Hi,
This past year has been extremely difficult for me. My dad has suffered multiple strokes and was diagnosed with cancer, and I’ve tried my best to support my family, especially my mom, who has had several emotional breakdowns. At the same time, I just finished my Master’s degree and started working full-time, which has been very demanding for me.
In October, something happened that changed the dynamic at home. I came back the next morning after going out, it was my first time doing so in about five months. Considering my age, I thought it was reasonable, but I hadn’t warned my mom the night before. She was upset, which I can understand even though it already happened and never caused an issue. That morning, she became very angry, hit me for the first time ever, and told me to move into the other house she owns next door. Since then, I’ve been living in the living room of that house, and now I’m trying to figure out how to move out on my own.
Over the following months, our relationship improved a little, but tension remained. My mom often criticized my cleaning habits (my space tends to get messy) and said I had a grumpy attitude. From my perspective, it’s more that I’m exhausted and not always cheerful around my family. To try to understand this better, I’ve been going to therapy in recent weeks, but neither my therapist, nor my coworkers, nor my friends see an issue with how I behave. On the contrary.
Two months ago, my mom stopped speaking to me altogether and even blocked my number. This happened the very night after we had spent a good day together, with no sign of conflict. It started because my brother, who lives in the same house as me, was upset when I asked him to repay the €500 I had lent him in April for his motorbike. My parents had insisted that I help him out, even though they actually have more money than I do. After he complained to my mom about the state of my room (the living room), she decided to cut ties completely.
This isn’t the first time she’s done this, but never for this long. I’ve tried everything to reconnect, I even rang their doorbell, but my parents completely ignore me.
It’s very painful to feel so rejected, especially when I feel like I’m doing my best. I’m the first in my family to graduate, the first to have a job. I now work in a lawyer’s office as a legal expert, my very first real position, and in September I get to have a good income after 8 years of college. Even during my internships, when I had very little income, I still helped my brother financially because my parents asked me to. I’ve tried to make them proud, yet somehow the result is that I’m seen as a bad person and a bad daughter.
On top of this, I’m still working through the trauma of a difficult childhood marked by neglect, alcoholism, and lack of direction from my parents. Despite all that, I’ve managed to achieve things and to stand by them. I just don’t understand why they’ve rejected me like this. It keeps me up at night, and I’ve even fallen back into insomnia, depression and restrictive eating habits because of the stress.
I honestly don’t know how to repair things anymore.
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Let her go
Find a way to ask her what repair would look like. It sounds like it’s been a brutal year for both of you with a lot of hardship and even people who love one another get short fuses and have misunderstandings during times like that.
First to have a job? Your parents never worked?
You’re 25, have a job and I guess they don’t but still have two houses somehow.
Go get your own place and live your life. Stay in contact with your brother if you want and he wants.
I can’t imagine blocking my child, ever. So I don’t know what could possibly happen in her mind she did that. Certainly not a messy room. He’ll, no parent
Would talk to their kid if that was the bar set.
Maybe just give it time and let them come to you. Let
Them know where you are and you’re okay through your brother and you can decide if they ever reach back out if you want to respond.
Do not lend people especially family members money, you never get it back. Try to give up the alcohol. Become tidier. If you have enough money to support yourself get your own rental. Just needs to be a small place even a caravan rental if you can afford it. You brother is a dickhead for not repaying you and using your mom to manipulate you so that you won’t ask him for the money back. These are not ideal family members and you’re better off in your own place where you don’t invite them over. Distance yourself from them you will be happier.
> On top of this, I’m still working through the trauma of a difficult childhood marked by neglect, alcoholism, and lack of direction from my parents.
Ah, there it is.
OP: Your parents are really fucked-up people. You have grown up believing that your mission is to break through their fucked-upness and cobble together something that looks sort of like a good relationship. Unfortunately, they’ve entered a new kind of fucked-up that you can no longer break through. You’re feeling like you failed your mission, when you should be recognizing that you’ve spent your whole life fighting for something you could never actually have.
None of this is your fault. You need to separate your own sense of self-worth from what these awful people say or do or think, because that has nothing to do with you, only with them. Please seek therapy to work on repairing the damage they’ve done to you.