u/Automatic_Set8296

My mother has been a shopping addict her entire life. I cannot recall a single weekend as a child where we did NOT leave the house. When she was married to my dad, we would go to higher-end stores (it was his money she was spending), and then after the divorce she started going to lower-cost stores. She also took out credit cards and racked up thousands of dollars in debt before she divorced my dad, and he got stuck paying it off.

Because of this shopping addiction she has racked up easily 5 figures of just credit card debt, and I am willing to bet it’s 6 figures now. Amazon and Temu packages show up every day. She’d started “hiding” purchases before I went NC with her. I should mention her and my stepdad make a combined income of about $300,000 in a low cost of living city. People in my city pray for that kind of money. I would have so much saved if I was making that!

My mom constantly complained about how she couldn’t travel, and she was envious of my dad and his new wife traveling the world and doing all of these fun things. He’s doing them because he was frugal his whole life and is now reaping the rewards. He deserves it!! But somehow my mom is the victim of it all. She never gets to go anywhere or do anything. And somehow when she looks at her piles and piles of materialistic crap, it never occurs to her she might be the reason why.

My BPD mom is very self-conscious about her appearance. As soon as she was able to, she downloaded photo editing apps onto her phone and from then on, every single picture was heavily filtered. Teeth whitened, all wrinkles removed, eyes brightened, basically looking like an alien.
I always thought this was weird, but didn’t have an issue with it until she started editing photos of me as a teenager.

Every single photo with me in it that was taken had to be taken on HER phone. Nobody would see the pictures until she edited them to be unrecognizable. She would make me look ridiculous with all the filters and “removal” tools she used. It was very damaging to my self-esteem because every time she did that, she was basically communicating to me that she didn’t approve of the way I looked.

This continued even into adult life. This memory is resurfacing today because it has been exactly two years since I graduated college. She made my college graduation all about her, of course, but I’ll save that for a separate post. When we took pictures after the ceremony, I told her to send those to me RIGHT then. She acted like I was dramatic. I said, “no. Send those to me RIGHT now. I don’t want your edited bullshit.”
Anyway she sent them and was all huffy about it. Last year, exactly one year after the ceremony, guess what she sends me? An edited one. Of course. The one with her and my dad, my dad who she divorced 12 years ago and then still cries crocodile tears to this day saying she could have “saved the marriage” and thinks my dad still even cares about her anymore. This picture is her proof of a “happy family” or happy marriage or whatever the hell she’s deluded herself into thinking nowadays.

I’m sure soon I’ll receive the same edited picture and some whiny message about how I haven’t talked to her in over a year.

I started writing my own stories as young as 5 years old. When I got older and started high school, one of my teachers introduced me to the NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo was a yearly event every November where your goal was to write 50,000 words between November 1 - November 30. For the young writer’s program, the goal was 30,000 if I remember correctly. I participated in this event every year between 2015-2023.

I was super excited to try this out for the first time. I started planning a fictional fantasy story and on November 1st started writing my book. I was getting really into it, and my mom of course noticed. She tried to sabotage anything I was good at, so my guess is she decided to try and clip my wings early.

I’m in my bedroom writing after finishing my schoolwork one afternoon, and she barges into my room, digs her long, fake fingernails into my laptop screen and tries to yank it out of my hands. She says “there’s no point in writing that! You’ll never be good enough to get published anyway. You’re just wasting your time.”

That was very damaging to me. I was only 14 when she did this and it affected my ability to complete NaNoWriMo every year. That first year was the only year I actually reached the word count goal.

I still write now, but I’m so critical of myself that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to publish because I genuinely can’t handle negative feedback. Everything is stored privately and it feels too vulnerable to share any of it. I always wonder who I’d be today if I’d had a supportive mother, instead of a complete psycho “mother” growing up.

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to sleep in. Ever. I was only allowed naps when I was sick, and even those were limited. She would leave me alone for maybe an hour or two and then get mad I wasn’t up again.

You might think “Maybe you could’ve napped/slept in when she was out of the house”. No. She would blow up my phone to make sure I wasn’t sleeping. If I didn’t answer, she’d escalate. I remember one weekend she was out of town and I was so tired I accidentally slept in on a Sunday morning. At 9 am I woke to probably 37 missed calls, over 50 texts, and threats to call the cops. An hour later she barges in and starts screaming at me. Unbeknownst to me, she’d started driving BACK to town the second I didn’t answer two hours earlier.

