Dear Mom, You’ve Hurt me and I Wish You Would Apologize
Sincerely, Your daughter who is tired of the same old pattern
Dear Mom,
I don’t know what moving forward looks like. I really don’t.
It’s been so many years of feeling unheard, talked over, invalidated. But then you remind me in the little things that you do still care about me. You make me my favorite lunch or you tell me a story from my childhood and we both laugh.
I don’t know what to do with that.
When I ask you to listen and get to know me, you get mad. You can’t accept that when I went to college and had experiences you weren’t a part of, I changed. I’m not the same girl I was seven years ago when I left home.
You throw religion at me as the bandaid that is supposed to fix our problems. You say you’re praying for me, but how can you when you don’t really listen to me? Your prayer isn’t fixing what’s broken between us.
Bandaids don’t fix scar tissue.
True religion is caring for those in need and loving people well. Instead you do what you want to in the name of God, and make me feel guilty for not responding how you want me to.
My high school years
I remember how hard it was for me that you kept switching “rolls” on me. You would get mad at me for not speaking to you like my friends, and then turn around and be mad again that I wasn’t talking to you like my mom.
Then you chose to add in the role of being my teacher. I didn’t want to be homeschooled, remember? I wanted to stay in public school. It added another relationship that I had to navigate with you.
You would walk into my room, uninvited, and demand I show you the respect of a teacher, get mad that I wasn’t talking to you like a friend, and then be upset because I wasn’t listening to you like a mom.
Do you see why that was confusing for me?
I remember having panic attacks from time to time when you’d come in my room (though I didn’t learn the language for that until much later).
I just remember hysterically crying and hyperventilating and pleading with you to leave. You would get mad at me because that wasn’t a reaction you wanted to see. I never received an apology for those times, I was only told that I should feel bad for having reacted in that way.
I did feel bad, I didn’t know why some part of my brain that I couldn’t figure out how to control started freaking out when you’d start to push past me as I tried to block my doorway. I just remember pleading with you to leave and let me talk to you in the hallway.
I still don’t know why my mind reacted that way, and I’m sure it hurt you, but I just don’t understand why you had to “win.” Was it really so important? Is it ever really a win when your daughter ends up crying and incapacitated on the floor when you finally leave her room? That was the price of your “win.”
Do you even remember those times? Because I do. They still haunt me. I still don’t have the answers I need from myself, and I never expect to get the apology I need from you.
Then chronic illness entered my life
I can’t imagine how hard it must be for parents to watch their kids go off to college.
In all honesty, you handled me leaving quite well. You encouraged me to graduate early and go on to bigger and better things. I appreciated that.
You didn’t come with me to drop me off, you just bought my flight and sent me away. That was what we had always expected it to look like.
But then a year in, I started having my medical issues. I couldn’t breathe, and none of the doctors I visited could figure out why.
My friends were my rock, while your texts would send me spiraling. I don’t expect you to know that, I was a world away. At 19 I just didn’t have the strength to be taking a full-time student, working, visiting doctors, and taking care of you emotionally. But that’s what I felt like you were asking of me. I felt guilty that I couldn’t do that for you, but looking back I also feel frustrated that that’s what you asked of me.
If you heard that accusation, I’m sure you would deny it. But then how else do you describe the emotionally manipulative texts that would come through when you should have been sleeping? How many times did you text me, “are you even alive anymore?” after I had gone a few days without responding.
I’m sure you’ll deny that that was your intention in sending those and in all honesty, you can probably “win” that argument if you want to.
Please weigh the cost of that win before you congratulate yourself for it.
My sickness dragged on
Then summer came and I had to come home. I knew I would be carted around to more specialists and be poked and prodded more all in the hopes of finding an answer to my sickness.
I knew after several months of silence, you had a lot of questions that I didn’t want to answer.
I remember we were in the car heading to the mall to meet my sister. We had plans for a fun afternoon of shopping. By the time we got to the mall I was in tears and wanted nothing more than to go home. Except going home would mean spending another 15min with you alone in the car. So I stayed and shopped, just so I could avoid being alone with you. And because you made me feel bad for wanting to go home when we had made these plans.
