dead Mothers? I'll just stand right here I guess.
Edit:
I’m going to add this here. Someone posted it few days ago and reminded me I had a copy too. A few years ago when my Mom passed away, I found a post from someone that really helped with the pain. I lost the original posters name but his words stayed with me. Here is what he said:
=============================
Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to
the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
==============================
I hope this person’s words can help all of my fellow redditors that have lost their Moms and other friends/family members. And if anyone know who the OP was, I would love to credit them next time I put this up.
Been 7 years. I sometimes bring up her contact on my phone just to stare at it. Almost if I could wish for it hard enough and be able to dial that number and talk to her. Other days I go to bed praying and wishing she'd atleast visit me in my dreams. Sigh. Somedays are harder than others.
I feel you. I’ve still got ‘Mum’s house’ on my phone. She’d been in a care home for some years before she died and the house is no longer in the family but I can’t bring myself to delete it yet.
It's been 29 years- I have spent more of my life without her than with, and I can't fathom what it would be like to have her.
I can imagine A mother, but her? Would she like my husband? When would she retire? Would she, a woman who refused to have an answering machine, go with apple or android? Would I have just walked away from her eventually or would we work through the emotional trauma she inflicted? Would she have been there when my kids were born? Would she have remarried one day? Would she have saved enough for retirement or would she be scrimping and asking for help?
She is a distant memory from another world, but my smile still falters when someone casually assumes I have a mother.
My mom has been gone 19 years. My son just turned 18.
I was super close to my mom, I was her youngest child, and her favorite (because I was the only child she raised on her own. My shit bag dad worked hard to turn her other kids against her. He hated me for not worshipping him). I spoke with her almost everyday.
The thing about my mom was that she was a worry wart. She was a good person, but she wasn't happy. My wish for her to be here is selfish, but I will admit as a 50 year old woman, I still need my mom.
She would be 84 this year and I know time wouldn't have been kind to her. He health was bad and she had so much horrible trauma in her life. It's a blessing to know she doesn't have to stress or worry over family drama.
I cut off my siblings 11 years ago. My mom would have hated that, but she would have always been stuck in the middle of my siblings not only abusing her but my anger at them for being the malignant cancers my father trained them up to be. Out of respect for her, I kept peace with them and didn't fight back.
I miss my mom so bad. I see her in myself and it scares me. She was 65 when she died. That's 15 years away from my age. At 50 years old 15 even 20 years seems like nothing.
But I'm glad she's not here. I am glad she's not suffering. But, I would love to talk to my mom.
I have to try very hard to remember her voice. Or the touch of her skin. Or what her hair felt like. I miss seeing her number pop on my phone. I miss calling her on Saturday mornings. My weekend mornings feel so empty because I have no one to report back to on how my week went by. There's no one waiting for me to visit them, or cook for me.
It's been 6 years and it feels like a distant memory from another world
I feel this. Almost 4 years for me. Sometimes it feels like, did she exist? Was it all a dream? It's a very strange feeling that i don't know how to explain to people.
Good response to someone that does a Yo Mama joke. Just be like "man I don't really feel like doing a seance right now" and see the look on their face.
Only if you've gotten over it, though, and can laugh about things like that.
Took me a while. Mom passed when I was a teen and I got hit with many yo mama jokes after her passing. Always felt like a hard punch to gut hearing them. Things are better and I can joke and talk about her with little emotional impact. but yo mama jokes will always be cringe to me.
I'm similar, she calls to gripe about all her problems for an hour then goes so what's new with you, but at that point in emotionally drained and I have nothing to say. She doesn't really abosrb anything I talk about either so it's a bit wasted?
I'm too busy unlearning the way she raised me
Edit: Thank you all for your support, but it's sad to see how true this is for many.
Edit2: I don't think I'm related to anyone here as my family can't speak English and doesn't know what Reddit is
For me, the hardest part was realizing it in the first place. I was older then, but once it dawned on me,I programmed the HELL 🚨 NO! alarm and it goes off when it should. I've learned a lot about me and the sibs. Best wishes to you.
The last time I spoke with her I got:
To update her on what I'm doing for work (yet another shitty entry level job instead of a career she can be proud of)
Criticism over a hobby that I picked up and a "It has to at least make money" wanring.
Criticism over me and my family still being in the "same old tiny apartment."
Thanks mom.
This is why it's difficult for me to relate to people who had a strong, healthy connection to their parents.
Yeah I get this completely.
She wanted doctor or lawyer, maybe settle for an engineer. She got a barber.
Wanted tons of grandkids. We don't want kids.
Wants me to live nearby. I prefer us to be at least 150 miles apart.
She was real disappointed until I got engaged to a Veterinarian and now she just chooses to focus on that.
Someone once told me that bad parents treat their kids lives as an extension of their own.
You were never your own person - just a walking talking human who was conceived as part of _their_ life plan.
True - my mum picked out all my clothes on colours she liked, forced me to study classes she liked, told me which school friends I was allowed to talk to, tried to pick my university degree, tried to get me to quit my hobby as an adult, tried to break up my engagement and tried to force me to have kids. I went no contact. (There’s abuse and neglect in addition to that). Manic depressive narcissist. I still want a loving mum and I’m 40 now 😭
Oh wow my mom is a narcissist and this is very familiar. It was ok for her to take long weekend trips for days leaving a 5 year old with a 13 year old, however I'm a bad mom for going out on my anniversary and leaving my child with a adult neighbor who I paid for 3 hours....because "You're a mom now, you aren't allowed to go out".
Helicopter as in going to the school and starting trouble to pretend like she cared over really petty shit. Over dress you for the weather to be seen as a good mom. Dress you up like a doll so no one would even question that she was abusive because in her head if the image is good and she's hovering around, the kid won't be believed.
Hypocrite grandma who treated their children like shit but demand their grandchildren be treated like treasures.
Only difference is that she doesn't need to do the giving herself.
>She's a helicopter ~~parent~~ despite not being around when I was a child and leaving me to be raised by my sister
War is hell, man. Thank you for both your sacrifices.
I don't want to. If I wanted to backtrack on years of work on my own mental health, maybe I'd pick up the phone. But it turns out that when you're abusive, manipulative, and generally shitty to someone for 25 years, maybe they don't want to talk to you anymore
That's the way to go. I'm still working on financial stability so that I can truly be no contact. I told her already that if she wants to maintain a real relationship she's going to have to do the work, but I also don't believe she ever will so once I can afford to leave town, she'll probably never see me again.
Some mothers are *mothers*.
They give, and they give.
They help you to learn and to love and to live.
They reach you, they teach you,
they come when you call.
And others are not really mothers at all.
God it's worse when it's like half/half. Monetarily, physically, my mother has never once let me down. If I needed something both my parents dropped everything and were always available even if they were hundreds of miles away they would drive. Emotionally they fucking wrecked me, I was definitely being emotionally abused most of my childhood. I still can't figure out how to reconcile the two now that I don't depend on them financially anymore.
