#but fr idk what else it could be ... one of my roommates was sick at somepoint recently and it COULD have been 2 weeks ago for all i know.

[talkorsomething]

Update on The Illness. I think i huave covid

[traumaticexperiences]

anonymous: i think it's abuse, but i'm not quite sure.

so, years ago, middle school-early high school, my mom got more physical.  Used to grab me by the arms or shoulders, if she grabbed by arms + dug her nails in i would too. one time she slammed me against a wall and started hitting/punching? me (cant remember entirely).  didnt leave marks like bruises or anything, just red fr little while. eventually she got less and less physical, and then hasn’t hit me in… idk, awhile.  at least a year probably.  But was this physical abuse?

aside from that, ever since i can remember, she has a horrible temper.  Calls us all names.  When I was younger, elementary school-ish, I remember calling my cousin a bastard.  I didn’t know it was a bad word because my mom called me + my brothers that sometimes.  I figured it wasn’t as bad as “bitch” because she said it less, or something.  She has called me names like that, and worse things like “cunt” countless times.  Same w my brothers.  But a lot of times we get into a screaming match and I say mean things too.  but I think that’s a newer development.  Eventually I got fed up of taking it and started yelling back instead of crying and just letting her make me feel like shit.  I remember a time in elementary school she told me to go drown in the shower.  I remember because I was in some fandom chat room thing and I was sad, and I told them what she’d said and they (mostly older kids, teenagers) were all horrified and comforted me and stuff.  

Also I’m a lesbian, and this was a five-ish year long ordeal that began with her first stealing my phone in 8th grade-ish and reading my text to a friend saying I thought I was bisexual.  It was turned into me “hurting her” because she couldn’t handle it being in “her family”.  She wanted me to just try being with a boy.  I never have and never will.  After getting a girlfriend in senior year of highschool, and after she talked to some close friends of hers, she became more accepting.  But before then, and even after that point sometimes, she’d still call me a dyke when she was mad, usually over my appearance.

Which always has been and apparently always will be a huge thing for her, too.  I don’t like makeup much.  I’m pretty feminine but I don’t really do my hair or makeup ever.  I just brush my hair, that’s about it.  This always upsets my mom.  My grandpa who recently died was in the hospital a year or two ago, and she yelled and screamed at me before we went to visit him the first time because after she asked me, I told her I wasn’t intending to put on makeup.  She was telling me she never wanted to be seen in public with me if I didn’t have makeup on, telling me I “look like a piece of shit without it,” etc.  In high school she’d often have to pick me up because of doctor’s appointments (I have many physical disabilities/ am chronically ill / have mental illnesses) and so often she wouldn’t even say “hi,” or “how are you,” but rather her first thing would be “Wow, all these other girls come out of school looking so wonderful, I want to cry when I see that disheveled mess is my daughter.”  I remember so many times doing my best not to cry in the car, looking out the window at the clouds or the sun thinking it would help me not to cry because that was letting her win or whatever, or at least I thought so.  I would just say “I don’t care” over and over again because arguing with her obviously did no good and just made her yell more.  But even though I really have no desire to do my hair and makeup every day and look super pretty, her comments did get to me.  I’m a freshman in college right now and sometimes I’ll apologize to my best friend / roommate for looking like shit and she’ll have to really convince me that I don’t.  My mom’s disparaging comments really stick with me even now.  I’ll walk out the door and feel super self conscious and have my mom’s words echoing in my head but still not actually do anything about it (do my hair, or makeup, that kind of thing).  

But I’m not perfect.  I forget things a lot.  Like if she tells me to do something I might just forget to do it.  Or if she wants me to clean and I just can’t find the motivation to do it.  Or if I do it but I don’t do it well enough.  It gets into this awful cycle where I don’t do something and she gets mad, and then I get depressed so I just lay on my bed and do nothing, therefore making her more mad, etc etc.  It’s hard because she has chronic pain too from a surgery that went wrong like 16 years ago that messed up her leg.  

And when she’s nice to me, I really do love her.  She’ll help me calm down from panic attacks and she brings me to doctors and gets me the medicines that I need.  I was in the hospital a month or so ago and she drove down to my college (4 hours away) at midnight just to be there with me since I had to stay overnight.  