In the car, you had started bombarding me with questions about my medical situation. I asked you to please lay off and we could talk about it another time. You said that all you were asking for was factual information. You said you were owed the answers because you and dad were paying for the doctors visits.
If that was true, why didn’t you ask when dad was around? If there were other witnesses present you couldn’t get away with treating me the way you did.
I doubt that was your intention, but I also notice a thread where all our worst times together happen when no one else is around to stop you.
Did you not realize that I was 19 and scared?
That there was no such thing as just telling you “factually” that after three months the doctors still had no idea why, multiple times every day, I would collapse on the floor unable to breathe? That I had met more paramedics in the past three months than in my entire life previously?
Then I had trouble breathing one day near your church. I remember you standing in front of me telling me to stop. Telling me that it made you look like a bad mother.
Did you think I was doing this on purpose? Did you think I enjoyed being unable to inhale properly?
I remember we were alone on the street, but your friends were in the church building around the corner. You were mad at me and adding guilt to my fear. Guilt that my sickness was making you look bad.
I pleaded with you to leave me alone. I tried to get away from you. Between gasping for air, I had to try to explain that I wasn’t doing this on purpose to make you look bad. (How insecure do you have to be to think your daughter fighting to get air into her body is a mastermind plan to make you look like a bad mother?)
One of my new doctors ran some blood tests. He told us what he was testing for. You took that as a diagnosis and looked it up online. It wasn’t life-threatening; with the right medication it would resolve pretty quickly.
I remember the next time I had trouble breathing. I was on the living room floor, gasping for air. I remember you coming in and standing over me and telling me to just stop. That the websites you had read about the “diagnosis” said I was fine, so I just needed to get over it.
I remember Dad yelling at you to leave the room. You finally did. He closed the door to ensure that you couldn’t come back in.
I felt like the root cause of yet another argument.
The blood results came back. That wasn’t the diagnosis, and we were back at square one. Except with more broken trust, unfair accusations, and no apology.
Do you remember that? Or is coming with me to the doctors visits all you remember? I could see how confused you’d be by my pain if you’d chosen to forget all those parts of our past.
But that’s not how it works when you’re on the receiving end of it. You remember the things that are said, the way you’re treated, how you feel.
I’m an adult now, but you still threaten me
You threatened to get me fired if I moved into a coed house.
You didn’t even try to make it seem like it was because you cared about me and didn’t trust strange men to respect me. You made it perfectly clear that it was because it would make you look bad.
The thing is I know you could succeed in getting me fired. You’re manipulative and no one really sees who you are.
More so, I know it would put me as the root cause of yet another fight between you and dad. And I’m sick of being the root of your problems.
Instead I’m living alone. I’m scared of being alone here.
Scared because the pain and loneliness of the past couple of months led me to start hurting myself. Not all the time, but when I get in a bad head space, it’s bad.
That’s why I wanted roommates. That’s why I don’t want to live alone.
Not that I’d ever tell you. You don’t know about any of it — the anxiety, PTSD, depression, eating disorder, and now this. I don’t think you’ll ever know.
I don’t really want you to know. I don’t want to give you the chance to break something that couldn’t be repaired. We’re too close to that place already.
So, where do we go from here?
I keep asking myself this. Do we just act like nothing has ever happened? Do we just fight and then pretend like everything’s fine?
I’m nearing my breaking point. I don’t know how much longer I can do that for. I get stressed and dread every time I know we’re going to be around each other.
We could just avoid the things we fight about. But you won’t. You know what they are and you go straight for them. You want to feel like you’ve told me what the “right” thing to do is.
And somehow I’m always the bad guy.
People tell me I need to respect you. I need to be more like you. They don’t see this side, and you trained me never to tell them about it.
You care so much about your image and having control.
I’m tired of caring about image. I just want to have an honest conversation and hear a genuine apology. For any of it. Without pinning the blame back on me.
But I can’t decide how you’ll act. Only you can make that decision. Do you care about me more than your pride?
I want you in my life. I get jealous of my friends who consider their mom their best friend. I don’t know if we’ll ever have that, but I think we can get closer.
Sincerely,
Your daughter who still wants you in her life