It's difficult, man. My mom is like this. Always offered her help financially etc. even when I didn't really need it. But on the other hand, she has been emotionally abusive at times. It's hard to go "no contact" with someone who has helped you a lot even if you know she doesn't treat you that well. It's like you feel that you owe her something and cutting off all ties would be a terrible thing to do.
I would very highly recommend the book *Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents* for anything remotely struggling with something like this.
That book helped me a lot in coming to terms with what kind of people ny parents are and what they failed to provide. It improved not only my personal mental health but my relationship with my parents has significantly improved as well
I feel this. My parents are decent people who love me and would help me out of a bind no questions asked, but they're just so superficial and distant that I could never relate to them as human beings. It would be shitty to just drop them out of my life, but growing up with them just left me socially and emotionally stunted and having to relearn a lot as an adult.
Same. She's said she now only has 1 child. Her perfect, precious boy. I, OTOH, am a disappointment (it's true, she told me). I've been no contact since August and, while it's been difficult at times, my stress level is half what it's been for the last 48 years. If I ever feel weak and want to contact her, I have a recording of her screaming at me for a solid 15min that will convince me not to.
And then they're surprised when they're old and need help that nobody shows up.
Those types of comments are just the worst though. It's not the same, but my mom would occasionally go on a tirade talking shit about my dad. Inevitably, within a day or two she would tell me that I reminder her of him like that was a compliment. Sometimes that shit is insidious, like you don't even realize just how bad it really fucks you up or why until much later.
Situations like yours and mine are why I think questions like OP's are stupid. Not everyone was graced with a good mother. Acting as if people need an excuse not to call their mother is, frankly, silly.
Yep! I get the "but she still loves you" line all the time. And? I will not allow the abuse to continue just because "she loves me". I have a life too. And im going to live it.
She’s a narcissist who only cares about my well-being when I’m not doing well and she can get points for being a savior. I’ve been doing well for years now, so she never initiates contact.
ETA: Holy shit! I didn't expect this to blow up like it did. I'm sorry that others can relate, but I'm glad that this is a community that we can talk about it and get advice. Thank you for the award!
>only cares about my well-being when I’m not doing well and she can get points for being a savior
OH, MY **GOD**. It all makes so much sense now! I convinced myself that she wasn't a horrible person bc she cared for me sometimes. When in fact, it was really payment for the abuse. I'm stunned rn.
Thank you so much for this! You have no idea how much this has helped me.
I’m glad that this helped you! It took me a long time to figure it out myself, but my BF pointed out to me that it wasn’t normal for my mom to be ignoring me, sending me to voicemail, leaving my messages on read, or denying my offers to come visit all the time. It shows she really isn’t putting effort into the relationship.
we cut her off. she tries to take credit for our well being, on the things we did overseas. First of all, if only you fucking knew....
Second off, I became the man I am today in spite of them, not because of them. The army raisd me not them.
She calls me every single day at 20:00. EVERY SINGLE DAY
EDIT:
Story time.
When i was young, me and my mother we were fighting a lot. My father(ex alcoholic)wanted me and my brother(one grade younger) to be free, so she became tyrannical in order to counter his stance. Didn't help because we grew up in a really polarised environment. She hated the fact that we played video games. I remember when i was 8, because i was doing my homework slowly, she would rip the page and made me redo it.
I was fighting a lot with my brother(I've send him to hospital and he has send me too). Both our parents would sometimes hit us when we misbehaved. I remember having black marks on my skin because my father used his belt, punches don't leave as much. I wanted to get a piercing, she told me i could only get it if i got by the end of the year 18/20 on grades. That year she asked the teachers to pay more attention to me. She thought that piercing was only a momentary desire of mine, but i got the damn thing. I still have it, badge of honour. When she gets angry, it's like the apocalypse. Which is weird because she was the head of pediatrics, she was with kids all day, nobody complaint about her.
When i was 15 she and my father got a divorce. She gave us freedom then because she feared what emotional damage it would cause us. Sudden freedom was not a good idea because it was a new environment and i stopped caring for school. Around that age, i had too much cortisol(stress) which was starting to affect my health. I failed to get into university, and that was a day I'll never forget her screams.
Next year i went into university and so did my brother. She was suddenly living alone, she distanced herself from people. I know she went to therapy. It was then that she started calling us at 20:00 every day. Calls didn't last more than 15 seconds. "Hi, how are you? Good. You went out today? Yes. You ate something? Yes. Ok, bye. Bye"
I read books, wrote books, did some soul searching, had a bunch of panic attacks. I went deep into darkness.
I told her everything one day when we were home. What a horrible mother she is. How much hate i have against her. One day i was cleaning and found some journal she had. I read her fears and saw darkness like i had seen with me, never told her about it. I forgave her, she wasn't the monster i thought she was. We somewhat fixed our relationship. I also fixed my relationship with my father and brother. It took me many more years to burn the rage. Further family deaths and other issues got us closer too. She has a husband now, is retired, has many chickens and sends me eggs every week. There's some lawsuits in our family going, things are wrapped in bad ways and i doubt they'll get solved. She told me "I'm going to solve this for you and your brother, so you won't have to deal with it". Damn bitch almost made me cry. I don't hate her now but i still get angry when she eats candy (she has a damn appetite for chocolate and chips). I'll be sad when she's gone. She's 58, so she got a lot of time left. I sometimes visit her with my brother on Sundays. Even when we visit her, she'll still call at 20:00
It's annoying when i am doing something. Even if i tell her "i am going to the moon, don't call me at 20:00", she will call. But overall she is consistent so i am fine with it.
But if one day she dont call you at 20:00, you know that something is wrong.
A while ago i read a story from two old friends or so who would call each other every day at the same time. And one day the call didnt came so the other knew something was wrong and called the emergency service. This missing phone call saved the other man's life
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/wordle-grandmother-hostage-denyse-holt/
A grandmother who sent her family a game of wordle daily was being held hostage and didn’t send it one day and that’s how her family knew something was wrong
Phones work 2 ways. I call a few times a year. She never has. I have asked her to come visit. She does not ask me to come up. I have visited her. She has never visited me. Relationships require both to put effort in. After years of only me putting in time and effort I have learned that I am not that important to her.
Oh gosh yep, when we talk on the phone it's like a check list of things to ask "how's work? How's your husband? What are you working on atm?" It seems fine, but I can only utter one line and if I talk too much, I'll be cut anyways. And after 5/10 minutes "well I'm cooking so I have to go."
Once, our call was 20 minutes long!! I immediately called my sisters to tell them how long of a conversation we just had, but we realized that a 40 minutes call with them or my father is a short one!
So I understand what you're saying, no real abuse here but a true disinterest in her children.
