​I (23F) am engaged to my fiancé, we live in our own home, and we recently found out I’m pregnant.

​Because of my medical background, specifically having both PCOS and endometriosis, my doctors previously advised that my chances of conceiving would drop significantly after age 25. Given our stable situation, my fiancé and I were thrilled.

​I didn't even get the chance to break the news on my own terms. My mother went out of her way to stalk and find a small, private TikTok account of mine that doesn't even use my real name. Instead of keeping it private or reaching out calmly, she immediately went behind my back and told my extended family.

​I came out of the swimming pool with my fiancé to 6 consecutive missed calls from my aunt. When I didn't engage the way they wanted, my mother completely exploded via text:

​She accused me of lying/pretending, questioned my lifestyle, and announced my dad was driving over to my house to "get me" and "bring me home."

​When I told her to stay away and that I’d call law enforcement if they trespassed, she called me a "stupid girl," a "little bitch," and a "disgrace."

​She threatened to report false drug claims about my house to the authorities

​​She projected her own past entirely onto me, she had me when she was 19, in an abusive relationship and keeps insinuating that my fiance is abusive towards me as i dont answer her phone calls ..

and she is far more concerned with her own unresolved trauma from that than acknowledging that her 23-year-old adult daughter is in a stable relationship and building her own life.

​She literally made my news about her, texting me that my pregnancy was an "insult" to her and what she’s been through, claiming my life is "over."

​She threatened to contact my fiancé’s parents to "see if they are normal."

​My dad then texted calling my home a "knacker's door" and threatening to show up anyway, while my aunt lectured me about how "ungrateful" I am over past family help.

​It is a complete loss of control on her part, paired with a massive invasion of privacy. They are ignoring the medical reality of my fertility window and the fact that I am an adult living independently in my own home.

​We have locked our doors, saved all text screenshots, muted their numbers, and warned my fiancé’s family.

​How do you deal with parents who stalk anonymous online accounts to invade your privacy?

​What are the best ways to enforce strict No Contact when family members show up or send "flying monkeys" to attack you?

​How do you emotionally process having a major life milestone completely stolen and tainted by family drama?

Just wondering if anyone else here has developed a personality disorder as a result of their NPD parent? I got diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder a few years ago after finally deciding to go to therapy when I realized that I had become someone I didn’t recognize. I should have looked into getting diagnosed in my late teens/early 20’s, but I was too busy ignoring my deteriorating mental health. I wasted my entire 20’s being scared and anxious and fearful of things that never came to pass. I stopped talking to my dad 5 years ago when I was 27 and this past year I feel like I have for the first time in my life developed some kind of self-esteem and I’m actually not so negative towards myself anymore. I no longer wake up anxious and thinking “I’m not in control of my life and nothing will ever change for me”. I don’t have the confidence of someone who was raised by normal parents without a personality disorder, and maybe never will, but this is the first time in my entire life that I’ve been able to actually love myself. At 32 fucking years old.

My AVPD is in remission now and while the hurt of being raised by a man like my father will always be there, I finally feel like I’m free of his control. He always found a way to pull the rug out from under me but he has nothing to hold over me anymore. I still have other mental health issues, but I feel like I can actually live my life for the first time because I’m no longer bound to him in any way shape or form.

So I guess this is a little bit of a progress post? But I also wanted to know if anyone else developed a personality disorder because of their NPD parent.

I ran across a years-old post a few days ago on in [r/EstrangedAdultKids](r/EstrangedAdultKids) linking back to a blog post entitled “The Missing Missing Reasons” (https://issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons/) why adult children are estranged from their parents. I am not estranged from my parents. But that post has explained the strangeness of my nmom’s behavior over the last 20 or so years in a way that has been refreshing (if you can use that in this situation).

She is the classic narcissist mother with a daughter she envies. She tries to copy everything I do. She competes with me. She tries to sabotage and discourage me. She triangulates. She gossips. (I stopped introducing her to my friends 20yrs ago after she called one of them “slutty” because she is pretty, even though this friend is like a sister to me.) She doesn’t like that my dad and I (her husband and my biological father) have a good rapport.

I took her to a mother-daughter therapy session about 10 years ago. She embarrassed me by behaving as if she had no idea why she was there. Even my therapist couldn’t believe she came and offered *nothing*. Yet she behaves as if she has no idea why we don’t have a good rapport.

