Yeah I haven’t been going. She keeps interrogating me about it. She seems to know to some extent. I don’t care if she knows or not because she’s demonstrating since the event that nothing was really going to happen because of it. I was reacting because she’s been saying all sort of madness to me since I was 16.
Erm and yes - I’ve been kicked out and am kinda glad that happened in all honestly.
you can still enter the college’s library, right? Or the town’s library (but college libraries may offer more cloisetered spaces, depending on where you live). It’ll be a safe space for you to think and look for escape paths, until you can leave for good.
Of course those are empty threats.
And if your mother were unbalanced enough to harm herself because you’re doing what normal young adults do and should be encouraged to do, then she should do it so you can refer her to psychiatric help because she’d really, really need it.
In both cases you help yourself and your mother.
No one is mentioning the younger sibling ? What happens to younger sibling who has some special needs if OP walks away. I know it is NOT the OPs responsibility, but I figure OP is going to want to know that sibling has someone watching out for him/her. Any suggestions for reaching out to a social service to alert them ? What are the practical options? Will younger sibling be taken away and put in foster care system? I hate to even bring this up and add to OPs concerns. But reality is that this younger sibling will need to be cared for. Is the parent able to do that?
In that situation it’s the 'plane emergency ’ order: save yourself first to better save the other person.
Clearly the parent doesn’t 'parent ’ and treats older child as ‘parenting’.
OP needs to find a way to escape and *from there * help younger sibling. Right now, they’re both stuck in an unhealthy situation.
Thanks for adding to the conversation @MYOS1634. I agree that OP needs to get busy breathing her own life-saving oxygen mask . I would like others to chime in on practical ways OP can feel more confident walking out and leaving sibling behind. Even something as simple as communication. Does younger sibling have a cell phone? If not, could OP buy a prepaid cell phone to give to sibling so they can communicate. Most likely would want to hide phone from parent.
OP, my heart goes out to you. This is an incredibly difficult situation.
I once worked as a counselor at a youth home housing about 40 teenagers, most of whom ended up in juvenile hall for doing nothing other than running away from abusive homes. The first time they’d run away, standard operating procedure was for the police to take them back home. Of course things were only worse after they ran away, so they’d run away again, and that’s when they’d end up in juvenile hall. They would then be placed in a group home like the one I worked in. There was no other place for them to go, either because the parents didn’t want them home anymore, or it was determined they’d just run away again, or the parental home was determined not to be a safe place for them.
Fortunately, you are of an age where you can be placed “in the system” against your will, but much like them, it sounds like you don’t have any real immediate viable and realistic options for escaping without a safe place to go or a means to start supporting yourself, so that’s what you need to start focusing on. First things first, as they say. You can’t do everything at once, but you do need to take a first step at some point.
I’m sure your mind is in a jumble. I wish I had great suggestions for you. We can all make suggestions based on the limited info we have, but as you have said, there’s a lot of missing info here that only you know. So where should you start?
I’d start by writing, and then writing more. Go to a library if you need to and start writing everything you are thinking and feeling. Write what you’d like to do vs. what you feel is realistic, and why. Write about the grand game plan that you’re not sure how to implement. What would be the first step? What could or might happen next?
Writing everything down and just getting it all out can be a great “release,” and don’t worry about it being coherent or cohesive in the beginning. Just write anything and everything that comes into your head. Step away from it when you need to. You will find that when you do, you’ll think more about what you wrote, come back to it being able to fill in more of the blanks, and the jumble of thoughts and feelings should slowly start to take a more coherent form.
I had an uncle who taught to play chess when I was very young. He never “let” me win, but he had an enormous amount of patience and let me take as much time as I needed to make every move. Little by little, I was able to make faster and smarter moves. Thinking back, I realized how much of a difference those chess games made in my life. I started looking at more and more decisions I’d make like a game of chess. If I make this move, what move could my opponent (the game of life) make next and where would that leave me? I found myself always looking 3, 4, or 5 steps ahead and assessing all the possible pitfalls.
