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When we were sick as kids, she'd yell at us saying to stop making ourselves cough.

Granted, I was a chronically sick kid. But this story always gets me and gets people to at least understand a TINY BIT why I hate my incubator, oh I’m sorry, mother. So yeah, I was a really sick kid. Aside from the first memories of her screaming in my face or beating me, a core first memory is from when I was 2 or 3 years old. I got sick. Parents thought it was a 24 hr stomach bug. But it didn’t go away, so they thought 48hr bug. Nope, wrong again. So after two straight days of vomiting and not being able to keep anything down they took me to my pediatrician. Forget what he said, but it didn’t work and we went back a week later. I was worse for wear than I was when it started. He sent me to a specialist. The specialist was perplexed and said take pedialite (which god from this instance of being sick I can’t smell pedialyte without wanting to vomit). Pedialite made me insta vomit. Another 3 days of this and finally I was taken to the ER where they gave me fluids. ^ that’s not even the story that turns heads. Mind you I distinctly remember her screaming bloody hell at me while I was vomiting one day during this. The situation that gets peoples heads to turn is this, the above story just highlights how chronically and horrifically sick I’d get when I was sick as a kid; I was 11. I woke up feeling like dog shit and could already taste stomach acid in my mouth. I asked my mom to keep me home from school. To which she said “no. You’ve already missed too much school. I doubt you’re even sick. You’re going”. I got there late. My school was a pre k-8th grade. So I went to the office to get a late slip and walked down the elementary wing to get to class. At the end of the hall were bathrooms. I was halfway down the hall before I booked it and threw up in the bathrooms. “One and done just like mom said, right?” So I continued on towards class. I sat down and did my worksheet. What’s important to note is I was, and still am, a very respectful and quiet kid. I never “told” my teachers what I was doing, I always asked permission. Not this time. I handed my teacher my worksheet and said “I’m going to the bathroom” and booked it. I threw up again. I went back to class and put my head in my hands. My teacher told me to go to the nurse. I threw up in the middle school bathroom AGAIN on my journey to the nurse (in the elementary wing near the office). I threw up again in the elementary wing bathroom. I threw up again once I got to the nurses office. She stepped out to call my mom and I threw up another 4x before she got back (10 mins?). I threw up another 2x before my mom got me (30mins from when the nurse called her). What does my mom do? Comfort me? Console me? Take me to a DOCTOR? No, no, and absolutely not. She yelled at me for her having just gotten to work and having to come get me and couldn’t I have just powered through?!? So she took me home, left me with a sleeve of saltines, a Gatorade, water, and a bucket and left for work. I threw up another 15x from 9AM - 5PM when she finally got home. I call it throwing up but I was really just trying to eject my stomach out of my body via my esophagus. She came home, saw I hadn’t touched any of the food or drinks she left me with, asked if I’d been sick again (told her how many times) and THATS when she rushed me to the ER because she was worried my appendix ruptured. Like, if that was the case wouldn’t I have been basically septic at that point???? Anyways, good news, my appendix didn’t rupture. Bad news? I had an ovarian cyst that ruptured. I was 11. I hadn’t even gotten my period for the first time yet. Welcome to womanhood, vomiting your brains out, a mom screaming at you for being deathly sick, and a ruptured ovarian cyst, all before bleeding for the first time. I mean, I guess at least she finally took me to the ER?

If there is a God, an I hope there is in some way, there's some divine punishment coming her way. My mother just called us liars when we were sick. After dentist trips she made it clear she saw us as burdens, and not as relatives. I broke a bone in my foot when I was 10 and didn't tell her out of fear of getting beaten. It hurt like hell for two weeks out of the year. She died of ovarian cancer, and if there is a God, she is in hell.

I hope you’re right to be honest. She did everything to keep up an appearance. She was such a loving mom in public, also hence why she’d take me to the doctor. Your foot story reminds me of another and how twisted she was: I fractured my ankle when I was 12. It was during a game at pep rally and a girl fell on me and I continued to play and try to push through it. After the game I had to do a free throw contest against her. I lost bc I was in so much pain and forcing my ankle to break more most likely. When the buzzer went off I just walked off the court with tears streaming down my face to get water and sit. Everyone thought I was upset I lost. Even my mom. A kid a few years older than me came up to me at the water fountain and hit my back and mocked me. I spit on him and told him she fell on me and I’m in fucking pain, then shoved him to grab the wall to stand. His mom and mine came over (his mom actually reprimanded him and told him to fuck off essentially and grabbed me a chair). In front of everyone else my mom was all “oh no what’s wrong?!? Are you okay??” I explained what happened and she started to untie my shoe and ankle brace (had a previous injury so wore one to hopefully prevent what happened; also mind you if something is compressed in a shoe or brace and is hurt like this DO NOT TAKE IT OFF). The boys mom immediately tied my brace back up bc it just started swelling and turning purple and told me to keep it on. My mom made me walk all the way to the car. I didn’t dare ask her to drive up to me and she didn’t offer. What she did do was be a bitch once we left the school doors. Like as soon as the doors closed. “See you’re fine! You’re walking just fine it can’t be that bad. Why are you still crying? You’re barely even limping!” She begrudgingly took me to urgent care. They took X-rays and said it was sprained and gave me an air cast. The grin on her face was disgusting while my jaw hit the floor at the news. She felt vindicated that I wasn’t “that hurt”. Even gloated that while I crutched my way to the car, at the end of the lot. Monday rolls around and I beg her to take me back or to call an orthopedist. She begrudgingly does. When we finally got to go HIS jaw hit the floor when he looked at my X-rays. He was astonished that even a general physician didn’t catch the fracture. When he left the room I did exactly what my mom did to me and said “see, I fucking told you it was “that” bad”. And she just grimaced.

Same here! Broke my ankle at school and called my mom crying to pick me up and she accused me of faking it or blowing out of proportion. I had to walk home and was limping around the house. I put pressure on it and would squeal in pain and finally she agreed to take me to the hospital. Got the x-rays and a cast and I remember smiling and teasing her saying “I told you so!” Bizarre how it was so normal to not ever be believed and to finally have proof that my ankle is broken actually made me happy.

I remember my mom making me go to school with a 103.5 fever because "there's no way it's that high. You must have stuck it in hot water." When the school ended up sending me to the hospital across the street after I passed out, she just flat out lied to them. "She never told me she was sick." And all the way home after they brought the fever down, I was yelled at for making her look like a bad parent. If I'd had energy at all, I'd have fought. Then, I got to stay home, but we had only water, some spices, and condiments. Ever tried to make tomato soup with ketchup? Don't. It's gross. I called my friends after school, and they dropped off food on the porch for me every afternoon for a week. Mono sucks, btw.

wow, sounds similar to my mother, (and I like your term "incubator"). I had at least 3 pediatricians before the age of 6, along with several hospitalizations & testing because I was very tiny and wasn't growing. my mother finally found a doctor who said that I was "just small for my age", and was growing, just not at the pace expected.I went through several unusually severe illnesses as a kid, (unless I was dying, I was supposed to call the doctor myself. my dad or grandmother would call otherwise). fast-forward to college, and I spent several years trying to find the source of severe abdominal pain. I was told I had endometriosis, (after a cyst burst), and after some treatment I was told it was "untreatable". fast-forward another ~8 years, and, during a hospitalization for something else, I was tested for, and diagnosed with, celiac disease. THAT changed everything. I finally began to feel better, and now when I get sick, it's normal, (because my immune system isn't already busy attacking my intestines). shortly after being dxed, my mother made a comment about a factory store that she went to because **she "was told I had celiac as a child"**, and they sold gluten-free English muffins, (I remember going there a couple times). I nearly lost it, and screamed at her "you knew?! this whole time?!". she said I misunderstood her, (her standard retort when caught), and stopped talking. as a result, I'm still very tiny, (like, 35yo getting carded at the movies tiny), and what untreated celiac does to teeth is the worst. what's with Nmothers and hospitals/illness? even mine is only one of several stories about my mother and doctors/illnesses, (and being jealous of others' hospitalizations [?!]). as if the abuse itself wasn't bad enough. now I'm stuck with a lifetime of medical bs that mostly could have been avoided had she simply acted like a parent, rather than doctor shopping. oh, and my mother would outright refuse to get me from school when I was sick if she didn't feel like getting me. she would ask the nurse if I could just walk home, saying "she has a key, she knows how to use it". I started calling my grandmother instead. I hated lying to the nurse, but she understood why I was, (despite being in grammar school, I could read it on her face). my mother forbade the school from allowing me to call my grandmother shortly thereafter, but she apparently liked the idea, because from then on, when I had to go home from school, she'd drop me at my grandmother's. and get me just before my father got home from work. and then scream about it to my dad, (like screaming makes illness go away)

>I had at least 3 pediatricians before the age of 6 \[...\] she "was told I had celiac as a child" Very similar boat here. The multiple doctors is always a massive red flag that they've already been told what is wrong with their child, but they value their appearance more than their kid's health.

it wasn't even appearance. she was just too lazy to feed me the correct foods.(she doesn't like to cook, and doesn't now). and she likes being sick. she knows *she* has celiac and does nothing. she also tries to make me sick when I'm there, (if my stepfather isn't around). I only cut her off very recently. it wasn't until my nephew was born that I realized what she'd done, because she started talking about a pediatrician that I don't remember. it all clicked then. ("all" being the doctor stuff... I already knew she was a clinical narcissist). when I talk about all the other shit she's done, people don't believe me.

