I’d like to add a note saying that my writing skills are not great so I’m sorry if this is hard to follow
I, M27 am working on my mental health because I’m not doing so well. I did some reflecting on my mother because I’m trying to get to the root of my issues. To start, I’ve always wanted to live somewhat self sufficiently, big personal dream of mine. That dream became more of a possible reality when I got a decent chunk of income from the VA due to a few pretty unfortunate injuries that happened when I was deployed. In 2024 my now wife and I decided to look for small 5-10 acre farms so we can live our dream. When we started looking in my home state my mom immediately decided to get involved and shot down every nice home that we found with some land. She sent me some ran down place in the middle of nowhere and spent weeks convincing us to get the place. Whenever I had any concerns about the condition she became very hostile. She wanted to offer us the money for the place in a home equity loan because the interest rates were much lower than a mortgage. I stupidly accepted the offer. (For context I could 100% afford my own mortgage at the time I was trying to repair my relationship with my mom in good faith). This became a mistake the day I moved in. She immediately started playing land lord telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. My 2nd biggest mistake was her deciding who was going to fix the appliances when the furnace, water heater, and well pump all went out at once. I wanted to pull my own loan to fix them but she was insistent that she would do it. Every single month she would throw it in our face. She loved shoving her money in our face. She would have melt downs when I told her I didn’t want her to build a 2500 sq ft retirement cabin on our homestead, and she loved calling the place “the family farm”. My last strike is when I wanted to take out my own mortgage to buy it from them so it’s in my and my wife name so we didn’t have to put up with it anymore. I gave her an ultimatum and overall they agreed to sell it to us. She was very hostile during the whole transaction process. I started thinking about my mom and childhood after my last phone call. I told her I wanted to quit my mining job because it’s making my disabilities worse and I’m at a financial position to where I have everything I need to just work off the land with my life. Not to mention these 60ish hour weeks I hardly get to spend time with my wife. She immediately had a meltdown and told me that it’s “not fair that I can do that at a young age because she had to work long hours into her 40’s”. So I started reflecting on everything in the past:
When I was in 2nd grade I was supposed to be her little child prodigy. My summer would be taken away so I can study for the next school year. I guess that can be considered normal because a lot of parents do that. But if I had trouble remembering something at school she would lose it. I remember in 3rd grade I got a D in a division because I really didn’t understand the way it was taught to me. She had a melt down and broke every toy in my room over it, then my Christmas break was was taken away so I can practice division more. Every grade under a B- was punishable by being grounded for 2 weeks. When I got older I rebelled really hard, I started working more and buying my own stuff. Even then, it really didn’t feel like it belonged to me. My mom would still take it away if I pissed her off. I stopped showing up to family dinner because she would use the opportunity to get drunk and push my buttons to get a reaction then when she got one she would go cry to my family to show them how evil her son was. Whenever I got a girlfriend she started acting weirdly possessive over me and found everything wrong she would with them. I eventually left home when I joined the military out of high school. The distance I thought would be good for repairing our relationship. When I was in she used my military to make people thank her for her sacrifice.
Nowadays she tries to control my wife. I low key hate being back in my home state because of the memories. I’m stuck in a position where I can leave because the era of the affordable homestead in the north is long gone and my wife doesn’t want to get rid of all we’ve been able to achieve. (I don’t blame her). I found out too that my mom was probably making money off of me too after I did the math between my mortgage and payments now vs when I was her “tenant”. I think she her insecurities about her kids getting ahead of her and she needs to have the nicest things. It feels like that everything I do has to be in 2nd place to her. A lot of times I feel like I’m in the wrong even when a lot of things I listed above are not considered healthy or normal for a parental relationship.
Is my mom a narc or am I just maybe overthinking stuff?