u/shrekseyelash

My mother likes to look my body up and down as if she's a man, ever since my body started growing into one that didn't look like hers. She's always seen me as her mini-me, her dolly to dress up and scream at. So how dare her dolly have big ugly saggy boobs? She thinks cutting me down will make it easier to mould me nto her. And she insults me using insecurities that are actually hers. She's called me saggy and fat and old and ruined ever since puberty. Yes those exact words. Imagine calling anyone that, let alone a growing child. As well as insulting, it also doesn't make sense because apart from pedos who thinks a tween is ruined and old? Because she sees herself this way.

*But why is that my fault?????????*

I'm in my 20s now, becoming more comfortable in my skin, finding clothes that suit me, and in the summer when I am at home I wear a tank top without a bra because fuck boob sweat. It was in that outfit I drank water in the kitchen just now, and she just... watched me. And she said "you know, you shouldn't wear that maxi dress anymore (I'd just worn it to eat with her + family) because it looks childish on you while your chest looks saggy like an old lady's." I said that I'll wear what I want, and just left the room. But I wish I'd crashed out. It brought me back to every time she'd ever said that about my body.

Don't give me that "it's her first time living too 🤪🤪🤪" when she's had decades more practice than me at it. This is a grown ass woman picking on her offspring like Regina george. Pushing all her fears onto me like her little Pandora's box. Well I want to open Pandora's box. She gets to act like this and everyone excuses her in my family, and in high school even people like volunteer helplines and school counselors told me she's just blowing off steam, just ignore her, just be the bigger (boobed) person. But when I get angry and depressed about this, I'm "crazy."

And don't tell me it's gonna get better. Even though I wish it would, and have tried in various ways (but why doesn't she ever have to try, why is it me?). Cos when I'm actually older, when I'm her age and she becomes elderly, what do you imagine she'll do? Become a saint all of a sudden?

I can't believe this person is supposed to be my role model.

I wish my mother loved me for more than my body.

(Rant/vent and context, questions for advice at the end.)

Having to suppress yourself out of safety while still growing into yourself is a dangerous thing. But as a kid I didn't know what else to do. And now I don't know who I am, or what I am. I feel like a failed racehorse or a showdog. Made to perform for validation otherwise the two people who created me, had financial and legal power over me, were able to control my daily life, would never love me. I knew this because of the constant criticism, holding me back from what I liked and wanted to do, and mocking and ostracising me for having different values and beliefs.

So I hid myself and performed. And they didn't even love the performance. At school, I was a genius and perfect grades were just expected. Outside school I was a dumb animal to constantly shit on and push and push and push to study. It gave me whiplash. In texts to my mother, I saw my father once refer to parenting as using a carrot and stick with a donkey. And yeah, that's exactly how it felt. And all the life advice they ever had for me boiled down to, I must become exactly like them, exactly who they want. Or they don't want me and I can wander the streets. They have said this to me. And they have said this was all for my own good, for my future.

Ironically, it's helped contribute to how I can't see the future. E.g. I'm considering returning to uni (during covid I dropped out, told myself it's a gap year but never went back and have just done odd jobs since then like library assistant). But because of analysis paralysis and shame spiralling it's like my mind physically freezes. I feel so stupid.

As a kid I started to feel non human. My mind, my life, they acted like it wasn't mine. If I expressed ny own thoughts they said I was rebelling and someone else must've told me to do this. Once as a 7 year old I switched my bangs parting, and my mother said she bet I was being romantically manipulated by a boy who I told her was bullying me. So I stopped telling her about my life. How was I apparently so smart and valuable and loved, yet so stupid and worthless and hated, at the same time and to the same people? And why did they treat me younger than my age, tried to stop me from age appropriate things like sleepovers, watching live action disney (they thought anything live action was too adult) and choosing my own GCSE and A level subjects (what tantrums they had), but in terms of emotional maturity it's like I was parenting them? I didn't understand. Who are they really? Who am I really? Am I real? Literally I am of course, but it's like reality was different at our house.

I went through archetypes of identity one by one, the nerd, the popular one, the emo, just to have something to hold onto. I still had real beliefs and values and fought them on the things they forced on me that I didn't want. But I suppressed myself too, whoever that was. A weird tightrope to walk. I eventually had a reality detachment episode during PE class. Nobody noticed and I don't think it's happened since, but that feeling has never left me. That empty untethered feeling. But when my self harm was discovered and I was made to see healthcare professionals who thought I was doing it for attention and I'm being childish for disagreeing with my family. My parents also said I was doing it on purpose to ruin their social standing, I'm weak and there are refugee toddlers who are stronger than I'll ever be, and I must be crazy and on drugs. Ha, that last one, I wish.

I said some things during counseling but being too honest felt unsafe. Eventually I just wanted it all to stop. So I pretended to be all fixed and better. Once high school was over I wasn't made to see anyone else. So now that my depressive episodes have gotten worse, my parents just think I'm lazy. That I'm wasting my potential. As if they didn't take my potential and force it through a mould of a child they actually wanted to love. And now I don't feel like me or have vaue to my own self, while they didn't get the mythical obedient sheltered supergenius they wanted (and is prob impossible to create). Nobody got what they wanted. I hope they're happy now.

