Is this Abuse?
TW: Potential physical, emotional, and verbal abuse
I'm not sure if I have been abused. If we go according to the textbook/law, it seems like I have, but I feel like mine is minor compared to most stories I hear. For context, I was born into an immigrant family, and most people who have also been born in a POC family can agree that there's a lot of physical abuse going on in there. In my situation, I've experienced a fair share of abuse, it was mainly slapping and being hit on the head repeatedly. It had happened until I reached the age of 12, but I never bruised. I know this is stupid to believe the same people who have physically hurt me, but my parents used to constantly tell me that it's not abuse unless I actually show physical signs of being hurt. I'm 18 years old now, and I continue to deal with the emotional and verbal side of abuse from my parents, at least I think I do.
My mom has called me a nuisance, difficult to take care of and an ungrateful spirit. She has said many other things, but those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head. There are times when, after an argument, she refuses to talk to me. She constantly downplays my emotions and the situations I've been through. She goes as far as to try to tell me I'm remembering my memories wrong when I know I'm not. I've picked up journaling just to disprove that fact. She can be so horrible some days, and sometimes I feel like she just takes her anger out on me, just because there's no one else to take her anger out on. Other times, I feel like she's just treating me like an extension of herself. An extension that refuses to listen. She tries to dedicate every single portion of my life (anything you can imagine, actually). I can't really speak on my dad cause ever since he stopped beating me, he's kinda just been emotionally unavailable, MIA, some might say. Both of them have continuously invaded my privacy and say it's for the sake of parenting, or because I gave them "trust issues," but like... I was a 13-year-old kid breaking a small rule of having a social media account.
But even with all of this, there's the other side, where they're nice to me, they pay for my school, take me out to eat dinner, buy me presents for my birthday, and all the other parent jazz. My mom constantly questions whether I had a good childhood, and I find myself just saying yes cause it's easier that way. That or she'll constantly mention how great my dad is for constantly being present in our lives when a good portion of my life, my dad was either at work physically or working in the basement, or present but not really there. I feel like I'm ungrateful or going insane for thinking this about my parents, about my family. I feel like I'm the one who's over exaggerating, and I have no idea how to go about this. I mean, during my earlier teen stages, I was so sure that I was being abused, but at this point, I'm not sure anymore.