Hello,
I’m really sorry to read about what’s going on in your life.
I have been through something very similar, my mom has been the meanest person to me yet. She used to fight with me about anything, and now she does the same thing to my younger brothers who are 17 and 9. I was suicidal and I felt worthless because I didn’t get any support or friendship or love from my mom. Today, I have behavioral problems that affect my adult life in ways that I never could have imagined. But there are therapists and friends and there is hope. You will find peace and light if you just open your heart to it.

It’s quite hard to talk about this, because it brings up a degree of shame. My own mother didn’t love me as I imagine I will love my kids one day. My mother is only a human being who let stress and negativity get the best of her. My mother would start fighting me on purpose to the point that I lived my days in fear of her coming home. It’s a nightmare and no child should feel that way. And those days when she would break down and cry, I was there for her, as much as a child could, in spite of my emotional problems and my incapacity to react with kindness.

I ran away from home when I was 19, because I couldn’t take it anymore, The never ending fights and the trauma made me jump out the window and leave for good. I was lucky enough to survive in a world full of strangers, in a city 500 kilometers away from friends and family, but I wouldn’t advise doing that to anybody. It’s dangerous and it’s not wise to make such major changes when you have such a huge emotional burden. Life decisions should be taken from a different angle, when you are lighthearted and when the reason is not running away.

So after 1 year, my mom lost a lot of weight and she turned for the better. I came back to my hometown and we never shared the same home. She learned to respect my decisions by force and that’s not something I wished, but I think it was necessary. I was tired of being pushed around and neglected, but now I know what was going on, with different eyes, and recently I finished college. She used to tell me that she didn’t think I’d finish high school.

Along the way, I’ve figured out a few things that helped me understand my mom and somehow find peace with her. Although now we talk like nothing happened, she lost me. We’ll never be friends, but we know each other enough to avoid really talking and things are quite good like that. Except, of course, when she starts going crazy again.

Anyway. Here are the lessons I’ve learned:
1. Moms are only human. If your mom treats you badly, it might be because someone treated her badly too and that is the only way that she knows how to express anger and stress and all those negative emotions that everyone has in their lifetime. I read Eckhart Tolle’s book, The power of now, which opened my eyes a lot to why sometimes people would just start blurting out at us, out of nowhere, and what we can do to top that. Understanding their behavior is key to accepting and forgiving and even helping them fix it.

2. No matter the reason why your mom treats you like that, if you offer understanding, you will find that she might open up and you can help her fix her problems. Sometimes people have a hard time accepting that life has its difficulties, and they might not see how much they hurt the people around them. But every mom has a gentle soul somewhere inside and every mom is not perfect and sometimes needs help to see how things could be different.

3. I think that kinds who have this kind of a situation have a tendency to fail in school because I believe that the home environment affects them in ways that they stop caring about grades and knowledge. To me, it was just a row of days where I had to be at school, but I didn’t care when the teachers tried to motivate me or tried to make me feel bad for not doing better. That was very bad, and I regret that now. The only thing that we have is the occasion to rise out of the mud by going to school, learning and doing our best to get good grades. It’s hard when you don’t feel motivated, but it’s the only way to go. If you build a career and no longer need your family’s financial support, they will start seeing you as a person, and not as a dependency.

4. Don’t expect your mother to change, unless what you put out on the table is perfect. That means, if you would suddenly be the best at something and you could make her proud, so that she would brag about you to her friends, then it would change something, but not much. I learned that trying to please my mom was pointless because I had my own path and my own opinion on things that were right and wrong. And the lesson here is that, with a parent like that, you loose sight of the valuable knowledge that other kids get. I lost faith in my mom’s advice and I did things my own way, and I made a lot of mistakes. I learned not to look for her advice because she didn’t know how to give it and she would always have other things to complain about. The world has taught me more than my mom, it’s called learning the hard way. Just be wise always, and try to stay away from bad things. Think that you will have your own family to look out for and keep your sanity and look out for your own health as much as possible.

5. Not all kids are blessed with a loving family, I think there is hardly anyone who can say that childhood and teenage years are easy. We all have problems, and we can’t choose our families. I’ve met a few “normal” families and they all had their stuff, but they hid it very well or they displayed it like it’s a complaining contest. the point is, you can try to accept things that are not your fault. It’s not your fault that your mom didn’t know better. You don’t deserve this, but you can try to do better than your mom. And also, don’t listen to her when she tells you anything that you feel is wrong. Don’t fight back, just be the wise one and let it go.

6. As a child, the emotional response is greater and more intensive than a parent’s. That is because as a child, you need some things to develop into a balanced adult, and you get hurt much more easily. For example, my mom doesn’t even remember that time when she broke my trust in her or when she broke my heart.

Recently, my mom told me that she doesn’t mean to be a psychologist to her children, implying that she doesn’t want to have heart-to-heart talks with them. I was stunned, and then enraged. She was still that same old abusive parent, because she doesn’t know any better. Also, she doesn’t want to change and she probably thinks that it’s okay to be like this with her children. She would deserve a big slap in the face, in my opinion, but I can’t do that.

On a positive note, when I got my first job, which was unbelievably well paid, she told me that she was proud of me. That was it. I didn’t expect that, because I didn’t care about her opinion and her recognition, but that thing struck a chord. We’ll always have a soft spot for our mothers, and they too for us. For all their wrongdoings, I believe some day they will look for forgiveness, because they too have been someone’s child and they too have hearts filled with pain and disappointment maybe.

PS. I was a bit surprised by how your mom told your neighbor about how she treated you. I think that she was feeling guilty, and she needed to let it out in the open, so she wrapped it all out as a joke or funny story and she received some form of approval. I think nobody in their right mind should approve to that, but sometimes, you just don’t want to ruin your neighborly relationship by saying something like “You crazy violent woman! How would you have liked it if that happened to you when you were at that age?” don’t fight your mom, that’s how you win the battle.

Good luck and may you find your peace! xoxox