Growing up, she was emotionally, physically and verbally abusive. The physical abuse was sporadic because she knew that any proof, in the form of bruises or marks, could be used against her, and she completely stopped around the age of 7-8. The rest of it continued though.
She began to control what I wore. I couldn’t wear short sleeves or pyjama shorts even in my own house even in the summer, I also wasn’t allowed to sleep with a window open or have a fan. In the winter I wasn’t allowed to turn on a space heater and she rarely put on the central heating. I wasn’t allowed to go out anywhere with my friends, but I started to anyway when I was 16. A trip to get ice cream with them would turn into her screaming at me for being an awful, badly behaved child. She would take my phone away every night and read through every conversation with my friends. I had zero privacy and wasn’t even allowed to shut my bedroom door without her getting angry and opening it. There’s so much more that happened but this is just the bare bones.
As a teenager, my friends encouraged me to tell a teacher at school. They got involved and even involved social services and CAMHS but since the abuse was mainly emotional and verbal at this point, they didn’t take it too seriously. I was always told that because I wasn’t in any physical danger there was only so much they could do. It didn’t matter, because it messed me up anyway.
At 18, she tried to stop me from going to university because I wanted to study away from home. She threw fits and told me that even at 18 I still had to listen to her and she even threatened to kill herself. I stopped caring and told her she could do whatever she wanted but hey ho, she’s still running around making my life miserable today.
I’m 24 now, finished with university and have had to move back home. I’m ill with POTS and chronic migraines, which means I may never get a normal job and be able to move out on my own. Still, I have a small business that covers my day to day expenses because she sure as hell doesn’t provide anything for me.
She still tries to stop me going out. She interrogates me every time I leave the house and calls me 10+ times when I’m out. She has to know where I’m going, who with, why I’m going, when I’ll be back, why I have to go on this specific day. If I’m out for more than 3+ hours she’ll start calling me incessantly. She’s even called my friends and their parents asking after me.
She has a go at me for cooking my own food. She asks why I can’t eat what she cooks even though I’ve explained a million times I can’t eat certain things bc of my health issues. She’ll even tamper with my food while it’s on the stove (adding oil and saying it was burning even though it wasn’t) and adding random ingredient behind my back. With that said, if I cook something for the whole family she refuses to eat it.
She was like this with all my siblings (older sister and younger brother). My sister is the only one who speaks to her properly, and it’s only because my mum helped her out with childcare when her kids were born. My brother and I barely speak to her only giving her one word answers if she asks us something. My brother is barely home since he’s in training for work but when he is he barely speaks to her or spends time with her. All 3 of us however have some degree of issues with her, it’s just that my sister makes more of an effort than me or my brother.
I have a boyfriend of 2 years who she would never approve of bc he’s a different race to me.
But I don’t care. Him and I are planning on marrying and moving in together and once that happens I’m going low contact.
My friends, my bf and his family have always been there for me in a way that she never has. I have tried many times to forgive her and improve our relationship but she never changes. She’s a bitter old lady with barely any friends or strong family connections and I used to feel bad about it, but now I can no longer bring myself to care. She brought this on herself and I want to stop feeling guilty about it.