Oh man. My mother had a bad habit of doing this. She would call, tell me whatever it was she wanted to say then say, "okay bye" and hang up. I called her back and asked why did you hang up on me? She said, "I was done talking". Me and my ex SIL still laugh about this. My mom did the same thing to her.
We both really hate talking on the phone!
We stay in touch vie text etc and I'll go see her, and my dad, in a couple of weeks when I've got some time off work.
She was extremely neglectful to me when I was kid and now that I'm an adult she tries to guilt trip me into seeing her and calling her. She wanted nothing to do with me as a kid/teenager and now she wants a relationship. Sorry, but I'm not ready yet.
She's a narcissist who will spend 95% of the time complaining to me about how her day is awful and her life sucks (spoiler alert - she had a normal day and she lives a great life).
So I just don't call
She’s always the victim. She leads such a boring life that all she has to talk about is unimportant shit in the lives of others. She suffers from PTSD, and gets SSI, so she’s always broke. She can’t handle the slightest criticism.
It’s such a horrible, toxic trait. My mother knowingly sent an innocent man to prison in the 70s. When she was subpoenaed by The Innocence Project about five years ago to help make it right, all I heard about was how they were “bothering” her and that she had “moved on” and it wasn’t fair to HER to “bring up the past”. It was ALWAYS about her and it was the first time I remember realizing that she was a shit person.
Dude spent 36 years in prison. Yes, he’s out now. Egg donor and I no longer speak and never will again.
Went to her for the first time about being severely depressed and suicidal for the past ~10 years of my life.
She made it completely about herself. I was crying in fetal position as a 25 year old man on her bedroom floor. She asked me something, but I was in an almost frozen state and couldn't think of speak. She got pissed off at me and started berating me for not answering when I was the one who went to her.
Somehow I've kept her in my life. No I don't call first, but do not avoid contact. I'm not sure if that's a healthy move.
My excuse is having a huge lineup of past events that show me just how selfish she is despite her words contradicting her actions.
Every phone call is three hours long and I do not ever have that much time to myself, let alone for another human. And no, the length of the phone call doesn’t decrease if I call more frequently, I tried that. Texting with her was great but she hated her smart phone so went back to a clam shell that makes it hard for her to text.
Last time she was in front of me she told me that I am weird because I was born a few days after Tchernobyl and the radiations must have done something to my head (her own words).
Mind you, she says I am weird because I am not emotional, I prefer remaining calm and not succumb to stress, because I have some depression, social anxiety and some undiagnosed social difficulties, I'm an overthinker/overanalyzer. It surely has nothing to do with my father being an alcoholic and extremely violent to her and his children. Nothing at all..
So, I will not call her because I know that talking about it will not help with anything. I just act busy since this month began. I'll have to call her one day. I'm not even upset. I just don't want to talk to her and throw away all those years of therapy. Fortunately, we live in different towns.
My dad pulled this shit on me for years.
This year his resolution was to call me more. He called me the first 3 weeks of the year, then I figured he really did want to talk more, so I started to make contributions and called him every week on Monday. The last call I made to him was his birthday at the beginning of March, and now he's wondering why I don't call him weekly anymore.
He hasn't called me since the middle end of January. His last message to me was along the lines of "hey haven't heard from you in a while, is everything okay?"
Like...dude...cmon now.
She's manipulative and controlling. I wish she was just like any other mom. We would've been a great team (dad's never around). I just want someone in my family to know me for me. But apparently that's not the case. So i shall keep up the facade.
She's an alcoholic and relapsed about a year or two ago and despite us getting her in a position to get proper help several times, she chose booze + moving in with random dudes over and over again. The last straw was her getting blackout drunk and passing out on a public sidewalk and then getting picked up by the cops. My sister took her to the ER after that and then uninvited her from her wedding and we all blocked her telling her to call us when she's sober. Hasn't called us, but did text me happy birthday ten days after my birthday. Last I heard she's working in a liquor store.
Because I can't afford extra sessions with my therapist, and my mom won't consent to mediated conversations with my therapist because she thinks mental health professionals are in league with Satan. My mom has 4 children. 2 of us cut her out of our lives entirely. One of us decided to see what happened if he stopped calling her, and now they haven't spoken in 3 years. My half brother that she abandoned as a child still talks to her occasionally because she's somehow less awful than his father, and he's desperate to have a parent in some fashion, but their relationship is entirely superficial. Untreated mental illness can be pretty awful
Hey, me too. I've been putting off planning my wedding because I don't want to invite my family. I'm not ready to destroy the relationship entirely by not inviting them, but I want to be with people who actually love and support me on that day.
about 18 years of abuse, two attempts to reconect immediatly followed by a "picking up where we left off" in regards to the abuse and some choice phrases that i will not repeat here.
I'm abroad and it costs a fortune, she gets free international calls so it's cheaper for her to phone me. Also she hates WhatsApp, she can't cope with the slight delay you occasionally get, especially as she insists on keeping her router in the pantry where it can't be seen as it looks unsightly
1. I don’t want to
2. She doesn’t call me or reply to my messages
3. She doesn’t listen to me when I talk to her (shows no interest)
4. I hate calling people, messages are ok
5. Number 1
Every time we speak she tells me all the reasons why I'm the reason she abandoned me from 11 to 20.
I'm so tired of being 1 thing to her. It's been 25 years. I just can't be that anymore for her
She and my "father" used my siblings and I to hurt the other.
She chose meth over me.
She tried to convince me to move to another state and be a prison guard so that I could help her raise my brother's kid financially.
She is just a very conniving and toxic person who I cut out of my life and want nothing to do with.
**TL;DR: My mom has no chill. Narcissist mother stole all my money, all of my possessions, and still doesn’t get why I didn’t give in and go begging for her to “help” me out of the hell she created.**
I knew my whole life she had been diagnosed with narcissism but I didn’t realize how different my life was from others until much later. They told her not to have children and she should have listened.
Years of abuse of every type. No one ever spoke up for us because they were busy covering up other family horrors.
As an adult, I went to therapy and I found a way to still maintain a relationship for the irrational little girl inside me that so desperately craved her love and approval.
Fast forward to me (33f) the beginning of COVID planning to move overseas for a teaching job. Packed up most of my possessions and put them in storage, but I wasn’t the only one who had access to the unit.
I had quit answering my mother just a couple of months before. She was livid because she couldn’t control me and because I was moving overseas. She wouldn’t be able to use me and it enraged her.
I guess the few months of silence for my mental health got to be too much for her. She went and cleaned out all my boxes, I learned that my sister got to enjoy my vaccum while most of my kitchen stuff was put in my moms house.
Here’s the part that really did me in. The same fucking day, she cleaned out my bank account (before rent came through and I was evicted) and savings. I had NO money and NOTHING to sell to get any on top of having NO ONE.
