Help! Is my mom emotionally abusive + advice
I'm a 20 yo female, and I think I have an emotionally abusive mother. From the beginning, when I was old enough to remember, my mom has never listened to my feelings (saying I'm the parent and it doesn't matter what you think) and often holds the fact that I still live under her roof to control my life.
Her favorite line is "I paid for it, I can take it away at any point." Yes, that's true for my car, which they pay for and I am very thankful, but when she says this about me going to a mini vacation with my best friends, she likes to say, "I pay your health insurance, so you can't go".
I go to college and still live at home to save money. When I commute to school every day, I am surrounded by a close and kind group of people who I have slowly opened up to, and they helped me realize that the relationship I have with my mother isn't normal.
For years, I was always confused why whenever I'm outside my home, people would call me kind and a ray of sunshine (their words, not mine), and I would go home, and my mom would scream and say I was a narcissist, lazy, ugly, horrible, etc. Any negative word ever created was screamed at me for little to no good reason (once it was because I forgot to do the dishes).
My mom often criticises me for never sharing anything about my life with her, but I'm not comfortable sharing anything with her. She belittles me and then acts like she never said anything negative about me in her life. She's a scary person to be around, not physically, but she's an entirely different person when she's out in public. She acts like a great mom who loves her kids.
The screaming and name-calling aren't all the time, but you never know what will set her off. A bad day at work, a misplaced sock, asking to hang out with friends, etc. Anything you can think of has generally set her off at one point in time. For a while, I stopped asking to hang out with friends because she would make it all about her, saying it would be easier for her if I just stayed at home. I was really isolated from my friends and family for the better part of my childhood. It's only gotten better because I'm older now and hang with my friends at college, where she doesn't know them (hasn't and won't meet them), and I can just do as I please on campus, plus I'm only home for an hour or two every evening before we part ways for bed.
I believe that she does all of this because I'm an easy target. I have a younger sister who will just yell back whenever my mom yells at her, which isn't very often, if I'm being honest, because my sister is the favorite child. I'm very much conflict-avoidant, so I'll just sit there and dig my nails into my hands to keep myself from making anything but a blank face while she has an angry spout, let alone let her see me cry. There's so much more to say, but I won't bore anyone with it and get to the point.
I'm at my wits' end. I can't nor want to deal with this or her much longer. All I want to do is spend time at college, feel young, live my life to the best of my ability, and move to the opposite side of the globe from her.
I guess this whole thing that I wanted to ask was, has anyone here had the same experiences, and what should I do? If I'm being a spoiled brat for saying all of this or am being a horrible child from what you've read above, please say so too!