AITB for wanting my mother to die before me?
My mother is 46, and I’m 17. My father’s a no-show — financially present, but not enough. In our country, especially in our family, the culture is that children take care of their parents. So I’m expected to take care of her forever, even if I get married, and she insists on living with us.
If I say I want to go abroad, her response is always, “You’re leaving me?” I feel so torn. She’s not a bad mother, not abusive. She works hard and takes care of my needs and wants, but our relationship is kind of messy. There’s always hidden resentment that bubbles up through comments like, “You’re not rich, stop acting like one,” whenever I buy things I want, or “You’re the worst child, I don’t expect anything from you when I get older,” every time we argue. She also gets irritated easily, so one bit of talking back turns into a string of curses thrown at me.
I’m far from being a perfect daughter. I know I have many shortcomings, but honestly, our relationship has been like this ever since I became a teenager. We don’t even apologize to each other — we just let things cool down and move on. I don’t know how to communicate with her without feeling like I’m wrong for what I feel. Our views just don’t align: religion (she’s religious), my father’s incompetence (I resent him, but she doesn’t want me to and says he’s still my father), politics (she’s a fanatic), everything. Seriously, I don’t know what to feel about our relationship. It’s much better than most, but it’s far from perfect. Every conversation about deeper things seems to go sideways because she invalidates everything I feel.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking everything would be better if I died before her, or if she died early so I wouldn’t have as many burdens. But then I realize how insane that sounds, so yeah.
AITA in this situation?
Feel free to give advice, cuz i badly need it.
ps. im not going to do anything about these thoughts, js needed a place to say these. Thank yoy!