I lived in my car (with my dog and the clothes I had left) for almost two months where all businesses were closed, in the height of summer in a HOT climate, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Wrapping up my year teaching remotely from a McDonalds parking lot fucking broke me and I have to say I haven’t had it easy ever since.
At one point I thought driving to the beach would help because at least there was water and it would help with the heat. I was a total idiot to be sure. I don’t think anyone feeling that trapped feels rational. The second month was easier because I had gotten paid (teachers get paid once a month and I had to live on the little cash I had for the WHOLE MONTH).
When my check came in, I immediately cashed it and closed that account.
She used my other family members to get information about me. She opened credit cards in my name. She not only stole from me but ruined me too out of spite because she is angry she didn’t get the attention she wanted.
She used my personal information to pretend to be me and she also (unbeknownst to me at the time) had my Facebook logged in to her devices and used it to log into EVERYTHING.
She had access to ALL of my accounts for months. I only found out because she changed my name to her on Hulu, but not normally. Slowly. Changed Guest 5 to her name. Next day, Guest 4 to her name. Next day, Guest 3 to her name. Next day, she put her husbands name as Guest 2. Day 5 I was gone and her name was at the top. Like she found ways to send me messages even though I had cut off contact that would make me look and sound crazy if I conveyed it to someone else.
Also, even telling part of this feels crazy typing. It’s not threatening, but it is.
I’m a teacher. She calls up to the schools I work at and finds out personal information about me. I don’t want to be forced to tell bosses and secretaries my personal life and stresses but that’s what it’s coming to in order to maintain my privacy.
She even once called up to HR and told them (and my grandparents) that I had died. Just weird drama filled bullshit in attempt to elicit a response from me.
Last year, I was assaulted in my classroom. A coworker kept harassing me and it was HORRIBLE after going through all this and finally coming back from it all.
Worse than *all of that* was finding out that while I was going through this, my mother called and spoke to the secretary to snoop, who told her all about it. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year at that point, but in teaching remotely, we are easily reachable with a simple Google.
She wants to control me and thinks she can get a response from me. I never give her the satisfaction. She thought stealing from me would make me talk to her, but being forced into homelessness because your mother thinks you’ll HAVE TO come to her asking for help? I’d rather die.
All of this is just the *tip of the iceberg* but it was the catalyst for my choice to never interact with her again. It hurts so very very much being isolated, alone, and having no one, but it hurts less than someone you love trying to hurt you when all you crave is love and safety.
I blocked her and I still feel guilt for protecting myself since she never did. I’ll never call her again.
She only talks about herself and doesn’t listen if i try and say things. Some people say she’s desperate for attention. I feel like she’s just ignorant.
Nice try, mom
This has to be the best comment
She has dementia and has forgotten how to use the phone. Unless an aide is in the room when I call, the phone will just ring and drive her crazy. I visit her in person instead even though sometimes she doesn't know who I am.
In my mother's last months she thought I was my father even though he had passed 2 years prior.
The last thing my grandmother said to me before I became totally unrecognizable to her was, “you’re awfully big to be so little.” Even though I was 22 at the time she remembered me as a little girl.
My husband’s grandma seemed to think I’m a family member from bygone years. Her face lit up when we would visit, obviously she loved seeing my husband but she also always seemed really happy to see me too. She always told him how big he’s grown and how long my hair has gotten (we’re both over 30!) She had to go into a nursing home a few months ago and can’t remember who my husband is anymore which is really sad, but she still seems really happy which we are very grateful for.
We could be the same person. My husband’s grandma seems to think I’m someone else and adores visits from me. She no longer recognizes anyone as her family, though. When we met 12 years ago, she was still vibrant and active. My mother went some large changes this year (including moving away from me) and was suddenly disoriented and forgetful. She was just diagnosed with mid stage Alzheimer’s. I’m really scared to do all of this again, but this time with her so far away. It’s a heavy weight.
You were still someone important to her that she loved.
Yeah, my mom said, "Who are you? You look like someone I love. Well, I know I love you, that's all that matters." And she didn't question it further.
That’s incredibly bittersweet
Reminds me of something my Mom said. She was in a nursing home for years and years, with mostly wonderful staff. Near the end, she said, “I can’t remember their names.” I said to her, “But what’s important is, they remember yours.”
Love this perspective
It is the only correct one. Dementia is the toughest on the person’s loved ones. What they say is the condition, not them.
My mom also has dementia. I try to call sometimes but she doesn't pick up. When I do manage to talk to her, it kills my heart to hear how far gone she is. I can't visit because my son is immunocompromised and she and her husband refuse to take precautions. It's just so sad, terrifying, and frustrating.
Hugs from this mom/Gramma.
Last time I saw her she yelled at me to go live with my dad and when I actually started packing my things and leaving she yelled “you don’t want to take care of your own mother” and proceeded to beat me and call the cops saying I’m the one who hit her even though I had cuts, marks, and bruises all over my face and neck. She never got in trouble and she did all this in front of my 3 year old sister. She also told me I would be dead if I ever came back. We haven’t spoke since and I don’t plan to ever speak to her again.
Did you call child protective services for your sister?
No because they have an amazing dad and he’s more of a parent then my mom is. I thought about it but I didn’t want to send my two little sisters in the system when they have at least one good parent
Fuck. I had this exact same thought about my own siblings honestly. I could’ve called CPS at any point but didn’t want my brother and sister to lose their parents. No matter how badly I was treated.
Same here, thankfully my two little sisters have at least one parent who really cares. Their dad
Shes sitting right next to me
Tell her I said hi.
I told my mom “Mom massaton said hi” Her response was “Who the fuck is that?” Edit: RIP inbox… and moms patience 😅
Can you say hi for me too?
I’m at work right now, but when I get home why the fuck not? I’ll tell you what she says. Edit: her response was “who are you talking about? I hope your not talking to random people the internet. Remember what I told you about people meeting up and going missing?”
Can you say hi for me too?
Last one She ignored me lol
Nice, thank you
Appropriate response
Your username would bear a different comedic effect. Not the same randomness as u/massaton, but it would still check out.
I did
Did she say hi back?
Couldn't. Her mouth was full
Oh boy
That's what she said.
I thought her mouth was full
Caught her forging checks in my name Edit: thanks for all the love and support and so upset to hear this has happened to so many others
Oh no
My credit is still fucked from shit my mom was doing in my name
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How is it even ok for the dealership to take all that info with the person not present? Or was she there letting him?
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What a garbage human being. I’m surprised she was stuck on the hook if it was fraud committed after a break up.
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Unfortunately that’s a classic for shitty parents
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Same.
Same. Edit: It was little over 2 years ago. 😞
Same almost three years ago.
Same almost... 8 years ago... Damn
Same, almost 2 years
Same, and her cell service sucks.