I couldn’t get enough sleep at night, either. She would try to keep me awake by coming into my room at night and either venting about her job/husband or berating me about my “attitude”, for as long as 3 hours. On the nights she wasn’t yelling at me, she’d be arguing with whoever she was married to at the time. I would occasionally tiptoe to the door and listen. I heard her second husband literally begging her to let him sleep because he had work in the morning. She said, “I don’t care, I want a divorce right now.” It was probably 1 in the morning.

She also had a household rule: everyone must get up the second she gets up, BUT nobody is allowed to be up before her. If you’re up before her you incur her wrath the entire day. You’re also not allowed to take your time waking up and have to be immediately “on” and ready for anything. This has resulted in my body maintaining a constant hyper-vigilant state even into my adult life as a single woman living alone, free of my crazy mom. It took me 6 months after moving out to take a nap without my heart rate being 150 BPM. Probably 8 months to sleep in on the weekend.

I wake up slower now. I’ve had long restorative naps on my couch. Why this woman felt the need to run her house like a military bunker is beyond me.

This happened when I was 15. It’s one of my most vivid memories of her abuse.
I was at home doing my computer science homework when my mom started berating me about my “attitude” as per usual. Well this time she was extremely pissed. I don’t quite remember what it is I did (although, with BPD parents, it’s never logical). Anyway she snatched my phone out of my hands and told me she wanted me away from her and that I was to go into the backyard for an indeterminate amount of time. It was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. She told me I was to finish my homework out there too.

So now I’m outside on the patio, in the freezing cold, with my laptop. Obviously I can’t focus on programming. I’m sitting there with tears in my eyes. I look at the back door, and my mom sees me, smirks, and starts swiping through my phone where I can see her. She had this really dramatic way of swiping with her index finger that makes me uncomfortable envisioning it again. It was performative and basically “you’re powerless and I can do whatever I want with your things”.
Anyway. My fingers start getting numb and I knock on the back door. She comes up to the door, smiles at me with this twisted gleam in her eyes, shuts the blinds, and deadbolts the door.

I don’t remember much after this. I did of course get let back inside and then immediately told I was “dramatic” for complaining about being cold and that I “deserved it” because of my attitude. Oh, and she informed me she found something on my phone she didn’t like so she would be keeping it for an undetermined amount of time.
This was of course to prevent me from telling any relatives, or most importantly, my dad. She knew my dad absolutely would have come to get me after that.

I wanted to share since this is something that still affects me deeply to this day. How someone can call themselves a “mother” after doing this is beyond me. I still remember that smirk before she closed the blinds in my face.

I love my dad. He’s been the only one to believe me when I talk about the abuse from my mom, because he was married to her, so he absolutely knows! He’s supported me through everything, and defended me from her.

My BPD mom has always been a cheater, but I never thought it applied to my dad. She has been married 4 times. During her second marriage, she made up a story about going on a “business trip” and went off to a different state to hook up with and see this guy she’d been talking to. She calls me during this trip and gushes about how she’s going to get married to the guy and that I needed to fly up there and attend the wedding. She was talking about dresses, flowers, etc. I was 15 years old at the time.

I should mention this “business trip” took place in the state where my dad’s parents live. My mom HATES my dad’s parents and isolated me from them my entire life. So I never got to see my paternal grandparents (until I turned 19 and went to see them myself). She told me my dad’s mom was insane and wanted us both dead (not true, she’s a sweetheart). She also told me that because of this, she got a court order banning me from entering that state until I turned 18. She said I’d be in BIG trouble if I ever tried to fly up there. Yes this is absolutely ridiculous but she planted this lie when I was very young, so I believed it and told people. No wonder why they all looked at me strangely.

Funny how she suddenly forgets about this “court order” when she wants to get married to some random guy while already married to someone else.
I mention this. She says “oh, you’ll just have to get your dad’s permission and it’ll be fine.”
After this trip of hers she forces me to drive to the airport and pick her up since I had just gotten my learner’s permit. The sick thing is she made my stepdad accompany me under the guise of “you can’t drive without an adult” which was true, however, the real reason was because she wanted the satisfaction of him coming to see her and having zero idea what she’d been doing on the trip. She could have easily ordered an Uber but she wanted it to be this way.