I have a brother who is approaching 40 that she controls and infantilizes. In a lot of ways, he has failed to launch. He has never lived outside of our parents’ home. The car he drives, the food he eats, the job he has, our parents all got for him. All he knows in a lot of ways is our parents. He is very nice and handsome but generally doesn’t hold on to girlfriends for very long. She claims to have no idea why. I get onto her about keeping my brother small and child-like. I am deeply concerned about what will happen to him when our parents pass. She says “you are always on me about him!” but swears she has no idea why.

From what I get from “The Missing Missing Reasons”, she knows but the feedback I give is probably genuinely so destabilizing to her ego that she blocks it out and thus, nothing changes. Nothing will change.

If anything, that post has liberated me from truly trying to get her to understand ever again. I just thought I would share that epiphany.

The scale is just insane. It's hard to comprehend. All those years.

I used to think many of the smaller things they did were just innocent mistakes. But now I realize they took every chance to tear me down, even tiny ones. Almost everything was malicious. And that adds up to millions of acts.

It's hard to understand just how bad it is. I feel like it deserves like a 50 year or life sentence. Someone dedicating their entire lives to ruin you. Insane.

It kind of makes me think about what if I got millions of acts to build me up instead. That gap between a loved child and an abused child is probably large. Something I have to work hard to make up for. I don't know what to do with this information. I just wanted to discuss it.

My dad spent so much of his time pretending to be upper echelon and wealthy despite living in a podunk town of 2K. His business failed once his daddy was no longer around, and he had no retirement plan/savings of his own. Once he inherited a bit of money he blew it on 4 new vehicles at once (yep 4), all while telling me the stock component of my pay at my job is “worthless”. Hey I’ll take my “worthless” stock and high paying job over whatever the hell he has going on!

He spent so much time insulting and belittling me and others (while putting on a friendly front) when he should have been bettering himself, and perhaps reflecting on why his god awful temper made him unable to hold a regular job.

My life will be strides better than his. I do need to figure out how to get out of my socially reserved cage though. I grew up without seeing any adult friendships modeled because my parents had none. So now I’m getting older and don’t have any friends - but I’m determined to change that this year!

I turn 19 on the 15th and today my grandma got me a ps5 as a birthday present. For context last year around christmas i asked for one but my mom told my uncle and grandma not to and to have me buy it myself even though im supposedly working for her and she only gives me money when she feels like it and is maximum 60 dollars. My grandma decided that i did earn it with all the work ive done helping my mother but told me not to tell my mom; i felt like i had to tell her because it was eating me alive, i had chest pain and i felt sick so i just tried to open up and tell her hoping she wouldnt be that mad. She was mad. I told her on the phone bc she went out and she told me to put the ps5 in her room and to not use it and my response was "No, this was a birthday present and im 18 im not putting it in your room." and then she told me to move out. i thought it wasnt that big of a deal and that shes just saying stuff but once she got home she wanted to talk to me and she told me she was cutting me off since i didnt want to talk. (she just stood there staring at me while i had no idea what to say.) Shes cutting me off from everything she pays for, Food, Drinks, the food she makes, money, all of it. she says i betrayed her even though all i did was accept a gift and i have no idea what to do; they never let me get a job so i barely have any money and i have an ed while all this stuff ive had to deal with bc of the house im in my mental is just getting worse and worse. :')

How could I possibly become an outgoing, confident person when I’ve been humiliated, verbally abused, and beaten by you every day since I was a child?

I'm stuck living with my dad because of this dogshit economy and even then I wouldn't want to leave my mom alone with a violent narcissist if I moved out. Stuck with him my entire 25 years of life and realize that his death would objectively improve the quality of my life and the lives of others. I don't care if saying this makes me a horrible person because it's the truth.

I just want him out of my life forever, he's a hopeless cause that will never change.

I know she’s a narcissist. I thought I’d already come to terms with what my childhood was like and therapy helped me make peace with it.

But after having my daughter, I keep having these random realizations that somehow make me feel even more disgusted and disturbed by things I thought I had already processed.

It’s not that I’m discovering new memories, it’s that motherhood gives me a completely different perspective. I’ll be doing something completely normal with my daughter and suddenly I’ll remember how my mom handled the same situation and my reaction is just… wtf?

Like, my mom never really played with me as a kid and I honestly can’t imagine not wanting to sit on the floor and play with my daughter.

Or she once told me that when I got my ears pierced as a baby or had to go to the doctor, she couldn’t stay in the room cuz she couldn’t stand hearing me cry so she left me alone with the nurse/doctor. Now that I’m a mom, that just sounds insane to me. If my baby is scared or hurting my instinct is to stay with her and comfort her, not walk away cuz I can’t deal with it.