Earlier I heard my mother say smth on the phone to her cousin about me. On my results day of GCSEs (high school diploma in the UK) we saw a girl get A+ in all her subjects, and had to explain to her father who had no idea what he was looking at. Look what she achieved despite having "such an idiot for a parent" (my mother's words). And when she thinks of things like this she feels sad for "our situation". Meaning me.

I've overheard both parents say variants of this before. To each other, to my younger brother, to other relatives. They are jealous of other people's children who are higher achieving and more successful, and feel sorry for themselves. As if they're jealous of their friend's collectibles at the playground. And when they express this to me, they pivot to pitying ME and claiming they just want to help. I hate, I hate, I HATE this. I don't even know how to describe it. Like they're pitying me for not being their doormat and prize winning show horse they wanted? But you limited me for my whole childhood, you cut off my legs then told me to jump, and was surprised I couldn't. It boils my blood to the point where I begin self harming again. I can't take this anymore. I want to be a human. I want to feel alive. I want to get out of here.

My questions -Has anyone else experienced depersonalisation/derealisation from their APs control? How have you dealt with this? How do you recover from this? -How do you plan for the future? -How do you find out who you are?

I know there won't be simple answers, I just don't know how to find them myself or who to ask. And I don't want to trust mental health staff after my own and my friends' bad experiences with things like CAMHS in the UK. If any of this post sounded too dramatic it's bc I justifiably feel like shit rn and I'll prob have post rant clarity later. Thanks for reading all this.

Angry, numb, tired of standing up for myself. Beyond tired. My middle aged mother acts like a high school mean girl to me while coddling her son. She's been so nasty even before he was born, acting like I'm her little dolly to dress up and scream at. I never knew what I did wrong. She didn't see me as a human, not really. Dad was controlling too for sure, but eldest daughters know the mother daughter dynamic. Used as a verbal punching bag, insulted on intelligence, life issues, appearance, slutshaming, fatshaming, while also expected to be a telepathic omnipotent being who should accomplish everything. While she babies my grown ass 20yr old brother without fail. Coddles him and even talks to him in a baby voice, won't teach him to cook or clean, if he makes mistakes that I made she forgives him, if he repeats the words I said she listens to him over me, when he's home late she even makes herself stay up to greet him with "my baby is home" like its her husband that came back. And he revels in this double standard too. Even me pointing out this double standard to my parents and nothing changing has become a joke they all know about.

I used to wonder, why am I not a human like everyone else? Why is it funny to shit on me, why is it an inside joke that I am everyone's little ragdoll? I argue back to the point where aunties say their bitchy little "you could be a lawyer" as yet another inside joke. So WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE? PLEASE STOP IT. As a kid I asked her, why do you bully me? She said, you give me the opportunity. Imagine a grown woman seeing a little kid this way. I can't even trust nice moments. I don't want to be near her. And today smth small happened but it was such a good example of all this that it switched smth in me. I'm not crazy right? Or maybe I should let myself be. I used to think being the stoic unaffected one was a virtue, because that makes me strong right, and everyone treated me like an animal that didn't know my own mind when I was open about my bad mental health and past (not current!) self harm from these family issues. But I am DONE.

It started normal enough, she just needed me to find her smth online. But she was cuddling in bed with her grown ass son while insulting me, at one point I needed her measuring tape to fulfil her request but she couldn't find it so I was stupid for wanting it, and mentally disabled for not being telepathic with her. But then, my brother piped up and repeated what I said, that her instructions were actually unhelpful. I said to her, now you'll believe it right, cos HE said it? But I'M stupid? My brother said it's always ok when it's me haha. I love when shitting on me is a cute joke for the whole family. I searched something up anyway and showed her. It wasn't exactly what she wanted so she called me stupid again and my brother started laughing. I said to her the dynamic I said earlier in this post. That somehow I'm "stupid" when it suits you but you also need me to do everything and be everything and it'd never ever enough? Silence. Maybe she heard me for once. But no. My brother said, I can feel her shaking from laughter.

When I tell you that my blood silently boiled like nothing else. I swear to god. She knows what she is doing and she finds my misery funny. She knows what she is doing. And she finds my misery FUNNY.

I don't care if this makes me an inconsiderate person or a bad feminist, or that I'm not allowed to speak on this because they're your family and it's their first time figuring out life too and you're lucky they even let you sleep there while you're between jobs, and imagine what your mother had to go through in her bad marriage and all her struggles in her life. I've imagined it and thought it and bent over backwards for it. Am I not a person too? I am FUCKING SICK of this bitter, nasty, close minded, male centred, venomous BITCH. Why did she have me? Why did she have a female child? Why did it have to be me? I don't want to be the eldest daughter anymore.​ Mentally, emotionally, she has done nothing but hate me and try to teach me to hate myself too. So I know how to hate. But I will turn it onto her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.