Anyway. Back to the topic of her cheating on my dad.
I flew up to see my dad’s parents for my birthday and Christmas. My dad’s mom and I are bonding over how terrible my mom was, both to her and myself. Then she goes “you know your mom cheated on your dad right?”
I just pause. “No?”
She says “Oh right I never told you… when your dad was deployed (he was in the military), your mom was regularly seeing this guy she knew from high school. She had him over almost every night.”

I just sit there. I *knew* my mom was a cheater, but to cheat on my dad?! That’s a whole other issue. My dad is probably the most important person in my life. And while he was DEPLOYED? How selfish can someone be to cheat in general, but also to cheat on someone risking their life in another country? I know that absolutely destroyed him. My dad is such a kind person. It’s going to take me a while to process this one. 🙁

Basically the title. The goalposts were always moved, so even if I was the perfect child, she wasn’t satisfied and needed to control me somehow. The clearest memory I have is this from when I was 14.

BPD mom was driving us home after running some errands. As we approach our house she notices the neighbors have an ambulance outside and are gathered around it. We get out of the car. My mom looks at me and says, “go tell the neighbors you’re sorry.”

I’m confused. I don’t even know the neighbors nor do I know why they have an ambulance outside. If I say “I’m sorry”, that makes it seem like *I* did something to cause whatever was going on. So I’m obviously uncomfortable and I go inside our house instead of doing what she says.

She comes in and tells me “because you didn’t say sorry to the neighbors, I’m taking Facebook off your phone.”
I didn’t care about Facebook so I didn’t react. Big mistake. She notices so she smirks and says “okay, I’ll take Snapchat away too.” Well as a 14 year old I viewed Snapchat as pretty important because that’s how I messaged my friends without my mom being able to see (Snapchat would erase messages after 24 hours if you didn’t save them, if I remember correctly). So she saw my reaction to this and was satisfied she got to pull some pathetic power move on me.

She certainly was crafty. Anything she saw would be used as ammunition. She even came up with nonsensical punishments like, “if you keep having an attitude, I’m going to put your DS games in the dishwasher”. Later on this escalated to her locking me out in the garage or the backyard, sometimes in freezing temperatures. She would also send me threats during school, and if I didn’t answer within 5 minutes she’d fly into a rage and send me 50 text messages in the span of maybe a minute. One particular afternoon she got mad at me because I’d brought my 3DS to school. She said “well enjoy it because this is your last day with it.” Sorry, but who sends that to their child? 😅

Growing up I was only allowed 5 minute showers because of my mom’s need to know what everyone is doing at all times. Closed doors set her off. She hid this under the guise of “the water bill is too expensive”, and because I didn’t know anything about water bills, I couldn’t argue. Spoiler: I’ve been living on my own for 1.5 years and my water bills are about $30 (apartment building). The highest was $100 during a winter storm where I had to keep the faucets running 24/7 for 8 days out of an entire month. When I got my first water bill, I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life.

Anyway, it seemed like my mom was set off the second I’d get into the bathroom. While I was showering she’d be pacing up and down the hall outside the bathroom. Then as time progressed she’d start knocking on the door and yelling at me to get out. Once I was out of the shower and drying off in the bathroom, she would twist the doorknob and also *scratch* the door with her fingernails (I’m not kidding). She would continue to try to have a conversation with me from outside the bathroom while I was drying off. Sometimes she’d just open the door and stare at me with this blank expression. If I reacted (rightfully so since I hadn’t even put on clothes and my stepdad was in the house), she’d smirk at me.

Every time I was in the bathroom she would accuse me of “hiding” from her. She’d come by the door and say “(my name), stop hiding. You’re being ridiculous/dramatic/having an attitude(whatever her choice of words was for the day).” Also I could always hear when she was coming because she wears flip flops 24/7, so you can obviously hear those.

My mom never followed the rules she set for the house, but what’s weird is when she showered it would be extremely quick. She couldn’t stand being unable to see or hear what everyone was doing. One time she heard my stepdad talking to me (he has a loud voice that carries) and she came out of the bathroom *in a towel* with shampoo still in her hair and demanded to know what we were up to and why I was talking to him.

I’m happy to share that now I take showers as long as I want and don’t have to worry about hearing someone’s nails scratching my door.

As a kid, my mom would occasionally go into these rages where she decided she wanted a bunch of stuff donated or thrown away. She would barge into my room, put down 4 empty bins and tell me all of them needed to be filled in the next 2 hours or she would throw stuff away FOR me. I learned very quickly that I did not want her doing that because she would grab anything in eyesight with zero regard for what I cared about.