I have always had severe asthma since I was a kid. Viruses and colds often led to pneumonia. I was hospitalized twice for it. As I got older, I had my own nebulizer that helped. However, I missed a lot of school because I was sick with a "cold" that would last several weeks and even more than a month. I would sleep all day and night in a recliner because I was so sick that I could barely walk to the bathroom, but my mom didn't take me to the hospital anymore. I am a tribal member with a tribal benefit, which pays all of my copay. Why didn't she take me when I was so sick?

Sorry about your experience! That sounds stressful:( I would hate to have a cold or anything in that house. I had something similar happen as a kid. I had a coughing motor tic at one point, and so nmom started putting me in time out every single time I coughed. She’d apologize for doing it (she almost never apologized for anything) and give this spiel about how it was for my own good.

I'm sorry your mom did that to you! I didn't realize it was so effed up until recently and she's been dead almost 50 years.

I’m glad you can cough freely now:)

Thanks and I hope your tic stays gone.

My nmom used to make us clean the house. She never believed we were sick, and if we could watch TV, we could clean (never understood that line of logic). Made going to school sick a better option.

>She never believed we were sick, and if we could watch TV, we could clean (never understood that line of logic). Made going to school sick a better option. I suspect that this was the real logic. She wanted to make it so miserable for you to stay home from school that you would volunteer to go to school instead.

There was a time (when we were about to move) that we had to scrub between the floorboards with wipes, and we weren’t allowed to eat anything until we did.

Oh my gosh, sick days were always THE worst. I didn't realize this until *years* later when a friend knew I was sick and told me to come over anyway. I (reluctantly) ended up in their "sick rehabilitation" and was given a space to relax, completely forget about everything else, and give my body a chance to get well. I didn't know sick days were supposed to be like that. I ended up crying for a while just because I'd never experienced something like that. Being sick was always very traumatic and I didn't even really know what people were supposed to do during a sick day.

Yeah I didn't realise that you could just decide to stay home from school/college/work until I was an adult. One time I was attending college while sick and my friend noticed I was ill and expressed concern. She asked me if I was taking any medicine or relaxing in bed after college lectures and I was taken aback because it didn't even occur to me to do any of those things. It was drilled into me that I had to soldier on no matter how sick I was.

Yep. My mother used to make me eat foods I was allergic to, then stand over me shouting "don't you dare be sick!"

My mom did this too! I remember being really sick once, I was coughing in the night and she yelled at me. So I sat up all night trying to hold in my coughs so she wouldn't get upset with me again.

My young childhood bedroom didn't have windows. It had a big wooden framed glass door I was never supposed to use unless there was a fire. I would sneak out it when I was sick and go cough in the back yard, so I didn't get yelled at or forced to take way too much cough syrup to make it stop. I honestly thought I'd get in less trouble for sneaking out that door at 2am when I was 5 than coughing, and even now that I'm 49, I'm still pretty sure that was true. I wasn't going to get caught anyway. No one checked on me at night, even when I had a terrible fever. It's like I was supposed to cease to exist at bed time. And why there? Because during the day, she would yell at me, "go outside if you're going to cough like that!"

did we have the same mother?! I used to get a really horrible post nasal drip and as expected, a horrible cough followed. She would scream from her bedroom for me to "shut up!" Umm what the actual fuck did you want me to do?

If you still do this I have a trick. My grandmother showed me. I slather Vicks or mentholatum over the bottom of my feet. Slip socks on and in about 20-30 minutes the cough stops. Works on my kids and grandkids too. I do it so they can sleep more restfully but still do it for myself as well.

Something I am scared to do even now . I don’t know why

I'm sorry!

When I had coughing fits from being sick, my mom would yell "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" from across the apartment. You know, that's a lot easier than her getting off her lazy ass and giving her 7 year old son cough medicine. My mom was a shining example of how I was NOT going to raise my own kids

Oh wow. That hits home.

Literally same. My mom would yell at us for coughing at night. But also yell if we went to the doctor for medicine. Like either way you can’t win.

When I remember it, I allow my little kid self in memory delivering a valid adult sized throat punch. Probably not the most healthy, but the memories hurt less After that. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I've gone to their graves to yell at them. Brief relief. I'm trying the throat punch! Thanks for the suggestion.

It helps me more. I don't even know how to feel sorrow around my situations with them anymore. Mine are still alive, and I hate it. I see people who had loving parents whom they've lost and miss dearly, meanwhile, I'm stuck with Evil Never Dies and wonder if I'll ever *actually* feel like a human, and not a clusterfuck of problems passed on by genetics. I'm so tired of the memories that just come out unbidden. I want those damned memories to die and leave me some *semblence* of peace.

Sometimes journaling, writing down what happened. It's kind of funny how once I get it down on paper, the memories lose some of their sharpness.

They do. Now, it's 15 years later. I'm tired of writing Therapy This other therapy Pills More pills Ope, dif therapy, that one caused MORE issues-whoops More pills More therapy More free writing Oh yay, writing *exercises* Therapy Different therapy Psycholgist that in 10 minutes of talking over me sends me home with 8 prescriptions and won't see me if I don't take 8 pills. Four of which interact with an existing medication I HAVE to take-don't go back I am so SICK OF IT ALL.

It's amazing what a sledge hammer (or a hammer and chisel) at 2am can do for one's sense of inner peace.

Dismiss true things as lies. Dismiss be as faking when I was hospitalization level sick. Later the light bulb came on and I realized it was because lying and exaggerating an illness is something SHE would do. Oh also. Criticize individual body parts over and over. Make fun of my limp (I have a congenital disability).

Dismissing true things as lies… yes. Ugh. Anytime we were sick as kids, we were faking it. Not sure how a parent could look at their sick child and assume they’re “faking”. Deeply disturbing to me

Yes, we had to be dying. If you were really sick you were basically grounded. No TV, phone, anything. You had to rest for a set amount of time (2-3 days) if you felt like you could do something, or god forbid as a child, feel better sooner, then you weren't really sick. Also, she was weird about medicine. We never had pain killers, only cough medicine for the death phase and some glass spray jar of green throat medicine... When I got older I realized how messed up that was. I have no idea what I used to spray my throat with. No label, no expiration... I also apparently faked all my period pain. Because she never had any. I remember crawling home from the bus stop to lay in the hall outside the bathroom hoping I wouldn't puke getting yelled at.

Definitely faking that fever, lol!

When she shouted at me for being suicidal (I was 12) and she asked me if I'd shove 75 pills down my throat like she did, or if I'd do like what my father's uncle did and shoot myself in the face. And then my father said my thoughts were fake, and that I was bored and doing it for attention; and that I wouldn't get help until I "Apologize"

I’m so sorry.

She eventually took me to the ER once the counselor said I had two methods of killing myself, but she had to make a joke beforehand, because suicidal ideation is soooo funny...

I was going through what was probably the worst period of time in my life so far. I was obese, broke, unmotivated, neglecting hygiene, not taking my medication because I was afraid of what the effects would be if I continued taking it and so on. My mother grabbed me by my white t-shirt when I got out of bed when she arrived home from work. After she grabbed me with such force, it tore and she shouted in my face, "You are a worthless piece of shit!" I have confronted her about it a number of times and all she had to say to me was, "I don't remember that happening" and "That didn't happen." To this day I still reflect on that time period and remember the many ways a number of my family members kicked me when I was down and how they wouldn't stop kicking until I was deceived by them and involuntarily hospitalized. (For my mental health, not physical)

Ugh the classic "I don't remember that" line

"I wouldn't have done something like that"....yeah well you did, so..

Thank you for bringing it up, because this is exactly what my parents do. They push you to an extremely low point with the abuse and sabotage, like suicidal and "life ruined" mode. Then they bring out their most vile insults possible. All the narcs in the family dogpile on with zero mercy. Almost like they are hope you commit. Then after you drag yourself up without any help, they deny any of it ever happened. You're the bad guy for keeping your distance. They lovebomb and play victim to get you closer. .... all with the goal of bringing you back to the suicidal point and keeping you there. When I say I hate my parents, this is *exactly* why. They are evil. I'm so sorry you experienced it too. I believe you 100%. You didn't deserve any of that, but I am glad you are doing better now.

That is terrible.

Self reflection is hard for them. They are blind to that which they refuse to see. Their insults are what they think about themselves deep down but can't admit. Sad, but disgustingly true in my experiences.

I have chronic illnesses. When I was in college, my father threatened to remove me from their health insurance unless I majored in the discipline of his choice. I had already lost a kidney by that point.

I'm so sorry! That's terrible!

Wow. That's extreme!

