Dear mom, fuck you

All the things I wish I could say to my mother but probably never will

Dear mom,

What the fuck is wrong with you? I am sick and tired of being your punching bag. You think you are the only one allowed to grieve. You think you are the only one who is lonely and depressed. You think you’re the only one allowed to have feelings and take them out on everyone else. It’s ok for you to terrorize everyone in your life. It’s ok for you to scream at everyone and have a terrible temper. It’s ok for you to tell everyone to shut the fuck up. You’re justified. You’ve been hurt. You’re in pain. So it’s ok for you.

Did you ever stop to think, even once, about the trail of destruction you’ve left behind? All the times you’ve hung up on people, or stormed out of the room with the last hateful word. You constantly think you’re the victim, but you’re usually part of the problem too. I can’t begin to tell you how many times you’ve absolutely FUCKED UP moments in my life. Dinners ruined, graduation ceremonies ended in tears, holidays a complete emotional breakdown. All because you decided I did something horrible and you had to crucify me for it. You had to make me feel like complete and utter shit because you didn’t like one little thing I did or one little thing someone said. Because you’re emotions and your ego are so fucking fragile.

I have put up with you for years. I continue to spend energy and effort including you in my life. I gave you a car. I bought you a house. I never did drugs or went out partying or fucking around. I fucking got a full ride to Undergrad and Grad school and I built a fucking career and now am raising a child on my own, and all you can tell me is “Oh, you live next to grandparents. I guess that doesn’t include me. I get it now.” FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK YYYYOOOOUUU!!!

I will NEVER be good enough for you. NOTHING I do will EVER be good enough for you. I need to stop internalizing all of this pain and I need to stop letting myself feel guilty and miserable because of your insistence on making yourself and everyone around you miserable. I need to cut you out of my life but I can’t because the sheer guilt of it all will probably kill me. So here I am, still just taking it and taking it and taking it. I call you damn near every single fucking day, which is really hard for me, and which is the most I’ve ever kept in touch with anyone in my life, and you still send me these hurtful text messages.

Never mind that I am already having a shit morning. Never mind that I am stressed out CONSTANTLY trying to keep everything together in my own life. Just worry about you. All that matters is YOUR feelings are hurt, so go ahead, text me your piss and vinegar so you can feel better. Make me feel like a piece of shit so you can feel bigger. Shit on my day so you can rest assured that I am not enjoying anything while you are alone and miserable in your life. It’s true what they say, misery loves company.

And no, moving back home is not going to fix all of my fucking problems or yours. you and your twisted mind think that it’s the answer to everything and therefore you insist on CONSTANTLY reminding me how fucked up it is that I won’t move back, how horrible I am for choosing whatever else that isn’t you, how much harder my life is, blah blah fucking blah. Here’s what will happen if I move there - I will give up everything I’ve worked so hard for, I will give up all my friends and my job and my entire lifestyle. I will give up access to community and culture. I will give up my freedom. And yeah, I can be an even closer punching bag. You can make me feel like shit and I will have no space. I will have nowhere else to go. You will try to control my entire life and you will try to make all the parenting decisions for my daughter. Yes, you will help me with stuff, but then you will use that against me, lord it over my head, to continue to make me feel like shit and to get your way. You will withhold your help if I don’t worship the ground you walk on, if I don’t do everything your way. You will still be an immature brat about everything. I will have no life, I will have no privacy, and I will have no agency. I’m sorry but I’d rather not have that kind of “help”. I’d rather stick it out here on my own and struggle than be beholden to a… a… ok, I had to ask ChatGPT to help me with this one and here’s my favorite thing it came up with: "A volcanic toddler sealed inside a grown-up husk, erupting whenever reality tells them no." And then is suggested that it could create an image to depict said metaphor, and I said, sure, why not? Et voila!

Accurate AF.

Anyway, living with you, it is like signing up to live in a malfunctioning carnival ride that definitely isn’t fun and gives you literal and emotional whiplash. One minute you say it’s too hot and as soon as I turn it down one degree then it’s too cold. There is never a just right with you. NEVER. EEEEVER. You’re like goldilocks but you don’t like aaaaaaany of the bear’s shit, it’s just all wrong, and you have to let us all know just how wrong it all is. You are the epitomy of someone who says “Shut the fuck up” and then immediately follows with “Answer me when I’m talking to you.” I lived like this for 17 years. It’s no surprise that I was ready to move out and be on my own at 12. My poor grandparents were forced to endure all of this times 100 and I feel awful about that every single day. But I worked too hard and for too long to make enough money to support myself and never have to be held hostage like that again. I did NOT come all this way to go back to that hellish nightmare that I grew up in.

I just need to stop taking pages from your book. I need to be less like you and more like me. I need to remember that I have my own life. You don’t own me. I am not your property, I am a human fucking being with feelings. I do not exist to serve you. It is not my job to make you happy, nor is it my fault that you’re sad as hell. Thank you for giving birth to me, raising me, thank you for sacrificing everything, but I did not ask to be born. If you really didn’t want me, you could have aborted me or given me up for adoption and then had the wonderful carefree life you seem to think I am having over here without you. But you CHOSE to have a baby and it’s time you start owning those choices. I am choosing my own path, whether you like it or not. It’s ok for my choices to be different than yours were at my age. It’s ok for me to be my own person.

I have a career, I have my daughter, I have my own apartment. I can walk, I can talk, I can breathe without assistance. Those are all things to celebrate and be grateful for. I am not going to let you make me fucking miserable to the point where I can’t even enjoy all the good things I have going in my life. I have made myself suffer SO much for you and it doesn’t even fucking matter. I’m done. I don’t want to do it anymore. If my happiness or my success or my free will makes you unhappy, then that’s a you problem. That is not on me to fix.

Ok, thank you Substack for letting me vent. I needed to get that off my chest so I can stop being a demon baby to my own family.