I don’t know how to deal with my mom.
Salam alaykoum sisters. I’ve thought long and hard about posting on here because I don’t know if it’s appropriate. I just don’t know how to deal with my mom.
My mom is in her 50s. She’s a single mom, has almost always been, and I’m (19F) her last child. I have 5 other siblings but they’re all grown ups and left home a long time ago. So it has always been just my mom and I for over 10 years. I know im kind of her favorite child because I’m the last one and being pregnant with me saved her life. But over the course of the last couple of years she’s become dependant on me. She can’t go anywhere without me accompanying her when she knows how I hate going out. She basically forces me to go on walks with her, and when I don’t want to because hey it’s hot rn in Europe (where we live), she just goes like ‘you’ll regret this when I die’ or ‘are you ashamed of me?’ or even ‘you don’t mind going out with your friends but when I ask you you always say no’ when i haven’t seen my friends in months because I don’t have the energy to.
I obviously know the place of the mother in Islam and it makes it even harder to say no to her. I just feel bad when she says that kind of stuff to me, but I feel like she can’t do anything without me now. She is going into a clinic to lose weight and has asked me to go with her. I’m a little bit overweight yes, but I’m not obese so she had to convince the doctor to accept me into that program because she didn’t want to do it alone. I initially agreed if it was during summer break. But the dates have changed and it’s in September right after I have to go back to college. So I’ll miss approximately 3 weeks of classes which I obviously don’t want. I told her I don’t want to go since I might miss a lot during 3 weeks, but she said ‘no you’re going with me you’ll find a solution later, if you don’t come with me I won’t do it and I really need it rn’. What am I supposed to say to this?
And it’s been like that for years. I feel like she thinks we’re one person but we’re not. If I want to wear a green dress but she prefers the pink one, I’ll have to wear the pink one because ‘I don’t like green’. If I want to bake cookies ‘you’re so selfish you know I don’t like them’ when I always bake the cakes that she loves even when I don’t like them myself.
I don’t know what to do. It’s suffocating. I wish i could get my own apartment but even that she won’t let me do, even though my uni is an hour and a half away from my home.
What can I do ? I don’t want to hurt her but I need my own space. I’m tired of her calling me her ‘investment’ or telling me that ‘I hope you won’t get married so you can stay with me’. I know it’s mostly jokes but there’s always a tiny bit of truth in that. She’s my only parent and has always taken care of me and sacrificed her life for her kids so I don’t want to be rude because she’s not a bad mother overall on the contrary. She’s made some mistakes yes, but she had a really rough life and she relies on me a lot more than she should.
Any advice?