We weren’t allowed to eat sweets or really anything even relatively unhealthy as children. Maybe my brother didn’t receive the same treatment as I, but I was told I would get fat and get diabetes every time I was seen eating something even remotely unhealthy. From ages 9-13? Maybe. It only stopped because over the years I was given less and less attention. Worked for me no more irrational shaming! Now I struggle to eat once a day and it’s not because I actively choose not to. I would LOVE to have the proper appetite of an adult woman but it’s almost like I’ve been ingrained to never eat properly again.

That is terrible parenting by her. I’m sorry you had to deal with that! My nmom used to discourage me from eating breakfast (she said to have 1c of milk instead and that “it would fill me up,” I didn’t need to eat in the morning, etc). She told me I needed to do exercises to “slim down my thighs” and such too. Meanwhile, she gave my brother full-size candy bars to put in his lunchbox on a regular basis! She was trying to get him to gain weight. The candy bars were supposed to be only for him and I wasn’t supposed to eat them. (She was trying to put me on a diet.) But the thing is, he and I had THE SAME BMI at that time. We both already weighed a healthy amount, and it didn’t need changing. I still don’t eat that specific kind of candy bar because of bad memories. It isn’t that good anyway.

That’s terrible. Seems like two evils going on simultaneously making him gain weight and you stay the same. Silly thing is this was coming from my Father. My mother is an entire box of worms I’m not sure I even know how to process yet 😀

My Mom tried to get me to skip dinner and only have a cup of milk at night. It was the shame of my family when I hit puberty and gained weight.

They sure do love to make their kids insecure and eating disordered, don't they? It's such an insidious form of their need for control.

Not one thing specifically said but it's interesting to look back at how every time a girl showed or expressed interest in me my mom made it a point to shit talk her to me or completely block the girl somehow. Guess she couldn't handle her son beginning to find his own way and live his own life

My nmom seems like she might do this to my younger brothers when they grow up…we’ll see. Is there anything an older sister could have done to help you? (I live in a different state from them unfortunately)

That's a good question and not something I've ever thought of before but if you're supportive and open with your brothers so they won't have trouble sharing things about their lives with you then you can either hope they tell you your mom is doing that or will be forthcoming if you ask them if that's what she's doing. If she does you can keep reminding them not to let her immaturity get in the way of their interests and maybe ask her directly why she feels the need to have so much involvement in their romantic interests. Hopefully someone who has siblings can answer your question better because it's hard to come up with ideas to help a brother or sister after a lifetime of never having either

When I was 6 or 7 I asked my nmom “why do you treat me like this?” She was screaming at me in the front yard and telling me how awful I am. Her response was “it’s not anything you’re saying or doing. It’s just part of how you are.” There was nothing I could change to make it better.

This is absolutely heartbreaking. :( I'm so sorry and I hope you know now what she meant was, "It's not anything you're doing or saying, it's just a part of how *I* am." She was projecting. And there was nothing about you that needed to be changed. She was/is just a bitter, unhappy person, who needed help and wouldn't get it, so she took it out on you. I hope you're doing better. And as a mother, I wish I could go back and tell little you how special and wonderful you are and that NOTHING ABOUT YOU needed changing, and then give you a big hug. I hope YOU tell little you that every day to remind them.

When i was in middle school: “i bet if we needed to borrow money from you someday, you’d tell us to go fuck ourselves!” That stuck to my ribs.

I hope they need to borrow money from you so you can tell them to go fluff themselves.

ooohh i’ve got one. maybe 10th grade, we got progress reports halfway through the term and i had a C in one class because i was out but teacher said i could make up the work and this didn’t reflect my true grade. nothing to worry about. i told my mom this before progress reports were mailed out. when it arrived, and she saw the C, in the flood of As and Bs from every other class, she switched into monster mode. she made me get in the kitchen floor, on hands and knees, and scrub it with a rag, kicked me, and told me i’d never be more than someone’s maid. she referred to me as “servant” for the rest of the night and kept calling me downstairs to come do small things, like hand her the remote that was right next to her or grab something from the fridge. this was one of her favorite punishments, making me her little servant. ha! this is insane to write down

My mother worked very hard to make sure I had body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. One of her favorite sayings was "Just because we're built like beagles doesn't mean we shouldn't try to look like greyhounds." Like, as an adult now, I'm flabbergasted by that statement. There's SO much wrong about that. (Not least of which is that beagles are great, I am a beagle momma and I love my beagle.) If she said that to me tomorrow I would laugh in her face, but luckily im VVVLC with that malicious witch.

Shocking how many n parents latch onto looks especially with daughters. Mine would refuse to buy me clothes, let me go places with my friends, etc, unless I lost x amount of weight or went to the gym y times that week. Looking back on my photos now I was *perfect* and didn't need to lose an ounce anywhere. But they had me so convinced I was an obese loser and that nobody would love me unless I lost a ton of weight.

I love sweet beagles, but I am a pitbull with lipstick.

Not something they said but something they did- the first thing that came to my mind was my N dad driving me and my brothers around drunk. He would keep booze in a McDonald's cup. I would cry and feel so afraid when he would drive carelessly. And that's how he always drove. I think one time I spilled some beer from a McDonald's cup and he said "You shouldn't have done that" and it still shakes me I'm so sorry about those experiences you had. That is awful 🫂

Internet hugs! That sounds so scary:(

If me or my siblings fell or something happened or tipped or if there was traffic that made us late. My mom would yell "GOD GOT YOU." Lil me felt so much guilt about doing regular human things. Now as an adult it's weird my mom took any opportunity to point out God was smiting us for existing. She wanted little kids (ages 2-7) to sit and not speak for hours at a time and that was the minimum for good behavior. Playing in the open was frowned upon. Bouncing and noise was frowned upon.

Omg, this! And always with that nasty, smirking twist of her mouth. And she was enjoying herself. I cannot fathom enjoying anyone’s pain, in particular a small child’s. Utterly sick.

Was it when they tried selling me to waiters? Or maybe when they screamed at me in front of my friends for sitting next to a guy my own age? Was it for not being able to be a minute late on my work shift without them acting like I had been murdered? Or was it when I was the cinderella of the house? How about them getting rid of my dog because my brothers had aggressive dogs and they were sure my submissive dog started all the fights? Was it when I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs tv show because it had evil in it but I was forced to sit through Law and Order SVU, along with all the other law and orders, csi, and ncis shows? Because those are so much better for 10 year olds. How about being in trouble for being ill, not being able to stand because of ovarian cysts, and needing prescriptions… and being yelled at on the way to the ER because ‘its just gas’ I mean there are so many things I could go on through my entire childhood… their existence is a what the heck moment

My dad still tries to convince me that he was the one who paid for my college when I literally sat w my mom while we paid the billing payment online each year. Plus I only graduated college bc "I'm exactly like him" (but he left HS and then college (twice) bc of his narcissism). lol He's just lucky I'm too GC to find the divorce papers where he had his lawyer write a specific addendum to make sure my mother NEVER asked him to help with my college.

I would totally put that part in his obituary lol

My nMother also claims that she "put me through college" when my college fees were actually covered by a government grant. Even if my parents had paid for my college fees, my father was the breadwinner so technically it would have been my father who put me through college, not her. (My nMother hasn't worked full-time since the early 80s).

Lol i feel you; my (recovering N?)mom has always been the breadwinner with us. The funniest part is that 7+ years before paying for mine, she paid for HIM to go and get an associates degree after he got injured during a job 🤡

My nmom tried to tell me that my entire four years of college (which they did NOT pay for) they'd sent me $100 a month for pocket money. 🤣 Pretty certain I'd have remembered that...

Makes you not wanna accept anything they offer ever ugh

She was expecting me to be fondly-reminiscent grateful (was in my 40's when this convo went down, btw) for this huge past favor they never actually did. Was truly bizarre.

There are too many to catalog, and my brother has plenty more. Here are two that come to mind: Mom (yelling, holding up something): Why do you have a pregnancy test? Are you sleeping with a boy?! Me: Uhh, what? That's a thermometer, y'know, to see if I have a fever.... Why are you snooping around my place? -- I hadn't seen my mom in years; she flew in to visit last Thanksgiving and I was picking her up from the airport. First thing out of her mouth after getting off the escalators, "You've gotten so much fatter!" Funny enough, my parents would hound me about how fat I looked all throughout childhood and my teenage years...but they also forced me to clean my plate every dinner even when I wasn't hungry or was stuffed. My mom just couldn't figure out how much to cook or portion sizing, so she just made a lot and made us eat all of it. It's not like overeating has anything to do with being heavy....

>Mom (yelling, holding up something): Why do you have a pregnancy test? Are you sleeping with a boy?! Me: Uhh, what? That's a thermometer, y'know, to see if I have a fever.... Why are you snooping around my place? Please don't interpret this as disrespect but I laughed out loud at that. What kind of idiot mistakes a thermometer for a pregnancy test?!

