Turning 25 in a couple of days. Always felt like something was off. It was hard to put my finger on what exactly was wrong, but I always felt there was something wrong in the relationship between my and mother. But whenever I tried to talk about it with my mother, my feelings always were invalidated. An important factor that made the whole situation worse in my opinion was the fact that she was divorced since I was 5. She would use this always in her conversations with me as guilt-trip, and I couldn't really say anything, because I thought she was right. There were constant guilt trips, accusations that I don't love her enough, etc. Only recently did I understand how wrong all of this was.
Because of my studies, I got to spend last several years away from home. It's when I started to understand much more clearly that something is deeply wrong. And only in the last year or so, I got to understand that I was given practically no privacy, that I had no sense of self, a character, or anything like that. I noticed how I have terrible self-confidence (I more or less lack it I think right now), no ambitions or dreams of my own that don't include her. There was a feeling of constant control, that was suffocating me. These feelings grew stronger and stronger over time, and recently I realized I can't keep living like that.
Last week, was the first time I challenged her. One of the things that felt uncomfortable was the constant infantilization of me. When I asked her last week to stop with this behaviour, I was met with extreme pushback. She told me I am basically abandoning her, that she knew this day would come one day, that I am her whole life. Normally I would budge at this point, but this time I stood my ground, for the first time. I told her that I had no intention of abandoning her, and this is not a big ask, I am 25 years old, and I don't want to be treated like a child anymore, and that is all I am asking for. I feel like at this point something fundamentally changed, both in me, and in the relationship. That same day I found this subreddit, and found out there are so many other people in same situation. So many of the things that others described here deeply resonated with me. I feel like I am actually starting to live, for the first time. All this time, until last week, all my emotions were focused on her. All I did was focused on making her feel better. But I realize, this actually made me forget completely my own feelings. All this time, the relationship was focused on making her feel better because of her divorce. Never once was I asked how I feel, what I want to do with my life. And I now realize this is wrong.
I will start my journey to free myself from this mess now. I think I need professional help for this, probably a psychiatrist. Right now I cannot get such help, because I am at a very intense point of my grauate studies. So for now I think I will try to get better myself. Once I am done with my studies at the end of this year, I really want to get professional help. I am very hopeful for my journey though, and I am really looking forward to actually develop as a person, by myself.