In order to adapt to this, I started holding onto everything and anything I could, even if I hated it. I realized the more crap I held onto, the safer my valuables were. If I had a bunch of stuff I didn’t care about to throw away when she flew into another rage, I was safe and she was satisfied (for that moment).

I truly didn’t realize HOW much I had until I went off to college and my dad helped me move in. He said “holy crap (my name), how do you have so much stuff?!”
Throughout college I acquired more and ended up with a 5 x 10 storage unit. It was ridiculous. After college, when I finally got my current apartment, I had to empty that entire storage unit out myself and move everything. I think seeing it all piled up in my apartment was really embarrassing. I got rid of a TON of stuff while unpacking, but even after that I still held onto a bunch.

Fast forward to now, over a year of living in my apartment, and I’m happy to share I finally came to the realization of WHY I have so much stuff. I’d had a deep seated fear of my valuables being taken. Now that I live alone, nobody can do that (I do have a fear of being robbed but I try not to let that consume me). So, for the last 5 months, I’ve slowly been getting rid of stuff I do not want and do not need. My apartment has TRANSFORMED. I went from hiding the stuff I cared about to actually putting it on display! If you walk through my apartment now you’d immediately get an idea of who I am and what my interests are. This is huge for me because before it felt way too exposing to do this. I finally feel like I can be myself, and with my apartment being SO much cleaner and organized, my mood has improved. To be clear, it was never to the level where I had stuff all over the floor or where my apartment was dirty. It was that all of my cabinets, dressers, any space that could be utilized was filled to the brim. Now I actually have space to grow in my little 1 bedroom apartment. It might be small but it’s mine!

Also, I want to mention that reading Christina Crawford’s “Mommie Dearest” stirred up some of these memories because I related so much to the scenes of Joan barging into her room at night and demanding things to be done. Honestly surreal.

Hi! I’m new here. Long time lurker via mobile browser, but Reddit recently cracked down on that so I had to make an account. Please message me if additional verification is needed.
Here is my cat haiku:

Tiny paws at dawn
Sunlight warms the sleeping cat
World quiet again

A little background - 24F. A little over a year ago I was finally able to move out and away from my BPD mom. When I was 17, I posted to the insane parents subreddit about my mom and got a lot of attention from it. My mom found it and forbid me to post anything about her again. Now that I’m financially free of her, she can’t do anything, so I’m ready to share my stories. This is one of them.

Every year from kindergarten to 12th grade, we got a bunch of permission slips/class syllabi that our parents had to sign. It was always on the first day of school. I can remember that as early as 1st grade (6-7 years old) I was terrified of these because of how my mom would react, so I tried to hide them. I don’t know why these bothered her so much.

I’d tentatively approach her with the stack and say “mom, I have some forms from school you have to sign. Can you please sign these? They’re due by (x).”

She would sigh dramatically, huff, snatch the papers and say “WHEN I have the time.” In high school, she ripped one of these in front of me because she was mad that I asked a second time (due date was approaching).

My senior year of high school, I turned 18. My first thought was “I can finally sign forms for myself!!” Which is so sad. When I got my new forms to sign for my last semester, I asked the teacher “so I just turned 18, can I just sign these and give them back to you now?” And she said “no, unfortunately district policy is to have parents sign, even if you’re 18.” Now I had a dilemma. My entire senior year I’d been in an apartment by myself that my mom was paying for, because she’d gotten a job in a new city and had to move. She initially threatened to make me change schools (a power move that she’d used in elementary AND middle school to make sure I would be separated from all my friends in the final year). I stood my ground and told her NO, she will NOT take my final year of high school away. I’d worked too hard to make varsity choir and all of my friends were there. She surprisingly backed down and just put me in an apartment close to school. I thought it was normal but to my surprise back then (and nobody else’s), my teachers were concerned a 17-18 year old was living alone.

Anyway I ended up having to send these forms to her and she had to scan and email them back to me. Of course she was annoyed by it (and she let me know, over text, many times).

Did anyone else experience something like this? It’s so specific. I can’t figure it out other than maybe she felt like she was giving up control by signing these and that made her angry? She also withheld my documentation like SSN and birth certificate so I could not get a job, so I guess it all boils down to a need to completely control me.