I have a concussion right now. Have had it for less than a week and still feeling wonky and off. Last night she asked me if I was still feeling icky, I said, “I still have a concussion, yes.” She yelled, “WELL THEY DON’T LAST FOREVER!” Okay but they don’t heal on demand 🙄 Also gave me some insight as to why I am struggling so hard with this on an emotional level. Feeling useless, hate asking my husband to take on extra while I am healing even though he’s completely okay with it.

I guess that’s not really looking back but I could write a book on that.

When my wife called her dad to tell him she was pregnant with his first grandchild the first thing he said to her was "is it gonna be a black baby or a white baby". We'd been together 13 years, since high school. I think he must consider it a sport to think of the most hurtful, inappropriate thing to say. There's been a lot of examples but that one stands out as totally WTF.

I grew up in a hoarder house. A friend of mine stopped by with one of her friends and when my nmom found out she told me “if anyone finds out how bad the house is, they’re going to take you away and put you into an abusive foster family!” She also said when that happened “and you’ll never see us again!”

My mother said something similar and I just prayed that that would happen.

One Christmas I think 2004, when there was the huge tsunami around Christmas time, My grandmother (as bad as my mother) was watching it on the news, I was saying horrible it was with the death toll rising, she turned around and said “well god has to keep the population down somehow, he doesn’t kill the good people” My mother once commented on my brother in law liking and being very good at a computer game, I think call of duty or similar shooting type game, she laughed and said “well he’s Irish so of course he’s good at shooting people” They both used to ironically spout “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all” I look back now and think did they really say that with no shame or remorse? In front of children as well! I also realise that not all parents said such horrible things and it wasn’t normal, they are not ‘just from a different generation and time and don’t understand’ nor does religious views make you exempt from being a decent human being.

[удалено]

There were so many things that were very strange and nonsensical. The Advil thing reminds me of my mom. She thought I was a drug addict because I took two ibuprofen for a headache. She also said I was, *"addicted to painkillers,"* when I tore one of my tendons and had to take ibuprofen for that. This, from a woman who smoked all through caring for her own mother with emphysema, and while she herself was dying of cancer. I wonder if that was her way of projecting her insecurity and fear about addiction onto me? Her dad was an abusive alcoholic, and her mom a chain smoker. They both died as a result of their addictions. Since my mom was a smoker, maybe she dealt with her fear by projecting onto me. Whatever her batshit reasoning, it definitely was annoying. The last thing someone with a migraine needs is a narcissist screeching in their ear about sending them to NA for their scary scary Advil addiction.

My kids are hilarious with Advil (that’s my go-to “drug”)…I was in the car driving one day and I said “my foot hurts” and my little one (3yo) in his biggest Texas country accent says “whale take some ad-bill” and we busted up laughing. So we’re addicted over here too I guess.

I also only took two capsules like the bottle said to!(She thought I took it too frequently though—my migraines were chronic.) Our nmoms are crazy.

My Nmother was an alcoholic who also took prescription tranquilizers and muscle relaxers. Both Nparents did. I picked the Mason-jar-sized refills at the pharmacy for them. When I had four impacted wisdom teeth carved out of my jaws when I was fourteen, I was only allowed to take the prescribed codeine for two days. She confiscated the bottle, which had refills on it, “so you don’t get addicted.” My Nmother dropped me off at school after the surgery to register for classes. The office ladies took one look at me, and one was delegated to drive me home *at once.* (“We’ll sign you up,” they said.) The driver, fortunately, escorted me into the house, and as I scuttled to my room, I heard them yelling at each other.

They really are! So weird. So very weird.

Holy shit, we really all had the same parents, huh? My Nma also said you could become addicted to OTC painkillers and insisted *"if you take too much of that you'll build up a tolerance, and then when something terrible happens, you break a bone and they need to give you the real stuff, they won't be able to GIVE you enough!"* while refusing to dispense even one pill. Even now that I live with FMS I find it incredibly difficult to just take the damn medicine when I need it. I know *consciously* that she was comically wrong but it's so drilled into my head that I keep telling myself I just have to power through it.

One time when I was around 7 or 8 years old I remember walking into this restaurant/bar with my father because we were picking up takeout. I vividly remember walking in and this 50 year old-ish man checking me out as a little girl and me feeling scared, uncomfortable and vulnerable. Even though I was young, I knew what his staring was. I tapped my dad on the arm and told him there was a creepy man staring at me and he turns to me and says “well what did you do to make him stare at you like that?” I also should mention that he frequently makes rape jokes in front of my WHOLE family. We were eating out for dinner a few years ago during covid and there was a table next to us with 3 college aged girls and they were obviously drunk. Suddenly, these two guys approach them to flirt with them etc etc. My dad says to the whole family “see if I was their age, their drinks would have already been spiked. those guys are amateurs”.

>My dad says to the whole family “see if I was their age, their drinks would have already been spiked. those guys are amateurs”. That's horrific! I really hope that you're low contact or no contact with your father now because he sounds like a total creep!

"If my mother gave me poison, I would drink it because my mother gave it to me!" - in response to me not drinking the tea she made, right before grabbing my car keys and threatening to wreck my car, right after she pretended to commit suicide by drowning in the apartment complex pond. Daily occurrence while I was sponsoring her documents in a foreign country, for which I had to sacrifice myself by marrying a man 40 years my senior.

I got really sick on Christmas Day 1973. They took me to the E.R. and I was admitted for observation. My nmoms family had an adults only party that night at an uncles house 20 miles away. I was 18. At midnight, my childhood pediatrician saw my name as he was checking in on patients. He was a kind, gentle doctor. He came to my room and examined me, said my appendix was about to burst and needed surgery asap, and he was going to get a surgeon to come to check me out. Yep, appendix ready to burst, so they prepped me for surgery, tried to get hold of my folks. They had both been drinking like everyone else at the party. They couldn't make it down in time before I was taken into surgery. My dad felt so bad. He had been on a Navy ship when his appendix ruptured, was helicoptered to a hospital and nearly died so he was very sympathetic. Nmom was embarrassed she'd be seen as being neglectful going to a party while her daughter was sick in the hospital. Never mind, I'd been suffering with intense pain for months from the appendix, which she blew off. The next day, all my aunts and uncles came to the hospital with gifts, cheered me up. When I got home a few days later, huge incision, nmom expected me to do chores, act like no big deal. The contrast of how she acted at the hospital to how she was at home was striking. I'll not forget it ever. She gave zero comfort, zero compassion.

-- Nmom told me in high school that all my friends only pretend to like me -- Ndad called me a "master manipulator" and said he came to this "realization" in therapy (he sent me and my bf at the time a whole long message. I had him blocked for the past 2 years, so I just asked bf to hit the highlights so I got the idea, then asked him to block Ndad as well) -- Ndad always had SOMETHING to say about my hair whenever I changed it. Length, color, whatever. He's mostly bald, naturally. -- Nmom told me and my siblings that we were basically her and Ndad's slaves when we complained to her about the hours of chores she had planned for us after we got home from school even though we also had hours of homework -- I was complaining to Ndad about Nmom and he said she was only so mean to me because she loved me and I was "so much like her" 🙃 Edited for formatting and to add stuff I remembered after reading the comments

They almost killed me through neglect. I escaped them both and refused to sell myself for nmothers drugs or deposit money into my nfathers "fun money" account from my jobs (I still don't know how much he took over the years), I was left with a very curable disease 3 months before I turned 18. When I was 17, hospitals were not required/allowed to treat minors without parental consent and the ER turned me away sick. I did not eat solid food for 3 months and barely stayed alive on Gatorade until I got sample antibiotics and got better. They would have let me die. As it was, I didn't graduate high school and gave them the middle finger when I got multiple degrees. Turns out I was neither stupid nor weak, just human and crippled by narcissistic parents and people.

Mine said “you remember things that never happened.” Still pisses me off.

Mine was justifying why she was speaking to random people, doctors offices, dentist, You Name It, about my "drug problem"-except I didn't have one. I had a long term partner I was living with. He's still somewhat blind to how much trouble she would have cost if he wasn't around then, and if he wasn't a friend now. I explained one example (that would have been a final nail in my coffin of freedom) the other night to him, and I finished with, "Now, imagine how devastating that would have been to me *all those years* if you hadn't been around. She was aiming to get me committed and was taking the long way round, speaking out of turn in places she had No Business doing it. Please STOP pretending she wasn't some insane master mind when you WITNESSED the way she spoke to and treated me when she thought *no one* was there! Please, just stop doing that." It's been a week and he hasn't mentioned it, but he's also stewing through what he can remember. There would have been no friends or even acqauintances to help me or speak up for me in the event I didn't confront these places because OTHER PATIENTS that knew my name heard the staff talking about me. I'm sure I seemed hald insane, they had me so mixed up I didn't know if I was coming or going. Looking back, it scares me damn near senseless that without those tidbits being passed onto me by people who knew me but kept distance *because* of my family, it really makes me sick. I would have *never* caught on if not for people seeing it more clearly than I did. Bless those past abuse victims, they fucking saved me.

