NMG93 Member Profile

...See more Hi, I'm new here. For the past year or two, I have been trying to understand why I feel so fucked up all the time. Growing up, I used to explain it to myself by saying "my dad is abusive and my mom is neglectful". But describing my mother this way never felt right. Now I know it was *emotional* neglect I was experiencing. I was fed, clothed, given gifts, had extracurriculars paid for, was allowed to make decisions for myself... But something felt *off*. I was given food, but turns out I am lactose intolerant. Yes sometimes that flies under the radar, but mom and her friends were health conscious hippies types and I drank rice milk just as much as cow milk 🐮 Somehow nobody connected the dots that I would vomit, shit my pants (ok that only happened twice), and have atrocious gas after drinking milk. Even though I am certain my mom discussed this type of thing with her friends. One kid even was *assumed* to be lactose intolerant, but wasn't. I, on the other hand, was ridiculed and scolded and made to be in the wrong for regularly taking multiple hours to shit by my own parents. They knew something was wrong with me but couldn't be added to figure it out, so they just blamed me instead. There were other issues with food (not sure I would have learned to cook without a class I took of my own volition) but this one seems most glaring 💩 Clothes: I had to nag my mom about the fact none of my pants fit when I was in 7th grade. Not sure that actually got resolved or if I just bought new ones when my friends took me to the mall. I hated shopping but wanted to socialize. Guess mom thought I just magically learned everything I would ever need to know about clothing by getting dragged to old navy 3 times by other 12 year olds. It has taken me years to learn how to dress without looking like a lunatic or wanting to scream every time I walk into a clothing store. I had extracurriculars paid for: this, I could go on for pages about. Long story short, I could have made a career or gotten a scholarship from a wide variety of things I did, but I was taught that sports and art were "for fun", and never transitioned to thinking of them as careers. Maybe I could have taken initiative to go through college applications and career planning on my own but I was very demotivated by my home life. Being traumatized kinda makes your brain not do the thinky-thinky so we'll, especially as a teenager 🤷🏻‍♀️ My mom would also show up to track meets and other events after I explicitly asked her not to, and honestly, I now consider some of that to have been "parental stalking". She was *that bad* at fostering a genuine emotional bond between us. I think she may have seen me more as an object/extension of herself, and therefore thought she had a right to do whatever the hell she wanted in my life, regardless of my wishes. No discussion, not a real one anyway. She was very quiet though. Very creepy, in a way. When I say I was allowed to make decisions, I mostly mean if my mom asked me if I wanted to do something, and I said "no", she would drop the thing entirely, forever. Shots, sports, driving, getting a credit card (remember, I was raised a hippie and thought these things were wrong because I had read that in books). No discussion, no explanation (except from the commie books... I say that lovingly, but books can't raise a child), just "do you want to do x?" And I'd say "no" without even considering it, mostly because I was resistant to having a conversation with my mom. In defence of my child self, she seemed awkward and it felt forced when she brought these things up, which probably started a cycle that she could blame me for when I was older 🥴. "You never talk to me!" "Well, actually, it's because *you* never talked to *me*, mom". Anyway. This is a bit long winded, but I have been tearing my mind raw over trying to understand why my life feels so fucked up, and uh, apparently have a lot to say! So I'm curious. Does it sound like I'm in the right spot? Does any of this resonate with any of you? If not, I hope it was at least entertaining. Thanks for reading.

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