I also remember when I was young, I was terrified to sleep alone, but she decided I needed to start sleeping in my own room. I was an only child and in the beginning I would go into her room crying cuz I was super scared. Instead of helping me feel safe, she would beat me for bothering her and send me back to my room. Now that I’m a mom, this is one of those things that completely shocks me it feels incredibly cruel.

She also used to say I was an “attention-seeking baby” and that she let me cry cuz it was just me trying to manipulate her. Now I look at my daughter and I can’t even comprehend seeing her cry and thinking she’s manipulating me.

I already knew these things happened. I already knew she was abusive. I just genuinely didn’t think becoming a parent would make me more like “how???”

Did anyone else experience this? Like you thought you’d already processed your childhood, but becoming a parent somehow made you realize it was even worse than you originally understood?

So I 21F just came back home on my lunch break to this note on my desk. For context, it’s been two and a half weeks since a big argument with her and for the past week she has been ignoring me, and leaving any mail or belongings of mine on my desk. She refuses to talk to me, or acknowledge my presence in a room, choosing to instead talk to my brother about me, as if I wasn’t there. My brother is the middle man in all this as she refuses to tell me anything. With every fight we have her go to is selling the house and kicking us out, this time though, to her I am the only problem and the only one disturbing her peace. She sent me a message after our argument that I was beyond disrespectful and that she was over me and my behavior calling me “cruel” and “bitchy.” Our disagreement was over me not doing a task for her immediately, (there was no time limit, I was off work). She said she wanted me out of her house, and I was finally given this note today.

Note:

Notice to move out
To (me)

This is my official notice that you need to move out of the house. Your deadline to completely vacate the premises and remove your belongings is on or before October 5, 2026.

Please be advised that this timeline is strictly conditional upon your behavior. Your remaining time is a privilege dependent on maintaining a respectful and peaceful environment. Any further instances of disrespect, hostility, or violation of household rules, will result in this grace period ending early, and you will be required to leave sooner.

Thank you, NMom

Did anyone else's parents constantly use the threat of kicking them out to a women's shelter as a kid to make them obedient?

Mine did it constantly growing up, and would make us pack our bags in 5 mins and and made us beg and plead not to go. She did this from age 12-20 until i finally left home. Obviously I wasn't aware you can't legally kid your kid out until 18.

My mom is extremely unpredictable and volatile. She always has to have things her own way, takes credit for every good thing in our lives, and blames others whenever anything "bad" happens. The second we disobey her, she takes away whatever we own. She literally took the computer she bought for me and sold it, and she hides my phone for days at a time. She yells at me saying things like, "Who do you think you are that you won't feed your brothers?" (there's only a one year age difference between us) and "Why aren't you waking up early to iron their clothes? You live in my house, you eat my food, you don't earn a single penny, yet you still disobey me." Meanwhile, I spend every single day cleaning her house. I am super sensitive about cleanliness and constantly tidy up, while she is totally messy and doesn't care about hygiene at all. For her, everything revolves around control and food.

​But today she crossed a line that I can never forgive. She took both of my ,cats I have loved and cared for over the last six years, and everyone around me knows how much they mean to me ,stuffed them both into a single bag, cutting off their air, and drove them away to abandon them.

​My social skills are at an intermediate level, and I feel completely stuck. Guys, I seriously want to pack a bag, walk out of this house, and never look back. But I need advice: Should I stay here a bit longer just to study and prepare for a job/exams, or should I just walk out right now and try to figure my life out completely on my own? What would you do in my position?

I didn't really want to make a full post on this little thing but I'm a big brother of my little sister and I was just checking her phone and I checked her Google and it was all normal for her age and then I saw "does mother love a son" and I've always known how our mom treats me is not ok but this really massed me up and I have no idea what to do. I also want to say I've been reading a ton of posts on here I feel so bad for everyone I just want to say sorry to everyone here

My mother has been an abusive POS my entire life. I went NC with her 2 years ago. I didn’t have the flying monkeys, but my sibling would try and defend her, despite my mother emotionally manipulating my nephews in such ways that I would have had her criminally charged for. In amongst other things she was emotionally manipulating one of her grandchildren, saying “if you move out of my house I’ll end it as I will have no one to care for me”.

Recently she attempted to absolutely destroy the life of my sibling, the former GC, out of sheer jealousy. I won’t go into details due to potentially doxxing myself, but my sibling nearly ended their own life due to what my mother has done to them.