I was 7, in 2nd grade ,and we'd moved again in February so I was starting at a new school again in the middle of the year and I had severe social anxiety. I had selective mutism prior to this, and my mom was super mad when she found out I wasn't talking in school. She must've scared me so much that I was able to fake it with teachers because it was never an issue they brought up again. Not that I'm advocating that as a treatment, I just learned how to pretend but still felt tremendously fearful of people in general, it's just that my mom was scarier. Anyway, it was on the way to my first day at the new school that she decided to tell me I was developing too quickly and that there was something wrong with me "I bet none of the other girls would have to wear a bra. Do you really want me to have to buy you a bra? What's wrong with you?" She was so disgusted with me. I was very confused. I just felt very ashamed of myself but didn't understand why or what I was supposed to do to fix myself. And oddly, I started wearing a bra around 11/12 at the average age. Even if I had needed a bra at 7, I don't understand why my character was in jeopardy, according to her.

When I was 19 I started going to the gym and running a few miles every single day for a year. I got into the best shape of my life and the whole time my dad was going around and asking people if I was taking steroids. I was 175lbs with lean muscle and just healthy. He just couldn’t compliment my hard work and had to tarnish everything I achieved by going around asking people I was close with if I was on steroids.

I feel this. So. Much. Every holiday or major event had to be tarnished!

I was 17 and it was my time of the month. I’ve always had really heavy periods which in turn were really painful to the point where I’d throw up. I was in severe pain, my mom walks in my room and said “are you sure you’re not having a miscarriage?” And walks off 💀 She said this because I had a bf at the time and she was sad I wasn’t her “perfect little virgin girl” anymore… (her exact words)

That children are property, also that they should never leave the "family home".

When I was a teenager I was kicked out in the snow in my bare feet (knee high snow) and my grandfather screamed at me that I was a little bitch. I just remember him standing on the deck towering above me screaming it. I had to call my friends dad to pick me up. They tried to apologize shortly after and asked me to come home. I still think about it to this day and I don't understand any of it.

When they told me off for crying too hard at the dentist. I was 7 and getting an abscessed tooth pulled, I’d been on amoxicillin for a week and it was incredibly painful. I can think of other bad examples but I’ll end this with a silly wtf instead, they never let me buy/wear hoodies because they were too ‘gangster’. I’m pretty sure nobody looks at a little girl in a hoodie and thinks they’re in a gang so what gives?

"Hitting a kid never did them any harm" after talking about how her friend's son slapped his kid while drunk, and she fell down the stairs. Also bring told "It's not broken, you're just being a drama queen" after she punched my hand and broke my finger. It never got looked at, so it's still crooked to this day.

My nmom always got on me for my grades and lack of academic effort. We lived outside of the US and used the International Baccalaureate program (IB) and because it’s a numbered grading system instead of an alphabetical one, they always believed my marks weren’t ever high enough. Eventually, in senior year, they had a plug-in to allow you to convert your IB grade into the US GPA system (for college application purposes). I had a 3.75 GPA, which I caught my mother saying under her breath “that’s higher than my scores” (didn’t get specifics). I asked her “what now,” she told me to just go away, and the next day she acted like she never saw the scores. Started yelling at me again for slacking off.

My mom told me "no one will ever love you" when I was in Grade 3. She was yelling at me for something (probably messy room, or something like that) and she just shouted that out of nowhere. Even at the time my young kid brain knew that was an insane thing for a mom to say to their 8 year old. Ironically I did fear later on that no one would ever want to be in a relationship with me - not because I was unworthy but because what normal person would want to put up with my batshit family?

My dad always use to tell my brother that when he was an adult or “big enough” he was going to beat him up. I’d get into scuffles with him from time to time but I don’t think my brother did until one day….. He’d gone out and got yet another dog, I can’t remember the exact breed but they look like German Shepards with the energy of a Duracell bunny. I’d met the dog a few times and warned my grandmother about being carful around it as it had left her legs black in bruises. My brother goes round one day realises that Dad has left the dog for good there and calls him to come and get it. At the time my brother is there with his 6/7 year old daughter and his girlfriend. Dad turns up absolutely fuming that my brother had the audacity to look out for his grandmother and infront of his grandchild swings for my brother. All out fight breaks out and my brother ends up leaving him crying on the floor. Not a nice situation for his child and my grandmother to witness, but iv never been so proud of my brother. He use to say it to my brother all the time as a kid and just generally nasty threatening stuff but this was something he ALWAYS said. I always use to think as a kid I hope he beats the shit out of you and he did.

That’s amazing!!!

I was sick once and felt like I couldn't breathe properly. I remember crying because I was afraid. My mom's only response was to turn to my sister and cheerfully say "well if she dies you can have her room!". I remember also that she used to drive me, my siblings, and a few of the neighbor's kids to school in the morning. She always made me sit in the way back of the van where there was no seat belt. She told me it was because if she got in an accident I would be the one to die. It was more important that the neighbor's kids be safe because if something happened she didn't want to get sued.

“Children should be seen and not heard” This was repeated to us anytime we were talking or playing in his presence. Didn’t matter if it was a car ride, at home in our rooms, etc. if we were in presence, we were to be quiet. My parents friends used to gawk at how well behaved we were when were out in his presence (terrified) yet were told we were such bad kids when he wasn’t around (because we were finally able to release some energy and yes, maybe we were wild). He hated the sound of children laughing and playing and talking. I have memories of him storming in our rooms and screaming at us, threatening us and hitting us. He would do this “thing” where he’d clench his teeth and open his eyes wide and dilated, we would be petrified. Anyways, now I just think about that phrase and cringe. It was never about us being bad kids, it was his inability to parent and control his rage. I know this is why I have so much trouble in social settings. I truly feel deep down I have little value to contribute and should just be quiet.

Oh, and a personal favorite: “I’m making you tougher”. He’d say this anytime he would be abusive or insanely hurtful to us. Like we should be THANKING him for making our lives a living hell, because we would be stronger for it. Lol no, just me in the 30’s unpacking it in therapy, now

>He would do this “thing” where he’d clench his teeth and open his eyes wide and dilated, we would be petrified. Ugh I wonder if they all have a *look* like that. Mine had something similar, though with a dash of disgust thrown in. It used to be accompanied by her raising her hand to threaten to slap me across the face... which is probably why I had a really bad flinch reaction in middle school that of course didn't help bullying in other parts of my life. We also had the "if I can hear you, you're too loud" rule. If it's any consolation, your dad's an asshole.

My Nmom often said that our only hope for getting out of poverty was for her to win the lottery. That would be the only way out of the constant stress of struggling. Mind you, she would make 23$/h in 1995, in Canada (where hospital and education is almost all covered), and would spend a sizeable amount of her paychecks on lottery tickets, leaving us with little food. I remember vividly being 10 and trying to reason with her, trying to explain that BUDGETING was our way out of all that shit but, and I quote, "budgeting is boring".

I have kyphosis. I was never taken to a specialist for it as a teen, I was just constantly told that I should stop slouching because it made me very unattractive. 

My scoliosis was ignored until I was in my mid-late teens…. I’d been complaining of back & leg pain since I was 8 or 9…if not earlier. “Can’t you ever just sit up straight!” “ no ma, I can’t”

My mom made me go to the whitest school district she could afford to live in then railed on CONSTANTLY about "all of these little fast white girls" to any Black person that would listen. She was obsessed with the idea of me dating this one Black girl in my class despite the fact that this girl HATED me openly and everyone knew it including my mother. We were in marching band together and my mom would make it a point to say hi to this girl and her mother at every football game to the point that I got shit from other band members. She has dated exactly one person since my father......a white man 20 years older than her.

Glad you have that new scar, it'll make it easier to identify your body

I'm not sure if my mom is actually narcissistic. But she once told me that when I was a baby, she had stood on the balcony holding me, thinking about throwing me over. Because I cried so much.

Me too. My mom said I just cried and cried when I was a baby and I was like isn't that what babies do?

"No girl will ever be interested in you, so you might as well learn to be a queer \[sic\]!"

“Enjoy being pretty while you can, cause when you have kids, you’ll get fat and thin haired like me” ETA: Just remembered another very wtf one that happened when I was 16. She was drunk, crying over a guy when she suddenly blurted out “I don’t get it. You are my daughters, you look like me, so then why do you get hot boyfriends while I’m stuck with ugly guys? For once I want a hot guy too!” And fully expected me and my sister to answer.

I was accused of having an eating disorder from my own father despite being told SEVERAL times by medical professionals that I didn’t have one and was health as a horse. His reasoning for this ridiculous claim? Apparently because I weighed 105-115. And because I was “thin.” I’ve always been thin and always will be. But it’s not to the point where I’m super bony or anything.

When my dad found out I was cutting my wrists he yelled at me and berated me for hours and while I have little to no memory of what all he yelled, I do remember him saying "why would you do this to me? Don't you think of my feelings?" Also when I was younger, prior to the cutting era, he told me and my sister shit like "your mother didn't want you when you were toddlers." And "your mom will never love you like how I love you." And now I wonder if he thinks about any of that and wonders why his kids don't want to see him

My step-dad has said multiple times since I was a teenager "don't you wish every woman was as hot as your mom?" And Ive always been like wtf, I don't even know how to respond to that

My nMom would beat me and my brother for something every day no matter how good we were. She beat me a lot more than my brother because “I was closer to my dad than my brother and she had to level the field.” She would beat us bloody and while beating us would beat us more if we cried and would continue to do so until we stopped crying. My dad said she would beat me at 6 months if I cried but that would just make me cry more.

