abusive mom

[miless_1989]

my moms ****in crazy. she just got separated from my dad (still married, dont ever see each other, and i dont see my dad either, but thats a personal choice) about half a year ago and im living alone with her. My dad was really controlling and made her think she was wrong about everything and like blamed her for alot of **** she didnt do, so now that shes gotten away from that shes convinced herself to be overly self confident and completely obstinate, even when her opinion is blatantly non-factual/and or outrageous. she makes me do all the chores in the house, and every day when i get up i have a 2 page long list of random **** that needs to be done, and she doesnt do any chores at all. and pays me $20 a week for spending half my day everyday doing chores.

so i spend my whole day doing work for her, and when she gets home, she immediately starts complaining about how i did everything wrong and im trying to slack off on my chores thinking she wont notice. (btw, i do EVERYTHING meticulously)

and half the **** she says i didnt do isnt on the list she gave me, but when i call her out on it she just refuses to beleive me and continues to think that im trying to clear my own name and put the blame on her...

on top of all that, shes all boozed up all the time, and shes not even supposed to be drinking cus she takes all kinds of meds for sleeping and bipolar/depression, so shes just all ****ed up all the time and she always accuses me of **** i didnt do like stealing her money and her weed and ****.

ive tried to like confront her and be like "ok, you seriously need to stop this ****. were supposed to try and cooperate, and im doing the best that i can, and to me it seems like youre not trying at all."

but whenever i try to talk to her about her behavior/ her alcoholism she just says "im really tired, i cant talk now....." etc. and keeps acting like im the one who has problems. she just wont listen to me and i dont know what the **** to do.

 

just recently she came home all upset and **** cus she got a ride out to do some shopping expecting to take the bus home, but the bus didnt go to the store she was at, so she had to wait for her freind to come pick her up again, and she just flipped out because something that small can make her start bawling at the top of her lungs. so i tried to be all nice and like make her some soup and take care of her until she was about ready to go to bed (about 8:00)

so then i asked if i could go hang out with my freinds and she said yeah, so i went out and she calls me 10 minutes later and says "youve done something really bad, come home RIGHT NOW. No excuses." and i didnt do anything so i was like "whats going on? i didnt do anything wrong...?" and she just yelled " DONT LIE TO ME. COME HOME RIGHT NOW!" and hung up. so i went home and asked her what was going on and she accused me of stealing a film canister full of really good weed from her , which i again, didnt do. so i said "but i didnt do that. maybe you misplaced it." and she just started screaming "LIAR!! LIAR!! LIAR!!" until i just gave up and yelled "**** YOU!" and walked out. I came back about an hour later when i was less angry at her, hoping she would calm down also, but she was still in the same state, if anything just more drunk. so i told her i would be home by midnight, which is my curfew, and went to go play video games with my freinds. the next day, i come home and she is STILL mad at me, and continues to be in the same obstinate, completely unreasonable state, so i took a shower, grabbed some of my stuff and some fruit and snacks, in case i wouldnt be able to come home that night, then left again, and told her i would talk to her when she was ready to have a reasonable conversation. then she started screaming at me and saying i was acting like my father, which i wasnt at all, but it still really hurt my feelings because i went through alot of **** that had to do with my dad. so i told her she was a drunk bitch and that i wasnt coming home that night, id be home tomorrow and i was staying at my freind jake's house(who lives 2 blocks away). so the next day at like 10:30 (which is hours before i get up in the summer) she starts calling all my freinds and all my freinds parents asking where i am and just generally flipping out. and this is all without trying to call my cell phone first. so i get a call from my freind randall's mom at about 11:00 asking me to call my mom and saying that shes really worried about me and ****. so i said that she hadnt tried to call me, i told her where i was the previous night and that she knows i dont get up until noon at the earliest so she has no reason to be so upset. so i called my mom and again she said, in the same tone/etc "Come home RIGHT NOW." and shes clearly not worried about me, shes just pissed off. so i got dressed and ate breakfast then walked the 2 blocks to my house, hoping that i would be able to reason with her. but it was just the same ****. she accused me of calling her a cuntface, which i didnt say, and i told her that all i said was that she was a drunk bitch and i apologized for cursing at her. then she started saying that i hadnt told her where i was and i "cant just be storming off and staying out all night without telling her where i am" so i calmly explained that i HAD told her where i was, and i said she was very drunk last night and she might have forgotten. then i tried to confront her about her drinking by saying that i think this is getting out of control. she pretends like shes just drinking a glass of wine or two a day to balance her mood, which is bs. i see her drinking all the time, and she goes through at least a bottles of wine a day, plus at least 3-4 glasses of hard liquor, usually vodka. so i told her that it was very obvious that she is not thinking logically and she is not on top of her **** and she needs to stop drinking, but she just took it like i was trying to insult her or like distract her from my supposed "bad behaviour" by making up some bull****. i told her that she needs to listen to me and that this is really a problem and she needs to be in therapy (which she is, but only like once a week or so, and she needs more)or to think about alcohol rehab. then she just started screaming at me again, so i told her that i would not speak to her until she was ready to calm down. so she went to her room and started crying really loud (which she always does on purpose to try and make me feel bad about **** that shes bitching at me about) and i rounded up all the booze in the house (about 20 bottles of wine and several fifths of hard liquor) and smashed it behind my garage. she noticed about 10 minutes later, when she went to go refill her wine glass, and asked me what i had done with the alcohol. i told her that i had smashed it and she said i was lying and that i had stolen it for my own use. (i have told her many times i dont enjoy drinking, it makes me sick, and that the only drug i partake in is weed and an occasional cigarette, but she repelled my statements with **** like "but thats what teenagers do! they sneak out and have parties and get drunk and smoke weed all the time and are irresponsible!") i said that she could go behind the garage and check it out for herself, i was being honest, but she refused to do so, and continued to accuse me of stealing from her. so i said that i was going to leave again to hang out with my freinds and i would again be back by midnight. when i returned, she had locked all the doors and i couldnt get in even though i had a key, because she had also locked the door chain. i ended up having to unlock the back door and break through the door chain in order to come home on time. i asked her why she did this, because she was still awake when i got home, and she said i was being extremely abusive and that she would not have me living in her home if i was going to behave this way. i asked her exactly what it was that i had done wrong, and she repeated what she had said before about staying out all night and stealing from her and cursing at her. i told her that the first two were false and the third i had apoligized for and that she ahd cursed at me alot more than i did at her.