We can’t see your chess board and all the pieces you have or don’t have on your board right now. Only you can see the entire picture. It probably just looks like a big mess and you have no idea where to start without getting yourself in a “checkmate” position.
The goal of your writing is to get to the point where you’re not just looking at a board where the game has already started and all you see is that big, confusing mess. You need to be able to look at it, study it, and see more clearly where you are and what viable options you have. The more you write, the clearer things should become, and it should help you put together a game plan, starting with a first move you need to make, then a second, what might happen with each move, etc.
I don’t know if you feel this helps at all, but again, you have to start somewhere. Whether your first step is tomorrow, next week, next month, or in a few months, that’s what you need to start working toward, and the sooner the better. Like others, I think the first step has to be figuring out how to cut the financial ties, meaning finding a place to go and a job. Every one of us has responding here has had to do that at some point. The path for some of us has been easier than it has for others, but we all did it. It’s part of growing up. It may not be easy, but you’ll figure it out . . . one step at a time. The first step is always the hardest, but you can do it.
Wishing you all the best.
My sister is older than me. Did I say she was younger? Accident if I did.
Yeah it’s really scary to think about these things because when I confront my mom with what she says she literally flat out denies she said any of it and it makes me head twirl. Like the world isn’t really straight anymore. And some of it is so repressed that I get so scared when I try to think it up because sometimes it doesn’t COME up in my mind and I wonder if I forgot something that was awful and therefore relevant. But at moments I know I haven’t forgotten because when I’ll be exercising it suddenly springs to my mind like fire and I get thrown into a rage.
You need to leave. People function with aspergers and ADHD but, even if they didn’t, caring for your sibling isn’t your job. You can’t help her until you help yourself anyway.
@MYOS1634, are there abuse hotlines you OP can call? They help people plan their escape. If OP could find a place, the sibling would have a safe place to go later on. That could prove useful.
Have you ever tried to get help, from a doctor or therapist? Has your mother?
I’m not sure anyone answered your question from above about whether it would be her responsibility to be there for you if your spouse left. The answer is…yes, if you don’t take advantage of it or cripple her in accepting her help. Of course family takes care of each other, to the best of its ability. But it sounds as if she’s been depending on you for a string of unfortunate events, one after another, all of your life, and manipulating you into doing exactly what she wanted. You could have “been there” for her and still gone away to college.
Right now you’re stuck in a rut and can’t imagine getting out. You need to ask yourself where you’ll be in a year if you don’t do anything, and where you’ll be in 5 years, etc. Your mother knows all of the right buttons to push to guilt you into doing exactly what she wants, and you need to find the strength, with help, to move on.
At the moment I’m trying to exorcise the harmful memories via introspection to share with a counselor. It’s requiring a certain degree of bravery on my part because it’s scary. It’s like I want to get some idea of which counselor I am going to talk to. I’m also trying to work out whether I am going to contact hers and whether I’m going to try to keep it a secret that I’m talking to her counselor, etc. I don’t want to just walk in and mess things up because every time I lose a battle to my mother I’m rendered even more helpless. We all have health insurance so it’s all free.
I know you all keep telling me to reach out but I feel I have to have content ready first right? I’ve had counseling before. The counselor at the time didn’t know what to do about my memory blanks. Then again I didn’t go into it with such depth as him at the time. I’m just terrified of being rendered helpless like that. I need to prove I’m right or I’m finished. It’s like some part of me is deeply afraid that I won’t be able to prove that she has a mental disorder. Her family supports her and I’m not sure I can justify that they all have mental disorders.
Btw, is there way to put this thread on private or something?
It’s like when she says things she actually seems to mean it which makes me wonder sometimes if she’s telling the truth about how she feels. But she’s pretty sharp so I guess that’s where the added effect is coming from.
This is another way I think writing things out could help. Glad you are getting counseling, but I’m a little concerned that your counselor “didn’t know what to do about your memory blanks.” I think it’s fairly common in these situations for people block out memories that are difficult to deal with as a way of coping. Again, maybe writing could help with that?
