Hello. Yesterday (Easter), I was supposed to go to my mom’s house for dinner. I’m a 22-year-old male who’s also an artist. I got very overwhelmed when working on a painting earlier in the day yesterday, which is probably an understatement. I’ve been doing a lot of work in regards to my shadow-self, inner-child, etc. and things have just been stressful in general, actually- which my mom knows about. She’s been in a similar position before and grew up with abusive parents. I’ve found her “recovery” mindset refreshing for me in my own life- but know also that the toxic traits she possesses are probably at least close to equal to those that she encountered in her parents as a child- but with that recovery “veil” to disguise them. She doesn’t acknowledge this in herself and tends to become the victim as soon as any argument against her is made. She loves using the point that “her feelings are valid and you’re laughing them off” when you raise a valid point against her.
Back to being overwhelmed: Somehow thinking that she’d probably understand, I realized that I was really not in a safe place to:
A. Drive to her house
B. Be around her, her boyfriend, my two brothers, and their significant others
Not even close. So I decided to tell her this and just try to relax the evening away at home (which was kind of successful).
This morning rolled around, and she sent me a text that said “Hey (my username), give me a call! ☺️❤️”
I didn’t want to talk about it yet because I still felt pretty crummy, but I called her anyway because of the warm tone her text carried. I was actually afraid of her being hostile last night and it seemed like it wouldn’t be an interaction like that after all.
It was. She said that I need to take my depression seriously, and not laugh it off. Never once had I laughed it off, nor insinuated that I was doing so. I WAS laughing her “advice” off (about saying that I wouldn’t have felt shitty last night if I just came over) in my tone, I guess (but in reality it was more a case of encountering a point that I didn’t agree with whatsoever).
Never once have I thought that my mental health was anything less than the upmost serious and important thing to me (for the first time in my life) as of late. I have been working SO hard (independent from her) and I’m being 100% dead, on-point serious in saying so. She hasn’t had any part of it, no- but why should she? Because she’s had similar issues? She caused a lot of my issues in echoing her parents behaviors to me as a kid whether she knew it or not.
She knows when I’m about to surpass a point where she can abuse my naivety and pretend to “counsel” me for her own gain. That’s what she started doing.
She said that any time I’ve tried to do anything to help my mental health, I “backed out” or “said I was too smart”. She said that she’s been at this recovery thing a lot longer than I have. We lived together (just us) from when I was like 3 to age 14. I “come up with new shit” all the time and “never, ever tell the truth”.
She’s told me I must have Asperger’s Syndrome so many times before too. I think that’s to undercut any self-esteem I’ve developed and basically make me think that I couldn’t possibly have the social competence to grasp any information other than hers. All of my failures are a result of me not understanding social ques in her world- which is ironic because I’ve actually made great strides in art lately via networking (and have actually always had above-average discernment of social situations).
I can’t elaborate on this much more now, but hopefully all of that was informative. I don’t plan to pursue or return contact with her again. I’ve fought tooth-and-nail today to keep my self-esteem afloat without falling into her lies- which is really hard and something I’m having a hard time with for the most part.
Just looking for some compassion in all of this. I’m having a really bad day today.
Submitted April 22, 2019 at 07:02PM by glowdeli http://bit.ly/2viDcl4
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