I know everyone has at one point or another dealt with revenge. I'm not talking about you, yourself having been involved, but you may have been close with someone mixed up in it. While fun and entertaining for a short period, it is not a great thing to deal with. Recently it has been ongoing between my mother and I.
Life issue #3
My mother has recently been put on some anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and a few other crazy pills. Some of the side effects make her not remember things as well, or at all. You can imagine how well that's working out.
When I was younger, she wasn't exactly strict with me or my sister. While there were many things that we weren't allowed to do that other kids our age could, we weren't very supervised. When we lived in PA, I managed to sneak out a lot. As an elementary school student, that was a huge feat. I will admit to thinking that I was a little bad ass back then, but that's to be expected when you were the honorary sister of the neighborhood bullies.
As I got older, I realized that my mother preferred my sister. (We'll call my sister Sunshine on here.) I resented it for a long time, until I realized that meant I'd get more freedom. She didn't notice when I'd leave most of the time. I spent the majority of my sophomore year in high school living at MW's house. I took up residency on his couch. I started calling his mom Momma 2 that year. I had moved into ZL'B's flat for about three months near the end of the summer after my junior year. He had just come home from Afghanistan, and said I could stay there; I was still his honorary sister after all. She never noticed that I'd left. She thought that I just hadn't left my room.
We'd get into fights, and I'd leave and sometimes wouldn't come back for days. She never really cared about what I did as long as it didn't make her look bad. Hell only knows that when I made a mistake, it was to purposely hurt her....at least that's what she thought. When the school had called her to inform her of my self-mutilation, she asked me why I was doing this to her. Yea, because me cutting myself was my way of trying to get to her. She had no clue that I'd been cutting for years already.
This past November, I announced that I was going to move to Canada for eight months in 2013 for school. I want to be a make-up artist, and the best school for it is in Toronto. I had missed the deadline for 2012, but I still want to go. Now, that I'm going to be leaving, she suddenly enforces this strictness out of nowhere.
She has explicitly made clear her dislike of me being around, yet she is doing everything in her power to sabotage my move to Canada. I don't get her most of the time. Some days things are okay between us but others are like an all out war zone. She has no respect for my personal space and has gone through everything in my room on more than one occasion, and then has told me that I was overreacting because I was mad at her for doing so. I am eighteen now, and no longer hers to push around. I do my part and help pay for things in the house as well as all of my own food, clothes and my sister's phone bill. I pull my weight here, so sh has no right to go through my things.
The last year, she has been complaining that I've spent too much time at home and I need to get out more. With the exception of work, I haven't really been going out much. The last couple weeks, I've been hanging out with my friends more, and now she's mad that I'm always out. I'm still home most of the time when I'm not at work. I take care of my sister, I sneak money into her purse in the middle of the night so she has enough, and doesn't have to keep asking my dad for it since they aren't together anymore.
One of her more recent strict enforcements is a curfew, which I didn't even have before I turned 18. I'm a month away from being 19 and now all of a sudden, she gives me a curfew and not even a reasonable one at that., She wants me to be home by 8pm! I don't know what the hell is going through her head. When I questioned her on this, she said it was because I broke a promise and left a soda can in my room.
I never promised her anything, because I know that if I promise her something, she'd find a way to turn it into something that would bite me in the ass in the end. She doesn't want any food or drinks in my room, but if I try to eat with them at the table, then she makes comments about me being a vegetarian and saying the smell of my food makes her sick, so could I please not eat it around her. If I eat in the living room, then I have to leave because someone else wants to be in there, and I'm not welcomed to stay. I can't survive by only eating one meal on the four days that I work at the deli. I keep snacks in my room, since my vegan/vegetarian health food snacks keep disappearing when I leave them in the cupboard. (For all the people I live with complaining about who icky my taste in food is, they sure like to eat my snacks.) I eat my meals in my room, and yes, sometimes I forget to take the plates and bowls out with me, but I do get them out the next day if I forget.
The most recent thing that she's done, that has cemented one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, was something unforgivable. I need to get my papers in order so I can get my passport, so I can go to school in Canada. My mom, dad and I got all of my papers together, and Mama said to let her keep the papers for right now so they don't get lost. Last week I was going to get everything for my passport, but she "lost" the papers.
I asked her for them, and she told me she didn't know where they were, and it was my fault for giving then to her while she was getting used to her new meds. I thought she was joking since she was laughing, but she didn't know where she put my papers and she thought it was fucking hysterical. I wanted to cry. Everyday for the last week, I've asked her if she'd found them, or even looked for them, but she kept saying that she forgot to look, or she hadn';t found them. I asked her again earlier, and she just laughed and said she hadn't found them. I told her it wasn't funny anymore. I got everything ready so I could take a shower, and while I was in the bathroom, my dad asked her what wasn't funny anymore and she said the she knew where my papers were, but why should she go out of her way for someone when they don't listen to her or break promises.
I didn't say anything. I kept my mouth shut and took my shower. She kept the papers I needed for school away from me over promises that didn't exist, a can of soda, and the fact that I can't be at her beck and call because I have work. She was going to jeopardize my future over a fucking can of soda! And she insists that I'm the one who has something wrong in the head.
So the main points here are:
1.) My mother couldn't have cared less about what I did before she found out I was leaving.
2.) She has imposed a whole set of unreasonable rules for me to follow, after I turned eighteen and now pay for all of my own things, as well as my sister's phone, and giving my mother money whenever she needs it.
3.) She hid my papers for school on me, nearly jeopardizing my future, just because she thought it was justifiable revenge for me leaving a can of soda in my room.
I don't know if I'm overreacting or not, but I don't think I can forgive her for this. I was up in the air about whether or not I was going to stay in Canada after the eight months, but this pretty much cemented my decision. After the eight months, I'm going to stay there; I am not coming back only to deal with her all over again. I'm done with her games, and as soon as I can, I want her to no longer be a major factor in my life.
Earlier she told my dad that she was worried about me, but she spent the last week watching me breakdown into an emotional wreck and have panic attack after panic attack, with a smile on her face, over my lost papers, that she had all along. To me, that doesn't sound like she was worried much. I don't know, does it sound like she was worried to you? I've been known to overreact, so I would very much like your feedback and advice. I just don't know what to do about this.
I'm not saying that she's a bad mother. In fact, when it comes to Sunshine, or anybody else's kids, she's a wonderful parent. It's just that when it comes to me, she's a different person. She's not a huge fan of my father, and not only do I look like his side of the family, I act just like him. It can't be helped, but it doesn't mean that it hurts any less.
As always, leave your comments and advice, and if you have any questions, I will answer them as honestly as I am able.
Until next time...
Sincerely,
ILive4Irony a.k.a Amanda
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