From what you’ve described, I don’t think going to her counselor is going to solve anything. Right now you need to focus on you and your own psychological health. The “plane emergency” analogy was a good one. The bottom line is that you need to work toward getting out of there ASAP. You may want to help her, but you can’t help her or your sister (or anyone) unless/until you take control of your own life, and you won’t be able to do it while remaining in that toxic environment.
Writing down thoughts can be very helpful, but don’t use it as an excuse to put off getting help. You don’t need to wait. That’s the whole point of a counselor – they help you, you dump your problems on them without them judging you, and they help you untangle the mess. If your counselor didn’t know how to help you (which seems odd) he should have gotten help himself by referring you to a specialist. Him not knowing how to help you doesn’t mean therapy won’t work for you, it means you didn’t find the right therapist.
Again, you do NOT have to have any content ready, and you do not have to have anything prepared. You can walk in and just start at the beginning telling them what’s going on, and it can be as generic as “I’m not happy” or “my mother’s making me crazy” or “my life is a mess.”
Your mom may have something called borderline personality disorder. A lot of people confuse it with bipolar disorder. Here’s something you can read about it and see if she seems to fit the description:
https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Conditions/Borderline-Personality-Disorder
Here are some of the features from the list:
At this point in your life, you have to take care of yourself and only yourself. You are NOT responsible for her.
Right now I am trying to write a long response here that covers a lot of missing information. I’ll probably submit it in under 12 hours, but for the time being - My mom is trying to force me to go with her and take a blood test. She’s acting like it’s something she can just schedule and go in with me. Whenever I have appointments with my doctor for a check up she always goes in, asks questions, and tells the doctor what to check on me. I told her I don’t want to take a blood test and she basically says I “have to” as if any reasoning of hers has to matter in my perspective which isn’t true because I’m way past 18. I’m debating whether to fight with her on this… I don’t want to enter a hospital with her ever again. I will go by myself after I finish my drivers license… I know this isn’t really relevant to the conversation. I’m just writing it here to vent and see if anyone will offer something that makes me feel better… ==" hope nobody minds.
lol, guess I won’t post quite yet after all because I’m falling asleep right now. 
Regret writing the last post above now because it’s so stupid… ><
Anyways the idea I think for me is to run away and start at a community college out of state somewhere far that I’d like to live, then transfer to a 4 year. I wonder how I’m going to even pay for out of state tuition… and my grades are going to be so horrible. I’ll probably end up changing my legal name and SSN so she can’t track me. She was going to move right outside of any school I went to and she definitely meant it, that’s why I ended up in a state school. She said she’d commit suicide if I ran away or something…
I’ve always dreamed of going to a really nice school and using all the nice resources. I wonder how much I’d have to save up if I went to community college and transferred to some private school. I guess I just wouldn’t be able to go…haha. Sad.
Why does your mom want to compell you to have a blood test? Does she think you’re doing drugs? Or does she need to have a blood test and wants you to do one too “just because she can”?
Save yourself for a bigger fight. If she wants you to have a blood test, go for a blood test. But say you’ll only go if you go on your own. If she won’t let you go on your own, refuse to go. Stay calm.
Record the whole conversation on your phone as proof if need be.
About your mom’s threat of committing suicide:
- either it’s an empty threat.
or - it’s real.
If it’s real, she needs PROFESSIONAL HELP as soon as possible.
SO, in either case, call her bluff.
But it doesn’t need to be now. Make a plan.
Is there a place in the country where you could go, that has plenty of jobs and relatively low costs of living?
(I’m thinking Florida, Minnesota…)
She wants me to have a blood test because she thinks it’s something I should do regularly. I haven’t always been stable but the thing is she acts like she has a right to just monitor these things as she likes when I’m suppose to be making these decisions whether or not they agree with her. Whenever we go there the doctors don’t really want to give me the bunch of tests she asks for for me because it’s a waste of money and there aren’t signs that I need them but she always make me say “yes” to all of them while she’s there so that they will all be ordered. So I just feel like I want to start rejecting everything she wants me to do that I don’t want to do. She still forces me to take vitamin pills that are supplementary and won’t leave me alone every time until I’ve swallowed them when there’s never been anything wrong with my nutrition.