she again accused me of trying to cover my own actions (she kept saying i was stealing weed/money/alcohol from her.) by insulting her, and said it was "Defensive behavior".

i didnt see any point in pushing it farther, so i said we could talk tomorrow when she was in a better state of mind (she doesnt usually drink until about 3 or 4, and that was what i meant but i didnt want to make her more angry) and she told me that she had set up a therapist appointment for at 7:45 am tomorrow. so i went to bed, and saw the therapist in the morning, he was completely on my side about it, and said he would talk to my mom and i should think about trying to find an apartment that my parents could afford, or maybe an inexpensive room at a co-op or somewhere to stay for the time being. when i got back my mom wanted to know what i had talked to him about, but she was clearly drunk already (~11:00 am) and i knew she would go crazy if i told her, so i said i didnt want to make her upset and i would tell her later. she wouldnt accept this, and got very angry at me, which further convinced me not to tell her about it yet. so i said she was being unreasonable and that i was going to stay away from her for the day, or until she calmed down. i went to the park and played ultimate frisbee for most of the day, then sat around a chilled with my freinds in various places in the area until about 10:00, when i went to see if my mom was asleep by checking for the light in her room. she was asleep, but the doors were locked again so i had to go through the back door where i had broken off the chain. the next day she seemed more sober when i got up, and i told her my feelings about what was going on and basically a shortened, more pink and cuddly version of the above several paragraphs. she still did not take it well, and refused to acknowledge that she was causing the conflict, and kept saying that it was my fault. i told her that she was being self-righteous and rude to me, and we came to the concliusion that neither of us wanted it to continue. she said "i just dont know how we can work this out" and i told her that all that needed to be done was that she needed to calm down and think logically about the situation and stop yelling at me all the time for no reason. she sort of listened to me, but wasnt willing to admit that she was at fault. so she decided that she would "forget about my behavior" under one circumstance, that i would not be allowed on the vacation that we were going to use as a substitute for the usual family vacation to lake michigan. i said that it was outrageous for her to punish me because shes got her own problems that she needs to deal with, but she became obstinate so i accepted her deal because it was better than what was currently going on.

 

so the original plan was for me to stay home alone, because shes only going to be gone for 3-4 days and im almost 17, old enough to take care of myself. but today, the day before she leaves, she decided she wants me to stay with my freind randall for the whole time. i said that i didnt want to do that because i dont like going to his house, seeing as his mom is really annoying and he doesnt have an extra bed so id have to sleep on the floor, plus he never has any food at his house besided ramen noodles and hot sauce. but she wont listen to me. i told her i would be miserable staying at his house for 4 nights in a row, and also that im going to cedar point and i dont have an extra ticket for randall so it would be really awkward going without him and hed feel left out, seeing as id have to get picked up from his house. but she kept saying **** about how teenagers are irresponsible and i would throw a party and trash the house. i told her that she cannot just assume that because im between the ages of 13-19 that i am an irresponsible cut up and that she had no reason to think this based on my behaviour, and i am a responsible person and she knows i can take care of myself for a few days. so she started talking about my "behavior" and how i had been acting up for the past few days. so i said "i thought we were going to forget about that mom, you cant jsut bring it up again like a day later and expect me to forget." i also asked her to explain to me in what i had done, aside from the **** that she accused me of that a blatantly didnt do.

then she like took advantage of the fact that i had yelled at her, and started acting like i was verbally abusing her, to make herself seem like the victim.

