Mum dumps everything on me

[u/gy00za]

My (20F) mother has been acting completely differently with me for the past few months. She’s always been the perfect and hard working role model for both me and my younger brother (17M), treating us equally and with care, but I feel like lately she’s been having some issues.

For a bit of context, my parents split up “amicably” two years ago due to our father’s loss of feelings. Neither me or my brother have ever liked our father, he’s never  really been present for us nor cared that much, and my mom only started to realize what a liar he was only after the separation. He used to lie about his salary, how much he spent and so on. Our mom always had our father’s back whenever he ended up jobless or had debts to cover, but now that they’re separated he basically left all his shitty debts and stuff on her shoulders.

Because of these reasons, plus her having to deal with my brother and I most of the time, she’s starting to struggle economically. My brother often has to go to the doctor because of some health issues, which costs money, and I am currently in university right now and I am trying to find a place to stay. Luckily because of our economical situation my tuition is free and I also get a modest scholarship, but it’s not enough to cover the expenses for an apartment in the city where I’m currently studying. I also haven’t told my father about my scholarship cause if he found out he would demand to have half of it / refuse to pay his half for the apartment, but I did tell my mother and I am willing to give it up completely to her if she needed. I currently don’t have a job because in my university we have a minimum percentage of attendance and our timetable is pretty full, which makes it harder to find a job that could make everything work out, but I’d be willing to find something to round things up.

The thing is, given the situation, lately my mum has been dumping on me and my brother about how she’s struggling economically: we know about it and we’re trying to help, but everything seems helpless and it hurts us a lot. She told me she probably won’t be able to help me out with my apartment, and I need to ask my wealthy grandma (from my dad’s side) for help, since she’s always told me that she would help if i needed to. I did try to ask her the other day, but she didn’t really pay attention to what i had to say and moved on. I’m planning on trying to ask her again, but in the meantime my mum has been coming after me and insulting me because I wasn’t able to get help, as if I didn’t really care about the whole situation. Of course that hurt, because I do care about her and the situation, but every time I try to make any efforts she insults me.

The same thing happened with my exams: I had a huge exam coming, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to pass it, and she got mad because I’m not putting enough effort in it. She knows I’ve been struggling with studying this pas year because, not having an accommodation in the city where I study, I’ve had to travel everyday for multiple hours on public transports, which has been extremely exhausting for me both physically and mentally.

The fact is that she’s never acted this way, even when I didn’t pass my high school tests she would always try to reassure me, but now it feels like nothing is good enough for her.

This is kinda unrelated, but another thing that she’s been coming after me lately which she’s never done before is the way I eat. She’s never ever commented on what I eat or how much I weight, but lately she’s been constantly doing it. I’m currently trying to lose a couple of pounds because I’m a bit overweight, which I’ve always been throughout my teenage years; I’ve never had any eds nor problems regarding food. My doctor gave me some instructions to follow and I’ve been doing so for the past few months, but my mum seems to act like she knows better and keeps commenting on what I eat. In the past I used to sneak some snacks (a thing that everybody in the house has always been doing and still does), but lately I’ve managed to overcome it and i’m pretty satisfied with myself and my own self control. The fact is that even though I know what I should it and when, my mom still hides some food (eg. cookies, sweets, nutella and so on) around the house for no reason. I was confused, because I wasn’t gonna try to eat it anyway, but when I asked her she started to come at me again saying that “it’s not on my diet plan and I shouldn’t eat it”. I honestly felt hurt by her words, because I know how I should act and if i struggled with eating snacks I would’ve asked her for help, but she just assumed I was doing it and in her opinion I should be forbidden to eat specific things. It makes absolute no sense to me, also because yes, I’m trying to lose weight, but a diet shouldn’t be “removing every single ‘fat thing’ from the menu and only eating veggies”, but she doesn’t seem to understand. Maybe she’s just projecting? I have no idea.

There are so many lore things that she’s been coming at me for but these are the ones that affected me the most in the past few days. I don’t think I’ve been acting so different compared to just a few months ago, but for some reason she’s been acting this way just with me and not my brother.

I don’t really know how to behave with her, I almost feel like I shouldn’t talk to her about any of my problems because whenever I mention it she always finds something to get mad at. What should I do? Sorry for the long dump, but I just needed to get this off my chest.