Thanks. But if I let strangers on the internet upset me, imagine what my mom could get away with ;)

Narcissists ‘need’ to see their children in a certain way in order to confirm their rightness and superiority to themselves. And it wreaks havoc on a child’s life: s/he is not seen and loved as a whole person but as the shadow the parent cannot acknowledge in him/herself and so madly projects upon the child.

THIS!!

replying to bring you out of the greys:

I cut my mother off 8 months ago. I think of her all the time. She probably thinks I’m doing it to hurt her, but I’m doing it because she can hurt me so easily, and she’s so incredibly determined to pin me as the dysfunctional problem child she raised me to believe I was that I know if we talked, it would take less…

I get this all the time. “But he’s your father!” Fuck that

Incredible. I read this piece and found myself in awe of a sense that 99% of the sentiments you expressed align completely with my own subjective experience of my relationship to my mother. I am a woman, and I hadn’t realized you were a man- it felt like I could have written this.

Yes. I hope my kids APPRECIATE what I did for them later, like, in the way that you do when you grow up and realize that you were kind of a pain in the ass when you were younger, just because recognizing (as an adult) when people have helped you is an important thing generally. But I don’t want them ever, ever to…

Aww, Mark. Thank you for writing this. I read it on a car trip with my boyfriend and actually started crying because of how much it resonated with me. You're right that you deserved more than your mother could give you. This might not mean much coming from a stranger on the Internet, but with the sensitivity and…

I haven’t contacted my mom for mother’s day for a couple of years now. Unlike yours, she wasn’t the primary abuser, she was just a traumatized child. So on top of the horrific amounts of abuse from my father, I had to take turns mothering my sister and my mom when mom was too deep in a flashback to function. I’m not…

It’s the worst, isn’t it? Especially how our culture expects the victims to automatically forgive abusers when they “start working the program” or whatever.

I think honest pieces like this are so necessary, especially around things like Mother’s Day or the death of someone’s mom. When I moved away for college, I never looked back. Well, that’s a lie because I do find myself looking back at how horrible my mom was - especially to me. Now that I’m a parent and do the things…

a million times this. that has always been my mother’s trump card but what she doesn’t realize is I wasn’t out there asking to be born so I could love her unconditionally no matter how bad of a parent she is/was. that isn’t how it works, no matter how much she might will it.

Dear God, this struck a nerve. Don’t worry about being a Dad, Mark - you will do just fine.

Oh, Mark. Mother’s Day is very hard when you didn’t get the mother you deserved.

I’m taking this to my next therapy appt because... you found the words I’ve never been able to express, you figured out how to translate what I haven’t been able to understand.

But if there’s anything she’s taught me, it’s that you don’t bring children into the world because you want them to thank you later.

I could have written this. The only difference is I will call my mother tomorrow, out of guilt.

Mark!!!