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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.