Welcome to Gaia! ::

I've lived with my mom for near 17 years. She raised me only 11 of those years due to her working offshore until I was 6. After which she went back to school, nursing school, while she worked in a restaurant until I was 9. She's pretty much raised me for only about 8 years of my life.

In those 8 years, I have tried what I can to make my mom happy with me. I took to looking for things I was good at - singing, drawing, writing. I would do random things such as those to get my mom to be proud of me. But she always found something to in it to give her reason to ignore me.

From when I was about 10 up until now she constantly drags me down verbally. All I want it to make her happy with me - but she seems to find fault in my effort, my sexuality, my appearance, my taste in music.clothes, my taste in friends, everything.

Late last year, around October, my mom got a call from the school counseler telling her about my problem with self-mutilation. She exlpained to my mom about the cuts and bruises and burn marks on my arms and legs. She told my mom that I had already seen 6 other school counselers all for the same thing and that I apparantly had a problem with self-acceptance and depression.

After that, I assume that gave my mom more reason to shun me. She already refuses to believe I have bipolar, which is one reason I don't have medication for it. And now it seems there are times she encourages me to hurt myself, such as yesterday when she gave me a bottle of bleach and said "Here's something for you to drink, go have fun." and she yells more when the computer will mess up while I'm doing something for her.

Because she is always in the living room (which is right by my room) and because we have thin walls, I can never cry when she's home. So I always have to wait until she goes to work at night, which is only about 3 times a week.

All I want is for my mom to accept me as who I am and to praise me for once, and for once tell me she loves me or at least thinks about me in some sort of positive way other than just another tax exemption. I'm sorry if my spelling or whatnot may be horrid right now, I'm shaking and her yelling in the background isn't helping.

Just me and her, my dad left before I was born because they were never married. All those years my mom was at work or school I would be at her friends Ms Cynthia's or Mrs Jean's house. So I was sort of raised by one person who had a very abusive son my age and the other who was a high-and-mighty catholic who thought I was some sort of spawn of Satan. I think the closest I ever came to feeling like having a real parent was with my uncle who moved away a couple years ago.

i hate your mom because i know what that can be like. if you look at the bright side, you're almost 18, and then you can go to the psych yourself and you can move out.... i fell ASLEEP next to a bottle of bleach like substance, and i got ruched to the emergency room... my version of being shunned is that i AM crazy and need to get out of my parents' life...

look :hugs: i know it can be hard... just reading that i want to hug you so bad. i wsh you wouldn't cut or mutilate. i wish that i could be there for you the way my friends used to be there for me... just know that even though we don't all know you here at gaia, in this guild... i'm sure alot of us care how you feel, and that's gotta mean something... sometimes you just have to wait misery out... if you're lucky, you'll get a masochist bf or gf and you can cut them instead! sweatdrop

Maybe your mother feels like she's failed you somewhere in life and now she doesn't know how to treat you or behave around you. That's not your fault. That's something she needs to come to terms with. There could be some skeletons in her closet that she doesn't want to tell you.

Your mother, however, is seriously disturbed. Please hun, stop cutting yourself. I won't try to understand why you do it, everyone has their reasons but it doesn't make the problem go away, it's just fuel for your mothers fire.

You seem bright, and extremely intellegent. Use that to your advantage. Don't let your mother bring you down, as she has aparantly done. Because as unfortunate as it is, you're the one that'll suffer from it. You have to be strong, because soon you'll be able to move forward and not look back. In the future, your mother may understand how she's wronged you and try to make it right. You seem to love your mother, and as easy as it is to hate someone for everything they've ever put you through, hate is not the answer. You mustn't let her keep you from living your life to the utmost fullest.

Don't let her get away with what she's done to you and how she's treated you, by all means, when she grows up to an age of comprehension and understanding, tell her what you've said up there, then maybe she'll grasp the idea that just because she treated you like s**t for all those years, you didn't turn out like her. You made your own life and it was successful. And you have no one to thank for that, but yourself.