When my mom is a Gaslighting manipulator
As I came from Spain to Taiwan, I moved into my parents’ place. Plan is that before I go to the US, I am staying here for now.
But as I lived longer, I felt something’s not quite right. Fishy, since I was little.
Some call it emotional blackmailing, I find it even another level — Gas lighting effect. That made you feel you are wrong, you don’t deserve love.
When I was in middle school, I was bullied by my mentor teacher severely. My parents both knew it from beginning to end, because I cried home every day.
‘Sooner or later you’ll just have to realize that the society works like that, when you start working as a junior you’ll be bullied by the others absolutely. So you’d better learn how to deal with it by yourself now.’ So I either become a nun or commit suicide — that was a thirteen-year-old’s solution to escape the three years middle school. Three years seemed far too long.
But I chose to study hard as hell to get out of the hell — — the whole thing I’ve experienced at school and at my biological family. Not until I got 25 did she told me that she was bullied in middle school before, and that she survived, so she thought I could survive too.
And occasionally she became VERY emotional. She would buy me something and later on told me that she did it for me and what did I do to contribute to the family. Usually I accepted the apologies, but this time I told her to get the fuck out of my life, and seriously, go see a psychiatrist to not burden the others anymore.
Aside from that she yelled at me with bills at hand. Bills that I paid by myself.
Sometimes people asked me if I was really her biological daughter, I said yes. But not nurtured.
I knew it was hard for her to survive. Her parents, patriarchal and son-preference, gave all the resources to her brother. Again and again he opened companies and failed and debted. In the end he borrowed money from gangsters and had to escape to Mainland China. My grandparents who were doing okaish, sold all their farmlands and house to pay my uncle’s debt and left with no money and thereafter moved from Tin House to Tin House.
My mom was the only one in her siblings able to support her parents financially, and the three kids that my uncle left. So she started paying rents and all the life necessities for them.
This happened when I was in junior high school. A psychiatrist told me that my autonomic nervous system disorder might have started back then.
And then I went to Europe to study. I was raped by a classmate, racially discriminated, sexually harassed by flatmates…etc. And at some point I had a total mental breakdown and had to suspend my semester in Germany, I called my dad, and he said, ‘You’re that far away. Telling me this wouldn’t do you any help.’ And my mom said, ‘ Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you supposed to tell me good news so that I don’t worry about you? Do you know that compared to your grandparents, you’re already living in a great condition?’
This time I came back. And Thursday is my happy day, because I get to see the lovely psychiatrist who calms me down.
Right before my mom drove me to the psychiatrist, she told me to read a book’s paragraph, and told me to tell her my feedback. The book is about how the X and Y generations seek perfection and materialism that until they’re 40ies or 50ies, they realize there’s no such things as an ideal life. And that all the previous effort go to waste. Book titled ‘Just fine.’
And then she told me that right before my paternal grandma passed away two months ago, my cousin committed suicide as well. He was always changing jobs, borrowing money to invest, and in the end doing drug trafficking and got caught. The day he got sentenced he suicided.
Now she pointed at me. ‘Are you having a stable paid salary?’
‘Not now.’
‘And you’ve always been changing from countries to countries, jobs to jobs. You’ve never stabilized. How are you gonna survive when you’re at my age? Shouldn’t you just tolerate and be a good employee, because it is how hard life is? ’
At that moment I felt that was the end of our relation. She knew by heart I much I suffered at each country, and yet she said that. I cannot act as a daughter anymore.
I messaged her at late night, it was the end. And blocked her.
Before I call the social service line to report the case and ask for spiritual compensation on the court, I beg forgiveness. But I’ve been mentally abused for too long.