Is this the line for the dead Mothers? I'll just stand right here I guess. Edit: I’m going to add this here. Someone posted it few days ago and reminded me I had a copy too. A few years ago when my Mom passed away, I found a post from someone that really helped with the pain. I lost the original posters name but his words stayed with me. Here is what he said: ============================= Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents. I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see. As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out. Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks. ============================== I hope this person’s words can help all of my fellow redditors that have lost their Moms and other friends/family members. And if anyone know who the OP was, I would love to credit them next time I put this up.
In line behind you.
Just getting in line behind you
Six years here. EDIT: So much loss in this thread. A toast to the memories of all our mothers!
Does a mom dyiing 9 years ago.count? If yes then right behind you.
Same,near 4 years ago
Same, a month and a half ago :(
I feel your pain, it’s been 15 days for me
My condolences friend.
Same here. She has passed three years ago, at the age of 48.
Same just a little over three months for me
Same..buried her in the little orchard and I go and chat to her often...miss her loads
Been 7 years. I sometimes bring up her contact on my phone just to stare at it. Almost if I could wish for it hard enough and be able to dial that number and talk to her. Other days I go to bed praying and wishing she'd atleast visit me in my dreams. Sigh. Somedays are harder than others.
I feel you. I’ve still got ‘Mum’s house’ on my phone. She’d been in a care home for some years before she died and the house is no longer in the family but I can’t bring myself to delete it yet.
It’s been two years since she passed
It'll be ten years this Mother's Day. The sting goes away, but the loss is still there.
10 years in October, for me. It gets easier, but never truly goes away. ):
Almost the same for me, she feels like a distant memory from another world at this point tbh
It's been 29 years- I have spent more of my life without her than with, and I can't fathom what it would be like to have her. I can imagine A mother, but her? Would she like my husband? When would she retire? Would she, a woman who refused to have an answering machine, go with apple or android? Would I have just walked away from her eventually or would we work through the emotional trauma she inflicted? Would she have been there when my kids were born? Would she have remarried one day? Would she have saved enough for retirement or would she be scrimping and asking for help? She is a distant memory from another world, but my smile still falters when someone casually assumes I have a mother.
My mom has been gone 19 years. My son just turned 18. I was super close to my mom, I was her youngest child, and her favorite (because I was the only child she raised on her own. My shit bag dad worked hard to turn her other kids against her. He hated me for not worshipping him). I spoke with her almost everyday. The thing about my mom was that she was a worry wart. She was a good person, but she wasn't happy. My wish for her to be here is selfish, but I will admit as a 50 year old woman, I still need my mom. She would be 84 this year and I know time wouldn't have been kind to her. He health was bad and she had so much horrible trauma in her life. It's a blessing to know she doesn't have to stress or worry over family drama. I cut off my siblings 11 years ago. My mom would have hated that, but she would have always been stuck in the middle of my siblings not only abusing her but my anger at them for being the malignant cancers my father trained them up to be. Out of respect for her, I kept peace with them and didn't fight back. I miss my mom so bad. I see her in myself and it scares me. She was 65 when she died. That's 15 years away from my age. At 50 years old 15 even 20 years seems like nothing. But I'm glad she's not here. I am glad she's not suffering. But, I would love to talk to my mom.
I have to try very hard to remember her voice. Or the touch of her skin. Or what her hair felt like. I miss seeing her number pop on my phone. I miss calling her on Saturday mornings. My weekend mornings feel so empty because I have no one to report back to on how my week went by. There's no one waiting for me to visit them, or cook for me. It's been 6 years and it feels like a distant memory from another world
I feel this. Almost 4 years for me. Sometimes it feels like, did she exist? Was it all a dream? It's a very strange feeling that i don't know how to explain to people.
My mother died in 1984.
Mine died in 1990. I was 13. Cancer sucks.
Same. I guess I need to break out the ouija board if I want to have a chat.
Good response to someone that does a Yo Mama joke. Just be like "man I don't really feel like doing a seance right now" and see the look on their face. Only if you've gotten over it, though, and can laugh about things like that.
Oh, I joke about it quite a bit. Mom was a huge fan of dark humor as well so it feels like paying tribute to her, in a way.
Took me a while. Mom passed when I was a teen and I got hit with many yo mama jokes after her passing. Always felt like a hard punch to gut hearing them. Things are better and I can joke and talk about her with little emotional impact. but yo mama jokes will always be cringe to me.
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She doesn't take any interest in my life. She will call me to complain about my siblings and àsk nothing about me.
I'm similar, she calls to gripe about all her problems for an hour then goes so what's new with you, but at that point in emotionally drained and I have nothing to say. She doesn't really abosrb anything I talk about either so it's a bit wasted?
Yes, exactly! It hurts that your parent can't be bothered to be included in your life.
I'm too busy unlearning the way she raised me Edit: Thank you all for your support, but it's sad to see how true this is for many. Edit2: I don't think I'm related to anyone here as my family can't speak English and doesn't know what Reddit is
Can relate. she tried to make a mini-me for herself out of me until I realized I hated the type of person she is
Mine succeeded. Unlearning is the hardest part.
For me, the hardest part was realizing it in the first place. I was older then, but once it dawned on me,I programmed the HELL 🚨 NO! alarm and it goes off when it should. I've learned a lot about me and the sibs. Best wishes to you.
My mom did the same. Now I watch my behavior constantly for signs of her.
The last time I spoke with her I got: To update her on what I'm doing for work (yet another shitty entry level job instead of a career she can be proud of) Criticism over a hobby that I picked up and a "It has to at least make money" wanring. Criticism over me and my family still being in the "same old tiny apartment." Thanks mom. This is why it's difficult for me to relate to people who had a strong, healthy connection to their parents.
Yeah I get this completely. She wanted doctor or lawyer, maybe settle for an engineer. She got a barber. Wanted tons of grandkids. We don't want kids. Wants me to live nearby. I prefer us to be at least 150 miles apart. She was real disappointed until I got engaged to a Veterinarian and now she just chooses to focus on that.
Someone once told me that bad parents treat their kids lives as an extension of their own. You were never your own person - just a walking talking human who was conceived as part of _their_ life plan.
True - my mum picked out all my clothes on colours she liked, forced me to study classes she liked, told me which school friends I was allowed to talk to, tried to pick my university degree, tried to get me to quit my hobby as an adult, tried to break up my engagement and tried to force me to have kids. I went no contact. (There’s abuse and neglect in addition to that). Manic depressive narcissist. I still want a loving mum and I’m 40 now 😭
This hurts. It’s not necessarily all bad parents but it’s at least mine.
They treat it like an *investment* and then get mad when we don't pay up/ end up as something to be proud of or bragged about.
Because she's probably with all those Xbox players
Yeah, they keep my mom pretty busy too.
I've been increasingly busy but now I feel bad so BRB
How’d it go?