 

 

 

i just dont know how to reason with her and explain to her what she is doing without offending her or starting an argument.

 

does anyone have any suggestions? this is really hard for me to deal with right now.

[whichwayisup]

Do you have an Aunt or an Uncle, or some other family member you can stay with for a while? Your mom IS messed up, she has depression and BP, is a drinker and obviously is having some serious issues going on inside her head.

 

This isn't your fault, your mom IS being unreasonable and needs counselling! Her meds don't seem to be working...

 

I am sorry that you're going through this, you're too young to have to deal with this crap. She's being abusive to you.

 

There is no reasoning with her because she won't bend, so somehow you just need to keep the peace. I know it's hard to do, but it's better then WWIII happening all around you.

 

Anyway, if you don't have a family member to stay with, maybe go to a friends place, and if you're close to your friend, maybe talk to your friends parents about this..

[breakupunderachiever]

hi,

 

i can't say i know what you are going through - but have been through something similar. my parents relationship was always awful even before the divorce. mum was always yelling at dad because she thought he was cheating on her. it was violent and horrible. eventually he did cheat on her.

 

after the divorce she became paranoid, kept accusing me of doing stuff i hadn't done. eventually developed a paranoid fantasy that she was constantly being monitored as part of a social experiment and that i was in on it. she was verbally abusive and would rage for hours on end.

 

just surviving in that environment was so hard. it was doubly hard because there was no one i could talk to about it really that could relate to.

 

eventually, when i was 22 i moved out. still had to keep going back though to visit my brothers who are much younger than me and were stuck in that abusive environment. it's funny: even though i knew she was crazy her words could still make me feel like s**t. i would tell myself not to rise to her crazy ranting and get into a yelling match with someone who doesn't see the sense, and will never acknowledge their wrongs or apologise for the abuse, but would get into it anyway.

 

i am ok now, have custody of my bros (they survived by escaping into books, video games and internet) and we are trying to rebuild. the damage that an abusive mother can do is really horrific and takes a lot of time. the sucky thing is that social services often don't even recognise their behaviour as abuse.

 

it definitely sounds like your mum has borderline personality disorder. i have been reading a book recently called 'understanding the borderline mother' that has been pretty good and made me feel less alone. also did some group therapy with children of parents who have a mental illness.

 

these days am pretty successful but still have negative thoughts and fears arising from my time with her. even though i visit her every week i feel physically ill whenever i am around her.

 

being responsible for one's abuser totally sux.

 

my advice is - focus on surviving - you will make it past this. try not to take too much of her s**t on board and get out of there if you can. definitely talk to a counsellor as well.

[suzyq83]

There is no reasoning with someone who is chemically-altered mentally/emotionally. I second the motion on seeing if an Aunt or Uncle can help you out in living with them for awhile. I also recommend Al Anon, it helps with detaching emotionally from the loved one's behavior while they are drinking and helps you to have a good day irregardless. You love your Mom, you just don't love what she is doing to herself. Sounds like she is out of control. And totally, it is NOT your fault, no matter how many times and ways she says it is. Seems she is patterning after your Dad now, in how he treated her, she has transferred it on to you. But it is just impossible to reason with someone when they are using or drinking. Talk to her when she is not drinking or using if you can. Stay out of trying to talk with her when she is drinking or using. To avoid the liar liar stuff, maybe leave notes saying where you are and when you will be home, as well as saying it to her. But you can't live in reaction to it all the time either -- it won't be healthy for you to. Get support from an Aunt or Uncle or Grandparent to help tell her she needs to stop drinking because she is on meds. Mixing the 2 could kill her. You need adult support in this, for them to address it with your mother, and to be your support. Don't go this alone. It is too difficult, when someone is bi polar as well as on meds as well as drinking.

 

Keep your chin up -- set limits too, about what your boundaries are when she is drinking, when you have an adult support person there to help you tell your Mom what you will and will not put up with. Getting sucked into dancing to the tune of a raging drinker, you just become part of the problem unwittingly. But you are controlled by her anger. Don't be. Learn to see it for what it is. A mind altered bunch of crazy stuff that she won't even remember tomorrow. Therefore, instead of reacting, stay calm while she is raving and raging and let it wash over you. Find support, in groups like Al Anon, and call around to find what there is. She needs counseling and she needs a Dr who knows what she is mixing, and she needs at least AA, it would seem. But she will have to come to all of that in her own time. Adults stepping in to help confront the problem, may help make that happen sooner rather than later. Hugs to you