I don't know why this is such a common sentiment but a lot of people find out about kid's grades and think "oh you have to not be trying at all" or "you're just lazy and spoiled grow up and do your homework" I struggle a lot in school nowadays when I used to get really good grades and participate in school activities. This is kind of a rant but yeah, what are your experiences??
I have a 10 year old cousin who lives in another country with the rest of my family. I 15(f) live with my mom in the US. My relationship with my mother is strained and I have a lot of issues with her and how she raised me but regardless we are very close. However my aunt is like my mom but on steroids, like she is a whole other level of insane. She has a young daughter who honestly not to sound negative because I do love my family but I cannot stand her. She lies a lot and has broken a lot of my things, and a lot of other issues. However I still feel really bad for her, my aunt constantly pushes so called "healthy" mentalities on her, like commenting on her body while she was performing ballet. Saying things like "I could see your tummy on stage you need to lose weight" or when they were leaving their visit with us she said "you've gained a lot of weight on this trip when we get back you are going to lose it" and always saying she needs to stay skinny and stuff. My mom also does this to me but didn't start restricting my food until I was about 13, my aunt has seen my mom do this and as a result does it to her very young 10 year old daughter. I had and am still struggling with recovering from a raging eating disorder that my mom refuses to accept was partially her fault, and I am very very worried for my cousin. She is a young girl, I don't know what she'll be like when she's my age.
Another thing is the homophobia. Both my aunt and mom became weirdly red-pilled over the pandemic, and are very vocal about their feelings surrounding the "woke mind virus" Every time my aunt sees for example a drag queen, or a non-passing trans person, or any LGBTQ person that she for some reason has an issue with, she will tell my cousin that it's a "gross rainbow person" and that the "rainbow people" are bad and immoral. MY COUSIN IS 10 at least let her develop homophobia on her own godamn. I was watching TV with my cousin and two guys on screen kissed, and she went "ewwwwww that's disgusting" and seemed genuinely angry. I asked her why she thought it was gross and she just said "because it is" and I kept prying and she couldn't come up with any real reason, except that she's been taught to react like that.
There's a lot of other issues but those are the two things that bothered me the most. I just don't want this young girl to end up with the issues that I have. She is hella annoying and the only kid in my family that I really dislike, but obvi I feel horrible.
Basically my mom has always made it very clear that your body is the most important thing, and always encouraged me to eat healthy and not eat any super porcessed foods throughout my childhood. I (15f) consider this standard and my childhood was pretty chill, but as a I got older I started noticing weird things. When I was about 9 or 10 I told her I didn't like my stomach (probably because I just ate a big meal and my stomach was full idk) and she told me i needed to lose weight then. She'd say stuff like this a lot and when I was about 13 she started restricting what I ate. Like I'm not allowed to eat ANYTHING with carbs or what she considers unhealthy. Nowadays if I go to a restaurant without her and they give me a bread basket I get unreasonably happy and eat as much bread as I can because if I ate any around her she would lecture me about eating habits. Now the actual ED thing is that when I was around 10 she started spitting. Which basically means that she spits her food into a cup. She still does it until today but she actually eats food now so who knows. She only buys me unhealthy food if she thinks I'm going to spit it. She also makes me exercise for 45 mins every day, and even though I usually fake them and don't actually do them she says she sees me getting thinner. She always comments when she thinks I've gained weight, and tells me not to wear low waisted jeans because they highlight the widest part of my body so I shouldn't wear them. She pays insane attention to her body and says if you go past xs then you aren't healthy. When I was like 13 I broke down in front of her saying that I had an ED and it's caused by a lot of the things she says, and she told me not to blame my problems on other people and that she just wanted me to be healthy, so I never talked to her about it again. She always says it's healthy and it's not all about how you look, but I don't know. She literally said to me "Do you know what one atom of carbs can do to your body?!"
I could go on forever and ever about many more stories, but I just need advice on general thoughts and what kind of behavior this is. How do I deal with this? How do I communicate with my mom in the future about things like how I don't want her saying these things to my future children.
I feel like people on reddit are so unreasonably cynical. Like every reply I get is weirdly passive aggressive or just straight up argumentative. What do you think? I'm curious lol
Basically my mom is generally pretty homophobic, she would never say she dislikes gay people, and I don't think she is hateful, but she says things like LGBT people are dysfunctional, the lifestyle is bad, they are perverted/disgusting, and for some reason gay men exist but there are no true lesbians, they just haven't found the right man, no woman could ever be attracted to another woman and love her and be happy. She says it's all the woke mind virus and most LGBT people are pressured by society.
Growing up, and up until a year ago, I 15(F) thought I was 100% straight. I was attracted to men, so therefore I am straight problem solved yay. However when I entered high school in 2023 I found out that straight girls do not in fact fantasize about women or kissing women or dating women or are attracted to women at all. I know it seems like it should have been obvious to me but I genuinely thought everyone in the world had a universal attraction to women (even straight girls). Even after that realization I still denied that I was anything at all, however I then had this thing with this girl for a while and it really impacted me (you could say we were very VERY close friends). That was definitely a wake up call and I accepted that I was not in fact straight. Nowadays I'm still not sure about my sexuality but I try to not stress to much about it, as I have no intention of ever telling my family, especially my mom, since I would like to keep peace.
ANYWAY TO THE MAIN POINT - Today I was writing in my journal, and was thinking about how I had this dream about this girl in my english class, I had a dream that we had feelings for each other and kissed. Now I have a crush on her, so I wrote it down. I think that was the first time that I put in writing casual "gay" feelings, and this weird sense of like disgust and hate came over me. Like words started playing in my head, "you're weird, you're perverted, you're disgusting, you don't have to be acting like this it's obviously for attention" I don't really believe any of these things, but I still feel weird about it. Like as if I should be disgusted with myself, and who I am as a person. It's been bothering me, because those are the same things my mom has been saying my whole life.
Is this internalized homophobia? How do I deal with this? Is this my brain telling me I don't like girls? How do I differentiate these thoughts from my actual reasoning?