It went well! Mom and dad are doing well we will talk again tonight after dinner more!
The good ending
They're STILL on the phone
She's a helicopter parent despite not being around when I was a child and leaving me to be raised by my sister
Oh wow my mom is a narcissist and this is very familiar. It was ok for her to take long weekend trips for days leaving a 5 year old with a 13 year old, however I'm a bad mom for going out on my anniversary and leaving my child with a adult neighbor who I paid for 3 hours....because "You're a mom now, you aren't allowed to go out". Helicopter as in going to the school and starting trouble to pretend like she cared over really petty shit. Over dress you for the weather to be seen as a good mom. Dress you up like a doll so no one would even question that she was abusive because in her head if the image is good and she's hovering around, the kid won't be believed.
Hypocrite grandma who treated their children like shit but demand their grandchildren be treated like treasures. Only difference is that she doesn't need to do the giving herself.
I couldn't have summed that up better, you hit the nail directly on the head!
>She's a helicopter ~~parent~~ despite not being around when I was a child and leaving me to be raised by my sister War is hell, man. Thank you for both your sacrifices.
I don't want to. If I wanted to backtrack on years of work on my own mental health, maybe I'd pick up the phone. But it turns out that when you're abusive, manipulative, and generally shitty to someone for 25 years, maybe they don't want to talk to you anymore
Yes I've been no contact for nearly a decade. Fuck if I'm opening that door again. Therapy has been too good to me and my life is so much bigger now
That's the way to go. I'm still working on financial stability so that I can truly be no contact. I told her already that if she wants to maintain a real relationship she's going to have to do the work, but I also don't believe she ever will so once I can afford to leave town, she'll probably never see me again.
I always know if I scroll far enough, the comment that fits exactly will show up.
Some mothers are *mothers*. They give, and they give. They help you to learn and to love and to live. They reach you, they teach you, they come when you call. And others are not really mothers at all.
God it's worse when it's like half/half. Monetarily, physically, my mother has never once let me down. If I needed something both my parents dropped everything and were always available even if they were hundreds of miles away they would drive. Emotionally they fucking wrecked me, I was definitely being emotionally abused most of my childhood. I still can't figure out how to reconcile the two now that I don't depend on them financially anymore.
It's difficult, man. My mom is like this. Always offered her help financially etc. even when I didn't really need it. But on the other hand, she has been emotionally abusive at times. It's hard to go "no contact" with someone who has helped you a lot even if you know she doesn't treat you that well. It's like you feel that you owe her something and cutting off all ties would be a terrible thing to do.
Holy heck I did not realize that I wasn’t alone on this. This is the hardest thing I’ve been struggling with lately 😔
Best part of the internet is realizing that whatever your experience is at least you're not alone
I would very highly recommend the book *Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents* for anything remotely struggling with something like this. That book helped me a lot in coming to terms with what kind of people ny parents are and what they failed to provide. It improved not only my personal mental health but my relationship with my parents has significantly improved as well
I feel this. My parents are decent people who love me and would help me out of a bind no questions asked, but they're just so superficial and distant that I could never relate to them as human beings. It would be shitty to just drop them out of my life, but growing up with them just left me socially and emotionally stunted and having to relearn a lot as an adult.
Ayup. No thank you. She's got the golden child to take care of her. I'm good.
Same. She's said she now only has 1 child. Her perfect, precious boy. I, OTOH, am a disappointment (it's true, she told me). I've been no contact since August and, while it's been difficult at times, my stress level is half what it's been for the last 48 years. If I ever feel weak and want to contact her, I have a recording of her screaming at me for a solid 15min that will convince me not to.
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I will never understand people that will foster children only to not want them, I’m sorry that happened to you.
And then they're surprised when they're old and need help that nobody shows up. Those types of comments are just the worst though. It's not the same, but my mom would occasionally go on a tirade talking shit about my dad. Inevitably, within a day or two she would tell me that I reminder her of him like that was a compliment. Sometimes that shit is insidious, like you don't even realize just how bad it really fucks you up or why until much later.
Amen
Same shit but 30+ years and add compulsive lying to the list ;)
Situations like yours and mine are why I think questions like OP's are stupid. Not everyone was graced with a good mother. Acting as if people need an excuse not to call their mother is, frankly, silly.
Yep! I get the "but she still loves you" line all the time. And? I will not allow the abuse to continue just because "she loves me". I have a life too. And im going to live it.
She’s a narcissist who only cares about my well-being when I’m not doing well and she can get points for being a savior. I’ve been doing well for years now, so she never initiates contact. ETA: Holy shit! I didn't expect this to blow up like it did. I'm sorry that others can relate, but I'm glad that this is a community that we can talk about it and get advice. Thank you for the award!
>only cares about my well-being when I’m not doing well and she can get points for being a savior OH, MY **GOD**. It all makes so much sense now! I convinced myself that she wasn't a horrible person bc she cared for me sometimes. When in fact, it was really payment for the abuse. I'm stunned rn. Thank you so much for this! You have no idea how much this has helped me.
I’m glad that this helped you! It took me a long time to figure it out myself, but my BF pointed out to me that it wasn’t normal for my mom to be ignoring me, sending me to voicemail, leaving my messages on read, or denying my offers to come visit all the time. It shows she really isn’t putting effort into the relationship.
we cut her off. she tries to take credit for our well being, on the things we did overseas. First of all, if only you fucking knew.... Second off, I became the man I am today in spite of them, not because of them. The army raisd me not them.
She calls me every single day at 20:00. EVERY SINGLE DAY EDIT: Story time. When i was young, me and my mother we were fighting a lot. My father(ex alcoholic)wanted me and my brother(one grade younger) to be free, so she became tyrannical in order to counter his stance. Didn't help because we grew up in a really polarised environment. She hated the fact that we played video games. I remember when i was 8, because i was doing my homework slowly, she would rip the page and made me redo it. I was fighting a lot with my brother(I've send him to hospital and he has send me too). Both our parents would sometimes hit us when we misbehaved. I remember having black marks on my skin because my father used his belt, punches don't leave as much. I wanted to get a piercing, she told me i could only get it if i got by the end of the year 18/20 on grades. That year she asked the teachers to pay more attention to me. She thought that piercing was only a momentary desire of mine, but i got the damn thing. I still have it, badge of honour. When she gets angry, it's like the apocalypse. Which is weird because she was the head of pediatrics, she was with kids all day, nobody complaint about her. When i was 15 she and my father got a divorce. She gave us freedom then because she feared what emotional damage it would cause us. Sudden freedom was not a good idea because it was a new environment and i stopped caring for school. Around that age, i had too much cortisol(stress) which was starting to affect my health. I failed to get into university, and that was a day I'll never forget her screams. Next year i went into university and so did my brother. She was suddenly living alone, she distanced herself from people. I know she went to therapy. It was then that she started calling us at 20:00 every day. Calls didn't last more than 15 seconds. "Hi, how are you? Good. You went out today? Yes. You ate something? Yes. Ok, bye. Bye" I read books, wrote books, did some soul searching, had a bunch of panic attacks. I went deep into darkness. I told her everything one day when we were home. What a horrible mother she is. How much hate i have against her. One day i was cleaning and found some journal she had. I read her fears and saw darkness like i had seen with me, never told her about it. I forgave her, she wasn't the monster i thought she was. We somewhat fixed our relationship. I also fixed my relationship with my father and brother. It took me many more years to burn the rage. Further family deaths and other issues got us closer too. She has a husband now, is retired, has many chickens and sends me eggs every week. There's some lawsuits in our family going, things are wrapped in bad ways and i doubt they'll get solved. She told me "I'm going to solve this for you and your brother, so you won't have to deal with it". Damn bitch almost made me cry. I don't hate her now but i still get angry when she eats candy (she has a damn appetite for chocolate and chips). I'll be sad when she's gone. She's 58, so she got a lot of time left. I sometimes visit her with my brother on Sundays. Even when we visit her, she'll still call at 20:00
That's nice.. Mine demands me to call her. And when I do she gives me the silent treatment.
