Hello,

This is my second post on this forum. Thank you to all who took the time to read and engage with my first one. I talked a bit about my relationship to my parents and I want to go into it a bit more because I feel extreme resentment and I want to heal from past wounds. I feel like I’ve been kind of neglected my whole life by my parents. Literally. My mom’s told me that when she was ready to give birth to me, my dad refused to take her to the hospital until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to go? Idk how that works. Also apparently, he didn’t go see me the day I was born because he went out to get drunk instead. My mom had me alone. I have an older brother who I feel I’ve always kind of lived in his shadow… He’s, in my parent’s eyes, “the perfect kid”. We were raised by my maternal grandparents and my mom for the first four years of my life in one country, while my dad lived/worked in another. I feel like most of my pain has been cause by neglect from my parents. When I was an infant and my dad was visiting, he picked me up from my arm and dislocated my shoulder. When I was three, we were at a family party and my mom had gone somewhere else and left someone to watch over my brother and me. I fell head-first into an empty pool and passed out. When she got to the room they put me in she thought I was dead, but I slowly regained consciousness. The doctors told her I was fine. I was brought to a new country by people my mom didn’t know, and we all moved in with my dad who was an alcoholic. All I remember from my childhood is my parents supporting my brother playing soccer, getting my hopes crushed constantly, feeling a lot of pressure to exceed in school, my dad drinking, and having to mediate arguments between my parents. Every club or sport or activity I was put into, I was taken out of shortly after because it either conflicted with my brother’s soccer practice or my mom just didn’t want to keep taking me. I was a really angry kid. I remember it felt like I lived a double life, one where I would be the perfect student at school but a little devil at home. My brother had really bad asthma and they’d have to take him to the hospital late at night sometimes and drop me off somewhere else. I was never allowed to go. I hated my dad for being verbally and emotionally abusive to my mom and was led on by my mom every time she’d cry to me telling me we were going to leave my dad. I was exposed to porn at a very early age and when I got really bad depression I thought it was guilt built up (I was raised catholic) I told my parents and my dad blamed me and said even at 7 years old that I knew exactly what i was doing and had to deal with my consequences. I was also extremely insecure and would give up at everything. When I played basketball my said he would only see me play if I was the best player. That never happened. My mom I think went to one of my plays. Theatre is the only thing I didn’t quit in high school. At home I felt criticized constantly and really invisible, unless I was doing something wrong. Which I really didn’t try to do.

Now, I’m in college and I don’t want to keep this inside of me anymore. I hate feeling like I hate my mom but she complains way too much about everything and expects everyone to solve her problems. She isn’t responsible, she isn’t clean, and she gaslights my older brother and me when we don’t do exactly as she says or guilts us for trying to take matters into our own hands, which is what she taught us in the first place. For example, when my mom complains about not dressing the way she wants, I tell her I’ll help her clean out her closet and go shopping with her if all she does is look into what style she really wants to try out. She doesn’t end up doing anything. She says she wants the house to be clean, but doesn’t discipline my little brothers to help her. I feel an enormous amount of pressure to do her job for her. I think she uses complaining as a mechanism to cope with the fact that even though my dad doesn’t drink anymore, he’s a workaholic who doesn’t prioritize his family.

I just don’t know what to do. I love her and I want to help but I know I can’t force her to change. But it’s the same pattern of habits that she had when she’d promise me we’d leave my dad and nothing would get done. Nothing would change. Now I’m an numb ball of anxiety that is working every single day on getting better and feeling alive again. But I really don’t want to separate myself from my mom. It irritates me to think that she’s a really nice person with good intentions but I just want to be mean to her all of the time. I have no respect for her and I realized that all of the complaints i have about myself I see in her. I don’t think she failed me as a mom, as she was present in our school work, but her inability to work for what she wants… feeding into the fear that lied to me when I was little…. makes it impossible for me to see her as a loving mother who is worthy of respect.