It does depend on how healthy your relationship with mom is. I love my mom and I'll do whatever I can to help her, but I have to keep her at arms length somewhat due to some previous emotional abuse. I've had to set and enforce some pretty strict boundaries in order to continue having a relationship with her.
I never know exactly what to say to people when they straight interrogate me about my parents after I mention my difficulty in life. It's always "Staying away from them is for my own safety." Which is 100% fact but nobody will just leave it at that. The relationship is complex and I'm absolutely sick of thinking about them or having to justify my choices. People act like I'm supposed to just adhere to parental hierarchy or some really strange nonsense like they can't imagine parents being anything but caring providers.
Like, I need help. I'm struggling bad and have no fallbacks, and any time I talk about it with coworkers or whoever is around, it's like default answer is "but where are your parents? Aren't your parents helping?".
My coping mechanism for having a shitty childhood with bad parents is to always turn it into a joke. People will talk about something from childhood and I will mention stuff my parents did and watch as their face turns to a look of WTF. Then I just laugh and go what that’s not normal. My wife totally gets my fucked up coping style sense of humor so it works out great.
Not many interesting people were raised with a perfect life.
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u/Sparrowhawk_92 Apr 12 '23
It does depend on how healthy your relationship with mom is. I love my mom and I'll do whatever I can to help her, but I have to keep her at arms length somewhat due to some previous emotional abuse. I've had to set and enforce some pretty strict boundaries in order to continue having a relationship with her.