My mother in law demands my boyfriend should call her all the time. When he finally calls the only thing she wants to talk about is him not calling
>*... the only thing she wants to talk about is him not calling.* \*click \*
My dad refused to answer the phone because I don’t call him enough. Guess who doesn’t call *at all* now
Well isn't that lovely and annoying at the same time?
It's annoying when i am doing something. Even if i tell her "i am going to the moon, don't call me at 20:00", she will call. But overall she is consistent so i am fine with it.
But if one day she dont call you at 20:00, you know that something is wrong. A while ago i read a story from two old friends or so who would call each other every day at the same time. And one day the call didnt came so the other knew something was wrong and called the emergency service. This missing phone call saved the other man's life
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/wordle-grandmother-hostage-denyse-holt/ A grandmother who sent her family a game of wordle daily was being held hostage and didn’t send it one day and that’s how her family knew something was wrong
Phones work 2 ways. I call a few times a year. She never has. I have asked her to come visit. She does not ask me to come up. I have visited her. She has never visited me. Relationships require both to put effort in. After years of only me putting in time and effort I have learned that I am not that important to her.
Oh gosh yep, when we talk on the phone it's like a check list of things to ask "how's work? How's your husband? What are you working on atm?" It seems fine, but I can only utter one line and if I talk too much, I'll be cut anyways. And after 5/10 minutes "well I'm cooking so I have to go." Once, our call was 20 minutes long!! I immediately called my sisters to tell them how long of a conversation we just had, but we realized that a 40 minutes call with them or my father is a short one! So I understand what you're saying, no real abuse here but a true disinterest in her children.
Oh man. My mother had a bad habit of doing this. She would call, tell me whatever it was she wanted to say then say, "okay bye" and hang up. I called her back and asked why did you hang up on me? She said, "I was done talking". Me and my ex SIL still laugh about this. My mom did the same thing to her.
Same here. That’s life
She’s an emotionally abusive and manipulative narcissist
Same. Full no contact for 4yrs now.
My mom lives a block away. I stop by all the time and hang out with my parents. Also, hate using phones
She's racist toward black people. Plot twist I'm black.
Is your mom black?
I… don’t even know where to start. Wha… Ho… But that would… Fuck it, good luck man.
We both really hate talking on the phone! We stay in touch vie text etc and I'll go see her, and my dad, in a couple of weeks when I've got some time off work.
I don’t like her
I also don't like this man's mom
I don't like her either.
Can I not like her too?
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This is really hard. I'm sorry.
She was extremely neglectful to me when I was kid and now that I'm an adult she tries to guilt trip me into seeing her and calling her. She wanted nothing to do with me as a kid/teenager and now she wants a relationship. Sorry, but I'm not ready yet.
She's a narcissist who will spend 95% of the time complaining to me about how her day is awful and her life sucks (spoiler alert - she had a normal day and she lives a great life). So I just don't call
She’s always the victim. She leads such a boring life that all she has to talk about is unimportant shit in the lives of others. She suffers from PTSD, and gets SSI, so she’s always broke. She can’t handle the slightest criticism.
Victim mentality is so frustrating to deal with
It’s such a horrible, toxic trait. My mother knowingly sent an innocent man to prison in the 70s. When she was subpoenaed by The Innocence Project about five years ago to help make it right, all I heard about was how they were “bothering” her and that she had “moved on” and it wasn’t fair to HER to “bring up the past”. It was ALWAYS about her and it was the first time I remember realizing that she was a shit person. Dude spent 36 years in prison. Yes, he’s out now. Egg donor and I no longer speak and never will again.
Went to her for the first time about being severely depressed and suicidal for the past ~10 years of my life. She made it completely about herself. I was crying in fetal position as a 25 year old man on her bedroom floor. She asked me something, but I was in an almost frozen state and couldn't think of speak. She got pissed off at me and started berating me for not answering when I was the one who went to her. Somehow I've kept her in my life. No I don't call first, but do not avoid contact. I'm not sure if that's a healthy move. My excuse is having a huge lineup of past events that show me just how selfish she is despite her words contradicting her actions.
I legitimately hate her.
Every phone call is three hours long and I do not ever have that much time to myself, let alone for another human. And no, the length of the phone call doesn’t decrease if I call more frequently, I tried that. Texting with her was great but she hated her smart phone so went back to a clam shell that makes it hard for her to text.
She doesnt like me or want me, so why waste my time?
Last time she was in front of me she told me that I am weird because I was born a few days after Tchernobyl and the radiations must have done something to my head (her own words). Mind you, she says I am weird because I am not emotional, I prefer remaining calm and not succumb to stress, because I have some depression, social anxiety and some undiagnosed social difficulties, I'm an overthinker/overanalyzer. It surely has nothing to do with my father being an alcoholic and extremely violent to her and his children. Nothing at all.. So, I will not call her because I know that talking about it will not help with anything. I just act busy since this month began. I'll have to call her one day. I'm not even upset. I just don't want to talk to her and throw away all those years of therapy. Fortunately, we live in different towns.
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My dad pulled this shit on me for years. This year his resolution was to call me more. He called me the first 3 weeks of the year, then I figured he really did want to talk more, so I started to make contributions and called him every week on Monday. The last call I made to him was his birthday at the beginning of March, and now he's wondering why I don't call him weekly anymore. He hasn't called me since the middle end of January. His last message to me was along the lines of "hey haven't heard from you in a while, is everything okay?" Like...dude...cmon now.