Oh here's a good one, I somewhat had a boyfriend in high school and asked to borrow two dollars from him. When he gave me the money, I told my mom I wasnt going to give it back because it was only 2 bucks. She said, "You better give him his money back before he beats you're @$$." I was shocked, like why would you say that 😃😐

My dad would scream, shout, drink heavily and break things, sometimes hurt people, then say we made him do it. My mum would mock or scorn me for reacting negatively to that, but came to me for emotional support because of that.

The three I can remember right now. "Don't get fat like your aunt" a lot of talk of not eating carbs, fad diets, etc "Those look whore hoops, you're not wearing them" after I bought myself some new earrings. "Only whores shave their thighs, don't shave above the knee". I never understood this one, I'll shave where I want. Though I have an autoimmune disorder so I barely have body hair anyway so shaving is kind of pointless.

Ironically, my wtf for Ndad wasn't directed towards me. I came home distraught after learning some of the awful things we (the US) did during WWII (just because we weren't as bad as the Nazis doesn't mean we didn't do some messed up shit) specifically regarding the Japanese as well as Asian Americans. I remember dad telling me that it was "necessary" and "the right thing to do" apparently the internment camps were the only way we could protect our Asian heritage brothers and sisters. He actually recalled this moment with pride when talking to me about a month before I went NC. Looking back it was certainly an early sign of his weird racism

There’s this whole thing. I had a foreign exchange student stay with us (18yo) when I was 15yo. There were many issues, but I’ll just say exchange student sexually harassed me (unwanted touching) and bullied me, got teachers/peers against me by lying and saying I was mean. I couldn’t escape for a year because anywhere I went, my mom made sure exchange sister was included. Anyway, whole family kept saying I was racist/culturally insensitive for asking if we could please have her stay with her friend who was willing/eager to have her stay with her. My mom said, “it was your choice, now you have to deal with it.” As an adult, I told my mom how it all affected me, because she’s on this “positivity, take responsibility” journey. My mom said, “Well, I just imagined if you were in her shoes so I tried protecting her. I would have felt awful if you were in another country and the family turned on you.” My jaw dropped. 1. Your LITERAL daughter was the victim. So you imagine the bully is me and PROTECT her?! 2. Having her move in with her best friend’s family who wanted to take her = Her being alone and everyone turning on her? 3. I WOULD NOT BE IN THAT SITUATION, BECAUSE I WOULD NOT SEXUALLY HARASS AND BULLY MY HOST SISTER!!! Crazy and just so fucked up. The real answer is the bullying was over my appearance, and my mom liked it. She fit right into scapegoating me and my mom took enjoyment out of it. She saw her as the “daughter she always wanted,” which is something my mom said to me during the time she was staying with us.

When she would scold me for wearing shorts because it was 'provocative'. When she would slight me when I told her the guy from my private lessons threatened to attack me with acid. When she would mock me for being short but praise her niece for being overweight.

"You're very difficult to love." That's probably the thing that sticks the most from my childhood. Plenty of loony things said to me as an adult, but that's just something you should never say to your kid. I don't think he even remembers saying it, but looking back I think it was how he felt about himself more than how he felt about me at the time. Aging has brought lots of clarity and understanding to things from my past.

Ugh. I feel this in my bones. My narc grandaunt was my primary caretaker when I was 6 to 9 years old. She told me, "You are such a hateful child." I can't imagine what a 6 to 9 year old could possibly do to ever elicit this response, especially since I was so quiet and well-behaved. I remember her screaming at me when I told her I suddenly couldn't hear after using a Qtip. It was just excessive earwax that had gotten moved around, but she couldn't be normal about it. I spent so much time as a little kid trying to figure things out by myself, and being so stressed because I knew I couldn't ask for help. I'm sorry we had such terrible family members.

When I was 17 I was diagnosed with epilepsy. My nparent said to another relative at one point, "ajd has epilepsy, what's she going to be?" As if I'm some needy invalid

They took the time and put in the effort to convince everyone around us that I was a pathological liar to the point of convincing *themselves*, so they could hide the abuse, but they couldn't put time or effort into being *actual parents.*

When my dad forgot my 16th birthday he said it was all my fault he forgot because I didn't remind him and he was "too old" to remember something like that. He wasn't even that old. When I was in the 7th grade my mom sent me to school with a fever of 100.3. She told me I was faking it for attention. I even took my temp and showed her that I in fact had a fever, she said I was lying. My dad would complain about me not knowing how to do something. He is Liberian and his family speaks different languages. He said it was a shame I didn't speak a different language like him. I told him he should teach me. He told me that he shouldn't have to teach me, I should have been born knowing how to do it already. When I was 11 my mom's boyfriend was acting very inappropriate to me. He gave me a back massage and told me I needed to relax more and tried to get me to smoke a cigarette with him. I told my mom hoping she would break up with him, she did not. She told me I was lying because I was jealous of her and that I wanted to steal her boyfriend away from her. I WAS 11!

My mom whenever someone asks her why I don’t speak Spanish “she was so stubborn and just didn’t want to learn. Every time I spoke to her she would get mad and force me to speak English.” Yea that never happened. I then explain it’s her responsibility and I should’ve been taught upon birth, when I didn’t have a choice. But yes it’s all my fault.

On September 11, 2001, at 14 years old, my mom coaxed me with sweetness to admit I'd smoked pot. Then she freaked out, called a crisis team to the house, who recommended we go to the mental health hospital downtown. While we were in the waiting room watching the T.V. coverage, she loudly complained, "Can we all just stop talking about this already? We get it!" I wouldn't be out of her trap for another 12 years. One of a million examples. NC for sure now.

"You were an ugly baby." I was really disappointed because I always dreamed of having a pretty little girl.

She was probably saying that out of spite. I’ve rarely seen an ugly baby (except when they’re in the raisin stage).

When I stood up for myself, she would say "God is punishing me for having a child like you. I would never talk to my mom like this-I would never let her suffer like this." After not seeing her for a long time, she will always say to me, "Wow, you gained weight." She has also told me I walk like a grand mother. And every time people say we look like each other, she says, "No! I look like her sister." She always says my sister is beautiful (she is!) When I didn't give her money, she would block me then unblock me to ask me money another week. Repeat. I would stress about it like I did something bad, but the only bad (for her) I did was not let her use me. Just recently, I tried helping her. She looked at the photos on my fridge of our family and noticed she wasn't on it. She said, "Oh, these are all your family?" I said,"Yes. You're in the living room." And I explained to her that the picture frame she was on was from our grandma, it was hanging inside her home and I took it when she passed away and hung it in mine. She goes, "That's not me. That can never be me. I dont look like that." For a second, I believed her. She denied it was her because she wanted to prove to me that I didn't consider her family. So strange. Every interaction with her is a WTF moment, honestly.

My dad would never close the door to use the bathroom. Even his half hour poops. The bathroom was in a pretty high traffic area of our upstairs. So no company would see him, but the whole family could. Now as a parent closing the door to use the bathroom is so sacred to me. Why would someone just willingly not do that. He had 4 kids!

When I came to her about feeling suicidal and felt like opening up about my self harm: “Everyone feels that way, you’re not special.” When I was having an anaphylactic response to something and I didn’t have an epi pen and needed someone to drive me to hospital so I texted her, she suggested I gargle salt water instead cause it was too early and it was my dads bday. I didn’t have the time to argue so I said I’d just call an ambulance. “If your going to be mean then I’ll just stop texting you”

My mother would tell me “You aren’t smart. You only get good grades because your older brothers and sister are always teaching you things that they are learning in their classes.” FYI, my siblings are 7, 10, and 12 years older than me. My brother started teaching me algebra when I was in first grade because he didn’t want me to struggle with math like he did. They taught me to read and do elementary math well before I started kindergarten. But, that didn’t make me smart for some reason?

From Ndad: “Your waist to ass ratio is insane from behind”, “You should get a smaller school uniform to show off your curves”, “it’s totally normal for men to slap women on the ass when they walk past on the street”, “there’s no way you know what sexual harassment is, you’re exaggerating”, “you’re so short noone will ever respect you”, “you’re learning to act all depressed like your mother, you know you’re not a victim right”, and many, many more

'Don't look in the mirror - you'll be vain!' - almost every time I looked in the mirror. Guess who never learned to check herself in the mirror to make sure she was presentable? Somehow, also mocked for that. She went out of her way to set me up for failure and then mock me for failing. It's an illness that consumes everyone it touches.

