She’s Secretly Disappointed That Her Mom Survived Cancer Because Of How Tumultuous Her Childhood Was, And She Feels Like She Just Can’t Escape Her Mom
For her entire life, this 25-year-old woman has struggled with her relationship with her mother.
Unfortunately, her mother, who she described as a narcissist, was addicted to substances and physically and mentally abused her.
This mistreatment ruined anything positive in her life for many years, and in order to cope, she turned to self-harm and other ways of “self-destruction,” and she suffered from terrible depression.
Even now, she still struggles with depression and doesn’t feel like she’s fully healed from what her mother put her through.
Her mother always found ways to make her feel guilty until she caved and did things for her or helped her whenever she tried to escape the horrific living environment that she felt trapped in.
“Fast forward to when I was 14. I finally broke free from her full-time, but then began the battle of her coming in and out of my life, talking me into seeing her and then hurting me again,” she said.
This was a vicious cycle that felt like it would never end until she gave birth to her son when she was 18-years-old.
In her view, the moment she saw her son, he saved her life and gave her purpose.
Now, a child was depending on her, and because of this, she felt like she had to be strong and not just survive but live fully.
phoenix021 – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
When she became a mother, it put everything from her childhood into perspective and made her realize just how horrible her mother’s behavior toward her had been throughout the years.
She couldn’t understand how a mother could act that way toward her own daughter. It was inconceivable to her.
Once she gained this clarity, she decided to stop communicating with her mother indefinitely. She didn’t want to put up with her mother’s abusive behavior anymore.
Two years later, her mother finally stopped using drugs, which she’d pleaded with her to do for her entire life.
She was thrilled for her mother, and eventually, her mother contacted her.
Understandably, she felt some hesitancy about talking to her mother again, but she gave her the opportunity to prove that she had changed, hoping that they could build a healthy relationship and recover from the negativity in the past.
“It did not take me long to realize that it wasn’t the drugs that she was on that made her act the way she did toward me. The same drugs I had excused her behavior because of before. ‘She doesn’t know what she is doing, or ‘She’ doesn’t understand; it’s the drugs; she can’t help it.’ Well, no, it was not the drugs,” she explained.
While the substances her mother used intensified the toxic behavior, they weren’t the cause of it.
The abuse and guilt trips repeated all over again, so she made the choice to end communication with her mother once more, this time intending it to be permanent.
Before this, she expressed to her mother that she hoped she would continue to have success with her recovery, but she could no longer subject herself to this mistreatment.
Plus, she was in the healing process from the abuse her mother had inflicted on her as a child while trying to be a wonderful mother to her son.
Not long after she cut ties with her mother, she learned that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer.
She felt conflicted about this news.
“I guess that’s normal when you go your whole life getting no love from a parent. I was sad for her, but I would be lying if I said I was heartbroken or as hurt as I would be if it was another member of my family,” she shared.
Despite the complicated relationship she had with her mother, she was supportive because she always wanted to be there for others when they were going through tough times.
She called family members to try to get updates on how her mother’s treatment was going, but no one she reached out to gave her too many details.
Later, her mother informed her that her cancer was late-stage, meaning that there was a possibility that the cancer could spread to the brain. The probability of her mother was not only high but nearly guaranteed.
Suddenly, she realized the reality of her mother possibly dying, and she experienced strange feelings in reaction to this.
It didn’t make her feel good, and over the next several days, she thought about how upset she was that her mother might pass away before they had the chance to heal their relationship.
She was overcome with guilt even though she didn’t have a reason for feeling that way.
Before this, she hadn’t experienced someone close to her being severely ill or at the end of their life, so her feelings and thoughts were completely unfamiliar to her.
After putting it off for a while, she went to visit her mother. Her goal was to find whatever closure the two of them could.
She wanted her mother to be aware that no matter what they’ve gone through in their relationship, she felt horrible that she was going through this battle with cancer.
Also, she knew that if her mother passed away before she could visit her, she would have had to live with regret for the rest of her life, so she was happy that she chose to see her mother.
A little over a year later, her mother recovered from cancer. Now, she doesn’t know if it was true that her mother had been going through late-stage cancer or how it was possible that she made a huge turnaround in her health.
According to her mother, her medical team made it clear that she most likely wouldn’t survive. After her mother recovered, she used her cancer as a way to guilt trip her into keeping in contact with her.
She had predicted that her mother would do something like this, and she added that having cancer doesn’t absolve her of her abusive behavior throughout the years.
While it’s difficult to admit, she despises her mother for this, and she also feels on some level that her mother passing away would have been easier for her to cope with. It’s as if she’ll never be able to escape from her mother, which is so tiring.
She clarified that cancer is obviously terrible, and she would never wish for anyone to go through it. Sadly, not long ago, one of her friends passed away from cancer.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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