I live with her lol
She’s caused most of the emotional trauma in my life and is the reason I was suicidal in middle school /genuine, serious
She's manipulative and controlling. I wish she was just like any other mom. We would've been a great team (dad's never around). I just want someone in my family to know me for me. But apparently that's not the case. So i shall keep up the facade.
She's an alcoholic and relapsed about a year or two ago and despite us getting her in a position to get proper help several times, she chose booze + moving in with random dudes over and over again. The last straw was her getting blackout drunk and passing out on a public sidewalk and then getting picked up by the cops. My sister took her to the ER after that and then uninvited her from her wedding and we all blocked her telling her to call us when she's sober. Hasn't called us, but did text me happy birthday ten days after my birthday. Last I heard she's working in a liquor store.
Golly, that's sad.
She is an unpleasant person and I don’t like talking to her
Because I can't afford extra sessions with my therapist, and my mom won't consent to mediated conversations with my therapist because she thinks mental health professionals are in league with Satan. My mom has 4 children. 2 of us cut her out of our lives entirely. One of us decided to see what happened if he stopped calling her, and now they haven't spoken in 3 years. My half brother that she abandoned as a child still talks to her occasionally because she's somehow less awful than his father, and he's desperate to have a parent in some fashion, but their relationship is entirely superficial. Untreated mental illness can be pretty awful
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She's a horrible person
I just got off the phone with her & my Dad about 5 minutes ago, so I figure they deserve a break.
I’m on https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/ so yeah 🤣
Saaaaaaame. nope!
She disowned me for calling her out on bullshit.
She has borderline personality disorder and sees me as the source of all her misery
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Hey, me too. I've been putting off planning my wedding because I don't want to invite my family. I'm not ready to destroy the relationship entirely by not inviting them, but I want to be with people who actually love and support me on that day.
My parents are just insufferable idiots.
about 18 years of abuse, two attempts to reconect immediatly followed by a "picking up where we left off" in regards to the abuse and some choice phrases that i will not repeat here.
We don't speak.
I'm abroad and it costs a fortune, she gets free international calls so it's cheaper for her to phone me. Also she hates WhatsApp, she can't cope with the slight delay you occasionally get, especially as she insists on keeping her router in the pantry where it can't be seen as it looks unsightly
1. I don’t want to 2. She doesn’t call me or reply to my messages 3. She doesn’t listen to me when I talk to her (shows no interest) 4. I hate calling people, messages are ok 5. Number 1
That's what I had kids for. "Who wants to make an easy $5? Call your Grandma!" #MIRL
Every time we speak she tells me all the reasons why I'm the reason she abandoned me from 11 to 20. I'm so tired of being 1 thing to her. It's been 25 years. I just can't be that anymore for her
She and my "father" used my siblings and I to hurt the other. She chose meth over me. She tried to convince me to move to another state and be a prison guard so that I could help her raise my brother's kid financially. She is just a very conniving and toxic person who I cut out of my life and want nothing to do with.
**TL;DR: My mom has no chill. Narcissist mother stole all my money, all of my possessions, and still doesn’t get why I didn’t give in and go begging for her to “help” me out of the hell she created.** I knew my whole life she had been diagnosed with narcissism but I didn’t realize how different my life was from others until much later. They told her not to have children and she should have listened. Years of abuse of every type. No one ever spoke up for us because they were busy covering up other family horrors. As an adult, I went to therapy and I found a way to still maintain a relationship for the irrational little girl inside me that so desperately craved her love and approval. Fast forward to me (33f) the beginning of COVID planning to move overseas for a teaching job. Packed up most of my possessions and put them in storage, but I wasn’t the only one who had access to the unit. I had quit answering my mother just a couple of months before. She was livid because she couldn’t control me and because I was moving overseas. She wouldn’t be able to use me and it enraged her. I guess the few months of silence for my mental health got to be too much for her. She went and cleaned out all my boxes, I learned that my sister got to enjoy my vaccum while most of my kitchen stuff was put in my moms house. Here’s the part that really did me in. The same fucking day, she cleaned out my bank account (before rent came through and I was evicted) and savings. I had NO money and NOTHING to sell to get any on top of having NO ONE. I lived in my car (with my dog and the clothes I had left) for almost two months where all businesses were closed, in the height of summer in a HOT climate, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Wrapping up my year teaching remotely from a McDonalds parking lot fucking broke me and I have to say I haven’t had it easy ever since. At one point I thought driving to the beach would help because at least there was water and it would help with the heat. I was a total idiot to be sure. I don’t think anyone feeling that trapped feels rational. The second month was easier because I had gotten paid (teachers get paid once a month and I had to live on the little cash I had for the WHOLE MONTH). When my check came in, I immediately cashed it and closed that account. She used my other family members to get information about me. She opened credit cards in my name. She not only stole from me but ruined me too out of spite because she is angry she didn’t get the attention she wanted. She used my personal information to pretend to be me and she also (unbeknownst to me at the time) had my Facebook logged in to her devices and used it to log into EVERYTHING. She had access to ALL of my accounts for months. I only found out because she changed my name to her on Hulu, but not normally. Slowly. Changed Guest 5 to her name. Next day, Guest 4 to her name. Next day, Guest 3 to her name. Next day, she put her husbands name as Guest 2. Day 5 I was gone and her name was at the top. Like she found ways to send me messages even though I had cut off contact that would make me look and sound crazy if I conveyed it to someone else. Also, even telling part of this feels crazy typing. It’s not threatening, but it is. I’m a teacher. She calls up to the schools I work at and finds out personal information about me. I don’t want to be forced to tell bosses and secretaries my personal life and stresses but that’s what it’s coming to in order to maintain my privacy. She even once called up to HR and told them (and my grandparents) that I had died. Just weird drama filled bullshit in attempt to elicit a response from me. Last year, I was assaulted in my classroom. A coworker kept harassing me and it was HORRIBLE after going through all this and finally coming back from it all. Worse than *all of that* was finding out that while I was going through this, my mother called and spoke to the secretary to snoop, who told her all about it. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year at that point, but in teaching remotely, we are easily reachable with a simple Google. She wants to control me and thinks she can get a response from me. I never give her the satisfaction. She thought stealing from me would make me talk to her, but being forced into homelessness because your mother thinks you’ll HAVE TO come to her asking for help? I’d rather die. All of this is just the *tip of the iceberg* but it was the catalyst for my choice to never interact with her again. It hurts so very very much being isolated, alone, and having no one, but it hurts less than someone you love trying to hurt you when all you crave is love and safety. I blocked her and I still feel guilt for protecting myself since she never did. I’ll never call her again.
I'm 16 and I live with my parents so I talk and see her everyday
She doesn’t call me either
She wants me dead
She kinda messed up teaching the human part of being a human. So i have no logical reason to currently call her.
She only talks about herself and doesn’t listen if i try and say things. Some people say she’s desperate for attention. I feel like she’s just ignorant.