What's the worst thing your mom ever said/did to you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t wait till you have a daughter as bad as you.

She’s said plenty of awful things but I think that one hits on all the key themes- i suck, she dislikes being my mom, and she wishes me similar negative experiences in my future

Right there with you. She also saved the parenting difficult child books she bought when I was young "because she knew I would need them" She was gleeful when she handed them over. I was a straight A student, never got into trouble, and was gifted in sports and music.

For me, this wasn't the worst thing. But it's hard to pinpoint the worst because it was the thousand tiny paper cuts on a daily basis all colliding to remind me all the ways I wasn't meeting her expectations as the eldest daughter in a large family. That my faults were terrible reflections of her. Lazy, selfish and ungrateful and me being generally person not worthy of any investment or love and kindness were the general themes.

I feel for all the people who have posted here.

Maybe the worst was the fact that after about age 6 or 7 I never smiled in photos and always looked sullen. She always said this was me and my terrible personality - I was negative, intense, brooding. No one ever asked why I never smiled or checked that I was ok. I wasn't ok but no one noticed. Sometimes I see children with this look on their faces today and, while I don't know what is going on in their inner life and am only seeing a brief moment in time, I silently wish them well and hope they can grow up and make it out. To have so much pain you need to dissociate from life with this blank, sad stare is something no child should have to endure.

This last paragraph brings tears to my eyes.

OMG that was me. I never smiled in photos beyond second grade. My mom is a narcissist and my home life was very depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are too many examples to possibly list them all....but growing up, my mom would constantly tell me that she hoped I had a daughter one day that was as horrible as I was, so I would understand how it felt.

She would also remind me that she was thankful that she had other daughters that weren't like me. Good daughters.

I never actually did anything horrible. Never broke any laws or any of the house rules. Never cut school. Had decent friends. But I didn't get great grades in school and that's what they focused on (of course, I had a serious learning disability which they knew about, but didn't tell me about or get me any help for....I guess their goal was to punish me into pulling myself up by my bootstraps and getting good grades. But that never worked out and they hated me for it. They were embarrassed by my disability and didn't want anyone to know. Also embarrassed by my Bs and Cs).

I'm so sorry pp. So many parents to this day are ignorant about disabilities and punish their children for them as if the kid wanted to have the disability. There's a great guy, can't remember the name, who does videos etc about helping kids with disabilities and he always has to remind the parents that the kids know they are different and would give anything not to be different and not to have the disability.

[MayaJ]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom would:

Routinely throw full glasses or plates of food at me at meal times and then scream at/hit me until I cleaned up her mess.
Go on Joan Crawford-style rampages and destroy my room - drawers emptied on to the floor, my things broken, smashed, etc.
Give me a small suitcase and tell me to pack b/c she was kicking me out - this started when I was around 4 - and then lock me out of the house.
Hit, scratch, pull my hair, lie, gaslight, drive exceedingly recklessly... all to intimidate and frighten me into her control.
Ruin nearly every personal milestone of mine by throwing tantrums and making it all about her.

I could go on and on...

I can relate to so many of the posts, but the bolded really rings true for me, too. And the more important the milestone (ivy league law school graduation, birth of first child, etc.), the more she made it all about her.

Ditto.
Mine is also jealous of the normalcy I have in my life and marriage, and she is very mean to my kids. Luckily, she lives abroad and we see her once a year for just a day or two. She was young when she had me and never matured as a person. She was a terrible mother who should have never had kids.

[Anonymous]

Jesus, you all had trash families. Where are the people who had healthy, normal childhoods??

[Anonymous]

My mother routinely told me how I needed lose five pounds, starting when I was 5 years old. Always in public and usually pinching my thighs or stomach to prove I was fat.

She constantly undercut important moments in my life - recitals, proms, graduations - with caustic comments and by showing up in a foul mood that made everyone uncomfortable.

But the worst thing she ever did and something that really shaped many things for me emotionally was go into a rage one evening when I was 11 and threaten to kill herself, standing at the opening of a 20th floor hotel window. I grabbed onto her leg begging her not to jump while she said over and over “I’m going to die and then you’ll be sorry you have no mother.” She later denied it ever happened despite my brother witnessing it too.

So yeah, she sucks.

[Anonymous]

My mother is usually pretty awesome, especially now that we are all older, but the one thing that she said that REALLY hurt me when I was pregnant with my son was that she would've "preferred a girl". My sister already had a son, and she just wanted a baby girl to spoil. I had already miscarried several times due to ectopics, so my son was a miracle baby in my mind. I couldn't image preferring ANYTHING or ANYONE other than him, especially after the other losses. It may not seem significant to some (especially after the other horror cases I'm reading in this thread), but it always stuck with me.

[Anonymous]

When my sister told her our stepfather was sexually abusing us, my mother came to me for confirmation.

When I did, she said "I don't believe either of you. You've always just wanted to ruin my life."

They stayed married another 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your father wanted to abort you.

When I attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills at age 15 while I was still in the hospital bed she said next time jump off a bridge and get the job done right.

This is the same PP. I have blocked this out for years. I survived the suicide attempt but my mother told my siblings that I had died. They believed it for years until I found them again as an adult after many years of estrangement.

[Anonymous]

Either "I'm disowning you. Never call again." or "I love your brother more." Separate conversations years apart the second one was during a pleasant dinner with just us...completely out of the blue.

[Anonymous]

Mocking me saying I couldn't lift anything heavy because I have fibroids and lifting anything heavy causes bleeding.

But apparently that's not a real reason to her.

She purposely set up a dynamic of playing favorites and pit my siblings and I against each other.

She lies all the time. Is basically a horrible person.

The kicker is she loves to play Miss Holy Christian

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tmi. I was 7-8. She was doing laundry and came across one of my underwear in the hamper. It had a "bacon streak" in it. She freaked out and started counting the underwear and only counted 5 instead of 7. She went all mommy dearest screaming why weren't there 7 etc. She then took the dirty underwear and hung it up in the front yard crotch side out, for all the neighbors to see.

I think that is really strange and still think about it once in a while, as I'm doing my children's laundry. She liked to humiliate.

I’m so sorry. I used to babysit a little girl and I found a bunch of underwear shoved in her closet. I went to put them in her hamper and she said no, because her mom gets mad and puts her nose in the underwear. I will never forget her sad face when she told me. I went and washed them out for her so she wouldn’t be embarrassed. The thing of it all, her mom is a kindergarten teacher. Every time I see the mom on social media I think about her Daughter and that whole thing.

I don't understand- she had her first period?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blatantly favoring my sister and then trying to gaslight me when I pointed it out.

yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“You’re just lazy.” It has echoed in my head for decades. She got the big things right, and was a good mom, but that was not a good thing to say.

Really. You sound sensitive. Decades later?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I loved to read as a child and to punish me she would put my books in a trash bag and threaten to throw them out.

Was this after she asked you to pick up your books a million times first?

[Anonymous]

I was an insufferable teen. I would have benefited from some of these moms. My mom was utterly destroyed by the things I said to her.