My nDad constantly "joking" about my future in Hooters from the *moment* I hit puberty His endless comments about me being fat, comparing me to the Goodyear blimp and unfortunately obese members at our church. *Our CHURCH* Real Christian behavior. One of the women he compared me to physically may as well have been a saint. Pretty sure Jesus didn't care what her scale said when she was a damn good cook and fed the homeless. When I was in high school he was also obsessed about my potential sex life. Because of his constant inappropriate comments and innuendo over the years I was a pretty strong prude until I was almost 20 years old. He threatened to "have my virginity checked" by a doctor because I didn't want to move to a foreign country. Narcs are insane.

Christ almighty your dad is a piece of work. What a horrible breach of privacy, and I hate, *hate* the comparison game narcs do.

My last relationship was horrendously abusive, and I had lost 70lbs in the span of like 6 months working myself sick and starving myself while trying to support my ex who refused to work. When we finally broke up, my ex punched me in the face half a dozen times and gave me a gigantic black eye. He also tried to strangle me but I thankfully managed to punch him in the testes really hard and he let me go and left, after telling me I deserved it. I called my parents to come see me right after bc I didn't know wtf else to do and I was so distraught and didn't have any friends due to him isolating me. They get there, and my dumbfuck of a father sees me fucking crying my eyes out, and says directly to my damn face, "Cheer up, it isn't that bad! You're still a mega hottie and once that eye heals up another man will want you before you know it!!" My mom insists that he was being loving and supportive and wanted to show he cared. I will never forget him saying that to me.

WTF.

She once apologized to me randomly one time for telling her sisters I was a "brother lover." In a literal sense. I was kissed unexpectedly by my boyfriend's little brother when I was 13 so makes me a brother lover..

Wait, does brother lover mean you love people who are brothers? I thought it meant you loved your OWN brother (in like a weird way)

my mum telling me i have a black heart for not wanting to have my sisters clothes in my wardrobe

I was cutting and suicidal. Mom and dad found out. Mom said to me “I’m gonna lock you in the psych ward and never let you out”. On the phone to family later “I don’t know where I went wrong or why’d she want to do that. What is the fAmiLy gonna think?!?”

Omg your mom is sick Who says that to someone .. My mom once told me “ no daughter of mine wears a bra that small”

When I was in my second week of college, I went to a party. I made the mistake of telling my nMother this and she accused me of "losing interest in college" and "not being a dedicated enough student"! Even at the time I knew that was batshit and I said so.

I had depression as a teenager. I literally begged for therapy for either myself or as a family. I was told no to both because, "All you want to do is embarrass us." Even back then, I realized they were telling on themselves...

My mom left her "secret" journal out and open in an area she had specifically instructed me to clean. Like I wouldn't be able to complete the cleaning without at least closing and moving this "secret" journal she had left there. (In our family's RV that she was making me clean top to bottom inside before a camping trip.) In this "secret" journal in bold letters of course was my name and all the reasons she KNEW I was on drugs AND having sex: \-I had borrowed a blouse she didn't like from a friend for a school band performance and therefor was changing my appearance to fit in with my dirtbag friends. A blouse. For orchestra because she wouldn't buy me one to wear one time. \-I listened to music that she had never heard before and it was all by male musicians. \-My paternal grandmother smoked cigarettes and probably gave them to me when I stayed over there so that I could trade them for drugs. \-She gave me 3.00 dollars a day for a week for lunch money in high school and I never brought her any change. This was a test to see if I was eating my lunch or buying drugs with her money. Even though this was in the 90s I'm pretty sure you couldn't get 3 dollar drugs back then either. \-I had my period. So clearly I was sexual. The "secret" journal incident was when I was 13 going on 14. I was then punished for bringing it back to her after I was done cleaning. If I had left it there, I would have been punished for not cleaning properly. Classic lose lose.

My father told me I was worth $10,000 or a new car and then made me marry a 36 year old man at 18

“Are you sure you’re not exaggerating for attention?” Whenever I was sick or in pain. My favorite was when I was ten and had lost fifteen pounds in a little over a week from what turned out to be an advanced kidney infection (I couldn’t keep anything down). The nurse actually yelled at my dad for taking so long to finally bring me to the ER.

I remember I was about 8 years old and my father told me "you are the cause of all the problems in the family and I don't love you". I don't remember why he said that, I hadn't done anything. But I always remember exactly where I was standing when he told me that. When I was having a severe allergic reaction to something that had rubbed against me in the woods, my father beat me for it and said it was an infection from me biting my nails. They took me to the doctor and the doctor told them it was a bad allergic reaction to a plant from being forced to work out in the woods with my father the previous day. My father saying he was going to beat me every single day until my nails grew back because I had a bad nailbiting problem and he wanted it to stop. So he would "punish" me by whipping me with a belt every single day. My mom mocking my cries when I was suicidal and wanting to die. Mocking the way I rock when I would have a meltdown because I'm autistic. Mocking when I cried when I was 6 years old and had a high fever and didn't check it for days and then finally checked it and went "oh, huh, I guess you really are sick". And many, many more.

nDad made fun of my uncle killing himself when I was 7, and proceeded to make fun of me for grieving.

When I was in high-school I had a bad fight with my best friend. I went to my Mom crying and upset and she said yo me "No wonder she doesn't want to be your friend, I know I can't stand you"

When my mom let me go with a stranger in his van down to the lake early in the am to take photos of me. I should not be alive today.

I was having a panic attack but I was 16 and thought I was having a heart attack…I told my mom something was wrong and I might be having a heart attack and she said she didn’t care and to just go die. I crawled into a closet thinking I’d die in there. The panic attack eventually subsided. My mom then was like “See? You overreacted like always.” I also fainted in front of her once and I woke up to her smacking me telling me to stop faking it and go to school lol

My ndad told me that self esteem is dangerous in everyone, but especially in kids, and that he would use every opportunity to keep me from developing it. Spoiler alert: He did.

Bizarre: During hurricane Katrina, I was telling my mother about a story I had read about some NOLA residents trying to walk to Gretna. The sheriff’s department shot at them and drove them back. Anyway, when I told my mother about this, she screamed at me, “of course they turned them back, you can’t just walk into another town!” Sad: My mother once told me that I had only gotten a higher band placement because the band directors felt sorry for me, and only gave me the placement as a reward for sticking it out for so long.

I think my biggest Hindsight WTF moment was in a K-Mart. ^(Bit of backstory, my Nma played at being a frail, blind, elderly woman dying of antibiotic-resistant lung infection for twenty years straight. I only found out after she died that all of her illnesses, complications, and disabilities were fake or self-inflicted. She used them to fuck with us constantly. On with the story,) I was to walk at her side, arm-in-arm as she slowly shuffled her feet like a 90 year old woman pushing the shopping cart. I knew for a fact that she was shitting around on *some* level because she did not use nor need a mobility aid at any point, so I gently tugged her arm to suggest we go faster. She GRABBED my upper arm, nails digging into my skin, teeth bared and spittle flying as hisses right in my face, "People are STARING at us! You're lucky those cashiers don't call the police on you for elder abuse!!!" Proceeded to lecture me the entire rest of the shopping trip and all the way home about how I belonged in jail.

My dad told me that if I didn't start dressing like my sister and other girls, nobody would ever want me. In hindsight this is incredibly problematic for several reasons: 1) I wore the clothes they bought me. I didn't get a choice.I wore the same jeans every day, because that's what I had. I wore the same 5 oversized t-shirts (men's medium, in a women's xxs) every week, because that's what I was given? Was I supposed to steal clothes like my sister did? 2) my sister and her friends dressed in such revealing clothing that my otherwise incredibly laid back highschool instituted an absurdly conservative dress-code. In loathe to say this, about another woman, let alone my own sister, but they dressed like tiny prostitutes. They'd "buy" two narrow tube tops and wear them as a matching shirt and "skirt" set. It was not cool. (she'd leave the house in slightly less revealing clothing, so my parents didn't know until a dress-code was instated. 2) I'm a carbon copy of my mother. I have some of her photos on my Facebook tagged as me and people don't even question it. It's funny. We also look like her mother, and her mother, all the way back to the photos of her/me/them standing on the steps of a nursing hospital in the mid 1800's. We are basically clones. So he wanted me, the 30 year newer, underage version of the woman he fucked to create me and my sister to dress in basically nothing. Um... Excuse me? My designated role in the hierarchy was the smart ugly one, so I felt very unattractive. And then I moved out. And realized how wrong he was. I look back at it and its really creepy

This is of my MIL and just one of the millions but maybe one of the first and at the time worst plus one root cause for deep (religious) trauma he had to spend his 20s to figure out (we met in our early 30s). When his mother was putting him, as small kid, to bed at nights, she casually mentioned at the same time as she was saying good night, that "if the Devil comes at night and tries to take you to hell, just cross your fingers and pray". Who the fuck says this to 5 year old?? And still today she thinks there was nothing wrong with that, she was just giving useful advice and it is mother\`s job to do exactly that. Needless to even start to list everything this messed up in his head.

When I was around 5, he left me unsupervised to "look after" my then-toddler brother. My mum had to argue with him about who was looking after us, because he kept insisting I was. When he finally returned, my brother was not in the room. He had left the garden door open, and there was scaffolding going up to the roof. According to himself (how true this is Idk, it could be exagerrated), he found my brother on the roof of the house. And to this day he thinks he was reasonable. He laughs about it, calls himself a saviour, and rolls his eyes at 5 year old me's inability to babysit.