It’s like, I know she loves me.  And the first few weeks of winter break back in December were good.  But if I stay home long enough she goes back into how things were before I left for college.  Eventually the honeymoon sort of phase wears away, and she’s back to treating me like shit, and I’m back to wanting to go away to college again.  Right before I went back to college I remember she said something about how I do nothing for her no matter how she talks to me, “whether she’s nasty or sweet as pie to me”, and I responded in frustration that she was always nasty to me.  And at that moment I was doing dishes as she told me to do, and she came up next to me and started slamming dishes down and told me to get out of her sight, to not do the dishes and to do them later when she was gone so she didn’t have to see me.  But at that time, she was trying to get off of cymbalta, which apparently has horrible withdrawal symptoms.  So I guess it made her temper even worse.  When she was slamming stuff I flinched, I really thought she was going to hit me (she hadn’t in a while).  But she didn’t.  But I still flinch at sudden movements in daily life–yesterday in the dorm bathroom as I walked out, someone walked in, and I flinched really violently just because I hadn’t seen them coming (pretty embarrassing lol).  

Also not sure how common this is, but when other people around me get into arguments I get really anxious?  My best friend’s family treats me like their own, and her cousin+cousin’s husband took us out for dinner, and on the way home they got into a disagreement and I got unbearably anxious, I actually had to do deep breathing exercises to try and keep myself calm.  I get kinda anxious just thinking about it.  The people involved have never yelled, they’re always super nice to me and each other–it was a perfectly civil disagreement that they were in, just very passive-aggressive tbh.  But it never escalated.  They just kinda bickered and then we got to our destination and they solved the problem, and that was that.  

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  That first thing I mentioned, about her shoving me against the wall, happened like 5 years ago.  I thought I was over it until I tried explaining it to my best friend and ended up a sobbing mess in the process–I couldn’t even talk.  I angrily mentioned it to my mom at some point more recently and she laughed at me, saying she “barely touched me” and making fun of me in front of my brother, who joined in saying how ridiculous I was being and laughing at me.  That experience has made me really question everything, to be honest.  My mom has a lot of shit to deal with, and I’m not the best daughter in the world, far from it.  I get good grades but that’s about all I’m good at, all I can be counted on for.  Or at least that’s how it seems to me.  I can’t tell if how she treats me is normal, and I’m overreacting, or if it’s abusive, or if she’s just angry at me and I deserve it.  Any advice on that front?  I’m sorry this got so long.  

It would be nice if this is anonymous.  But could you tag it as “mint” so I can find it if you make it anonymous?  Thank you.  And thank you for running this blog.

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yes, what you're describing is abuse! grabbing you, and punching strikes as a really hateful and cruel physical abuse, only a person who really wanted to hurt you would do such a thing. Being called names also comes from a hateful place, and it can hurt so much when it comes from a parent, because they're not supposed to hate you, they're supposed to care, calling you names shows that they didn't care at all, they saw you as something that is there for them to hurt. Presenting your sexual orientation as something hurtful to them is so cruel and vicious, they wanted you to feel horrible about who you are! As if something is wrong with that! I'm really glad you never want to be with a boy. Calling you names for merely being who you are is really hurtful, again, something she does only to harm you. Hatred over your appearance is also something really abusive and crushing, it can affect you really deeply that people can hate you merely because they don't approve of the way you look, and that's terrifying, even more when it comes from a family member. She made you feel like she'd rather have someone else for a daughter, merely because of your looks, that is just too cruel. It doesn't matter if you're perfect or not, you haven't deserved this kind of abuse, someone who cares about you would never do any of those things, because they shouldn't think that you deserve to be hurt. Helping you calm down and bringing you medicine are such basic things, it's really not much, even if it means much to you because you don't really get much affection so even the smallest gesture can feel like love. You deserve more than that. Your mom is abusive and a few basic things she does can't change that. I don't believe a person who hurts you that badly can truly love you and care about your well being. You can't just love a child when you feel like it, and then hate it when you feel like hating it. That's sick. It seems you recognized the cycle of abuse and you know what's going on. I'm glad you're so bright and know a lot of things are wrong. You are scared of her. You're anxious in arguments. She's obviously capable of hurting you a lot, and you know it's not safe for you around her. It's really painful to live around a person like that, and you shouldn't be subjected to that.Probably the most scary thing is how she pretends nothing happens, minimizes the pain she caused to you and tries to excuse her actions and gaslight what you know happened. That kind of psychological abuse can drive a person crazy, and you shouldn't be put thru that, just for the sake of her getting away with it.