for context this is a woman my mother hired to be “my mentor” aka be someone that would try to make me what my mother wanted. i am so over this— my aunt already tried to get into contact with me before. this has me seeing red.
I will try to make this short but it will probably be long, sorry in advance. Condensing your entire life into a Reddit post is not easy. Also HUGE trigger warning for mentions of almost every type of abuse you can think of. I really lucked out in the mother department
I’ll probably do this in parts because it is genuinely too long to do in just one.
From the moment I (F20) exited the vaginal canal, my mother (F52) has made it her lifelong mission to torment me. I’m not even kidding— one of her first stories about my childhood was spilling BOILING WATER on me as a baby. I still have the scar. And while I don’t think it was intentional, I would not be surprised in the LEAST if it was. That’s to show you the type of woman she is.
I have stories ranging from as far back as I can remember of my mother making my life misery. She would beat me for the mildest infractions (immense sins such as dressing up for halloween, having opinions, not passing a test, crying or ever being upset, etc.), and when I say “beat” I don’t mean a cheeky tap on the rear. That wasn’t enough for the sadistic witch that decided to give birth to me. Many were the times that I had to go and fetch my own spanking tool by finding a large and thick enough branch for her. If it wasn’t “good enough”, off I went again to find another. But she usually defaulted to hefty wooden spoons, steel broom handles, or metal cooking utensils. And heaven forbid I cry or try to move away during a beating… that just made her do it more.
One story of this that I remember with unfortunate clarity is the time she beat me over not passing a Kumon level. For those blissfully unaware of what Kumon is (I envy you) it’s a math and reading program that assigns kids homework to get better at it. I was always whiz-bang at reading so I only did the math worksheets and my sister brother and I HATED it. But we all did them anyways because facing our mother’s wrath was not a fun alternative. I in particular struggled a LOT at one particular level and could not seem to finish it no matter how hard I tried. Normal parents would get me extra help, try to figure out what was wrong, etc etc. Not my mother! She decided I was failing purely to piss her off and I obviously needed to be taught a lesson.
So when she found out I had failed AGAIN before school one morning, she proceeded to beat the crud out of me for 20 minutes before shipping me off to go learn for the day. This beating left me in tears and with very visible welts all over my body. I looked like I had fallen down a flight of stairs. When my math teacher noticed and was understandably horrified, he asked me what was wrong. I said nothing due to being a horrible liar at the time. My continued refusal to say a thing led to them starting to investigate. My sister came to my class to threaten me with mom’s wrath and that scared the living daylights out of me, so when the teachers asked if I felt safe at home I said no. So they called the police.
This all ended up being for nothing as the police didn’t do shit, my mom sister and dad all lied, and they left me there at the house. But after they left my mom proceeded to give me the silent treatment and my father guilt tripped me for almost a month over it. Did I mention at the time I was 12 years old?
The worst part is that I continued to get beat by her for 3 more years after that. And that’s just the physical abuse! The sexual abuse (constant groping/flicking of my chest) was also nasty but not as important. Onto the next parts!
My mother was the most skilled manipulator I have ever met in this life. To this day I am impressed with her ability to somehow turn everything into my fault or make it so that I was doing everything as maliciously as possible. Her being a psychiatrist probably helped hone her skills but it’s still shocking how she managed to blame me for things such as getting stalked and having my car keyed. When I would make mistakes like lose something or forget something, it was always because I was intentionally trying to make life harder for her and everyone else and I only cared about me. I was called selfish and entitled for daring to not want to do something she wanted or wanting to make my own decisions, or even just for not doing exactly what she wanted, like not having enough lotion on. I was always accused of “talking back” (explaining my decision making) and “having attitude” (trying to communicate). When this treatment inevitably made me upset and cry, I would be accused of only crying for sympathy. Apparently I was such a manipulative person that even my emotions were being used to harm my poor little mother. She was saying this stuff to me when I was 9, by the way.
Her favourite thing to say was to tell me I had a victim mentality. When I was 17, she told me she hoped my boyfriend at the time would never dump me, not because she wanted us to be happy and wanted me to have a healthy relationship but because I “have a victim mentality and wouldn’t stop talking about it”. Needless to say, when said boyfriend ended up being manipulative and cheating on me then dumping me, I kept my real feelings to myself.
She threatened to kick me out so often that I lost count, mostly for not having my room clean enough for her liking or for not being skinny enough. My weight/enjoyment of food was always used by her as a way to bully me. Whenever I didn’t want to do something, it was always “oh, but you can eat food” in response. The one and only time I told her to stop saying that nonsense (in which i barely got upset), she had my sister hit me with a towel in her stead and scolded me for 20 minutes.
All of this abuse was bad enough but of course she had to be extremely religious and use God to guilt trip me as well. About a month before I left she told me that “God will judge you for all the pain you bring upon this family”, a sentiment that would have crushed me a year prior.
Essentially, this lady was crazy. This isn’t even half of the awful things she did and said to me. The point is, it’s good backstory for why my leaving was so abrupt and crazy as it was.
This is getting a bit long so I will probably stop here. I will in fact write a part 2 as it is quite interesting to me at least and I would like to share it with people. Thank you for reading if you got this far!
lucille ball was really a fantastic screwball comedy actress. i got into the show by flipping through the pluto tv channels and deciding to give it a chance since it was on my watchlist anyways (it was my favourite writer’s favourite tv show!). the episode i got was the nightclub one (where ethel wants to go to one for her anniversary) and it had me CACKLING. every joke hit and it was zinger after zinger. i just wanted to say i love this show so much already. what is everyone’s favourite episode?