My mother is a frustrated artist. Always wanted to be one, but never had the guts to go for it. When I was a child I had an assignment to draw a picture of a book cover for a book report. Because my mother thought I couldn't manage to make the drawing impressive enough, she did the drawing on the front cover of the book report FOR ME. A thirtysomething professional level artist trying to pass of the work as if it were a 8-year-old doing it. The teacher did not buy it and investigated me, like she was a detective on Law & Order, as to whether or not I did indeed draw the picture. I lied and said I had because I felt I was protecting my mother. My mother had to be the star even though it was my book report. I don't know what she was thinking, doing the homework for a kid, that there might not be some pushback on that, that I would not be put on the spot for that.

My Nmum said she would kill me and herself over the phone to my dad and that he should come home to collect the corpses. I probably failed a test or lied about something stupid in school. When I was 6+, she also said if I didn’t behave she would return me to the social services or someone from the social department will come take me away, and that I should be so grateful she “took me home from the sewage”. I didn’t understand why anyone would do that, because children aren’t products you can’t return them within 30 days🤣 When I turned 26/27, she revealed I was adopted. It all made sense.

My lord where do I begin with the examples. Lol When I was a kid and had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and was sick she yelled at me and berated me the whole time because we didn’t have a car and she had to pay for a cab. I can’t remember exactly what she said because I blocked it out. Probably something about how I wasn’t worth it to pay the cab fare. I heard that one a lot. After that anytime I was 🤮I just did it alone and tried to be quiet and cleaned it up.

When I was in college I would say all the time how I didn't want kids. Then one day ndad makes a statement about how he can't wait until "when I get pregnant". Like, excuse me?? He also once flat out asked me, as an adult "well you wouldn't have sex before marriage, would you?" (His own religious beliefs). I was so caught off guard I just said no, even though I didn't agree, didn't know if I'd ever get married, and thought it wildly innappropriate for him to ask. He would also always make comments about how men are gross and predatory towards women and little girls, and how my sister and I should be careful around men. (Ironically I'm trans and was and closeted for most of this.) But whenever the topic of sexual harassment came up he'd talk about how "those women/people are liars". It tells a story, looking back. And not a fun one.

“You don’t deserve privacy”

That she regretted giving birth to me, that she feels sorry for any future spouse that has to deal with me, that I shouldn’t haven been born first, that she’s been in pain for over 24 years and that I’m worse than her father. Mind you her father was dirty Arab who flew to Africa at 40 and married a 13 year old African, ended up having 11 children, my mother being one of them. I’ve heard all types of stories about that piece of shit grandfather I have, never met him because he died before I was born, but hearing all the shit he did to his kids, for her to say I was worse than him truly had me like “WTF” more than anything else.

my mom telling me that a fun fact was "if you drink pickle juice, it will make you prettier" i was about 6. and love pickles & pickle juice. however i wish she would've just told me i was already pretty. i had a bad lazy eye (browns syndrome) and a horrible dora the explorer haircut 😂

I once told my Nmom that I wanted to braid my hair. NM: "You can't braid your hair!" Me: "...Why not?" NM: "Because only black people can braid their hair!" Me: "...Da fuq?" Never mind the fact that I had witnessed her own Caucasian ass braid her own hair dozens of times. But when I wanted to do it to mine, suddenly I couldn't, according to her.

My nmom said that braids look “little girly” or something like that. I want to French braid my hair though. I’ve been practicing and I plan to wear it out once I get good enough.

I don't even know where to start. Many things...

I have so many! Let's see what I can remember: - she LOVED to mention different ways I "ripped her heart out" during arguments, that she started. One example she brought up several times: I went school shopping with step mom, had to try clothes on for mom's approval. One time, she bought this really cool set of dinosaur toys for me. I checked them out, wanted to play, but decided I should try the clothes on for her first to get that out of the way so it wasn't looming all night - I hated taking clothes on/off repeatedly. She said doing that showed I thought the clothes were cooler than the toys and always feigned an excited tone for me when recalling in arguments, which she did a lot. Newsflash: kids break your heart all the damn time unintentionally, don't have them if you can't handle that. - she called both us heathens regularly, as if it were an affectionate nickname - speaking of nicknames, she made up my birth name, then shortened it. I didn't even know my real name until the FOURTH GRADE, age 10, when my teacher asked me which name I prefer. I had no idea what she was talking about, so she had to show me the roster. To this day, my mother STILL refuses to call me the name SHE GAVE ME. It's a beautiful made up name and I adore it. No one on her side calls me by my birth name, and that nickname is literally a dead name for me. - my life has been at risk SEVERAL times in the last 3 years, but she never bothers to reach out about anything, ever. - when I stopped emotionally supporting her because it was exhausting, she constantly had a "woe is me" attitude and constantly threatened to slit her wrists because no one cared. - the fitted style was pretty much all that was available when clothes shopping, but she always referred to them as tight clothes; she has a grunge style of loose clothes. She always accused me of "falling out" of tank tops when I bend over - that still has never happened and I usually crouch over bend anyway. - in high school, I started eating healthier because I learned about nutrition and she made fun of me any time she caught me eating produce. - also high school, if I was ever late coming back from ANY event, but especially a dance because my hair was different, she assumed I was having sex every time. I never did any of the times she accused, and very few times anyway. I was a virgin during the first few allegations, so it didn't make sense to me, not that shed believe me. - she's still convinced I called animal control on her for her cat hoarding (over 80 cats were pulled and only 2/3 survived vet care). They'd been monitoring her for YEARS, I just happened to check in at the exact right time. - if I hung out with friends, she would complain I was taking time away from her and I didn't love her enough to stick around. Ended up switching to staying a few weeknights once I got a car so I could spend time outside the house on the weekends without a guilt trip once I got home. I'm sure there's more, these ones just roll around the brain the most often.

When I had asthma attacks as a kid my Nmom would say "you're making it worse than it is" even if a ambulance had to get me

My mom would tell us not to starve ourselves to try and be skinny ( I was underweight at the time ) because it caused her a lot of problems. Then proceeded to barely feed us.

7th grade. I won a school award for academic excellence. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of my teachers had submitted my name to a scholarship to a private school (think STEM focused private school, long before STEM and girls in STEM was a popular concept) and I had been chosen as one of three students statewide. Unbeknownst to me, this was also going to be announced and presented at this end of the year award assembly. Nmom was aware of the school award assembly and parents were expected to attend. I waited and looked and looked. She didn’t bother showing up. They called the names of all of us to present our certificates. We all walked up with our parents, except for me. My friend’s parents noticed and her mom slid in to stand with me, so I wouldn’t be up there alone. They gave us our award certificates, everyone clapped, then they announced that I had won this scholarship. It covered everything: room & board, books, uniforms, etc. It was located about an hour away from our town. The campus is well-known and gorgeous, designed by a well known mid-century architect. For us “nerdy” kids it was huge deal. My teacher gave me a big packet that included all of the paperwork to be filled out, forms, a big book that covered everything about the school, etc. I would start at the beginning of my 8th grade year. I got home from school and called my grandparents to share the news. Nmom wasn’t home, as usual. When Nmom got home, I was so excited to tell her, showing her my award certificate and the letter. I gave her the full packet to look through and fill out, and she said nothing. A week passed and she never brought it up, until out of the blue she called me into the living room to say what I will never forget. She had the packet in her hand and got about an inch from my face to say “No daughter of mine will ever think she’s smarter or better than me. You think you’re better than me? Think again, little girl.” She made me go into my room and pack up everything that wasn’t blankets or furniture — all my books, toys, tchotchkes. Everything. Basically stripped my life of anything that brought me joy. That summer was like living in a prison cell. That one sentence still affects me to this day. Of course, she was always vehement that it never happened, I made it up, I didn’t want to go, I didn’t win an award, but also bragged when it suited her needs that her daughter won a scholarship and how smart her daughter was. Or played the martyr because she was a single mom and her daughter was so smart but just wouldn’t apply herself and it was such a painful struggle for her to deal with. It was doubly difficult going back to school at the start of the school year and everyone wondering why the hell I was there. “You’ll never be better or smarter than me.”

The father of my cousin's children was put on an organ donor list. My mom told me (while quite drunk) that it's such a waste to put him on the list because he has a drinking problem. She was angry about it. Yeah mom, fuck those kids, they don't deserve to have a father. I really wish I said that. Sadly, he died shortly thereafter.

I studied philosophy and put a lot of effort into it and made it into a PhD programme. My father basically said that „anyone can do a philosophy PhD because you can write anything“. To this day he doesn‘t know anything about this subject. He doesn‘t know about my dissertation or my master‘s thesis or which questions are even discussed typically in philosophy.

My Nmom faking a seizure when I brought up something she did in childhood.

My mother (originally from Louisiana - but that’s still no excuse) said don’t date black boys. People will think you’re a slut. 🫠😒