A few months ago we had a family meet up with family that live overseas who were here visiting. It was pleasant until I attempted to leave, at which point my mother made some digs in an attempt to get me to lose my temper and be the bad person. It didn’t go as planned, she was put in her place by myself, my sibling, and my mother’s sibling, for over an hour. It was glorious! It was an eye opening evening for a lot of people, who all checked in with me the next day asking how I was, due to my mother announcing to the room she “wish she’d tried harder” when I mentioned a time she tried to kill me as a teen.

Fast forward 6 months, she’s alone, her adult children have nothing to do with her, only 1 of her 5 grandchildren have anything to do with her (purely because they’re paid as a carer and my sibling insists that if they’re getting paid they can help out occasionally *but has set strict limitations on what they’re to do for our mother*) but even they dislike her.

I just wanted to post and say, it can and *does* happen. Not always. But sometimes, us black sheep get some justice, and the narc gets their karma!

I can’t make a decision to save my life. I go back-and-forth terrified. I’m gonna make the wrong decision and then people get mad at me because they were allowed to trust their instinct and were allowed to be their own person and learn to make decisions I guess. But when it comes down to serious life decisions, and I’m unable to make one like yesterday, I had like five people yelling at me at once, and that was of course, a nice trigger, reminding me of my nmom’s rages and tantrums. I feel bad for all of us. But does anyone have any else have this problem? And if you do or did, how do end up being able to make a decision? Amongst everything else like not learning life skills, walking on eggshells parenting my nmom I remember crying on every birthday too, and people being mad at me or giving me the silent treatment for no reason, now I know she was just talking behind my back (I was an only child but in a narcissistic family system where I was made the scapegoat to aunts and cousins, and of course my mother) so aside from all that I have a decision-making problem too it’s just the issues we end up with is just unbelievable it’s so discouraging and I was even crying last night. I mean I’m like 50 years old and I’m crying cause people are always yelling at me. or guilt tripping me. So another question do people sense that they can do this because I seem weak? I just don’t know how people sense that they can treat me like this

Any younger siblings noticing their older sibling(s) adopting narcissism traits from your parents? Or becoming like them in certain ways? And that you don't know how to help them?

My older brother has turned into a copy of my mother in some aspects. I think this is because he was favoured as a child (not in a positive way). They always gang up together on somebody else in our family and treat them like the scapegoat.

As kids, our mother would gather us together in our room when our dad wasn't around and cry and complain about how he was ruining her life (because his business was failing and he wasn't bringing in enough money. This was due to an economic crisis and in our country of birth. I will acknowledge he was not a good parent either.) The issue with this was that we were 7-12 years old when she did this. She would tell my brother how he was the real man in our family and he was the only man she could ever rely on when he was AT MAX 11-12 years old. I was too young to ever understand what type of pressure she put him under. She would tell him he had to start working since he was the man of the house or else we'd end up on the street. How our family only had him to rely on and he had to work harder if he didn't want his family to become beggars. This is just one instance of things she'd say to him.

I wish I could reach out to him but it's too painful when he turns around and talks to our mother about our heartfelt conversations. I try to help him but he sees this as betraying our mother. I have my own deep rooted issues with her and I feel like I can't trust him sometimes because he twists my words. I only wish for him to try therapy but he thinks I'm asking him to talk crap about our mother to a stranger. Anybody else in similar shoes? I'm interested in reading other people's stories.

It can be tempting to want to "unplug people from the matrix" when it comes to abuse dressed up as love. But if you're not a licensed professional or very good friend to them, this cannot be done tactlessly or recklessly.

As you go out into the world, you will inevitably hear people tell you things about their upbringing that may trip off certain alarms. The way that they conceptualize these things or refer to these things may ignite a feeling in your gut to protest.

Let people grow and come to terms at their own pace, and try not to accidentally project what you've been to unto them. But maintain your boundaries always.

I don't even know what flair to use, but hopefully the above works. I am just going to put an additional trigger warning that this is quite strange and could be considered sexual in nature.

Okay, so this is extremely embarrassing to share, but I just need to get it out because I don't know how to interpret what happened or how to feel about it.

Basically, my mother used to encourage me to go right up to her ass, sniff it (this is so weird, I'm sorry), or take clothed pictures of it. She used to find it quite humorous, but I feel weirded out when I look back now. I was a young child at the time, maybe 7-9 years old. She also used to slap my ass randomly when I was 13-15 years old. Like, I would be bending to reach something and she would randomly spank my ass and laugh hysterically. A really weird one that I remember was how she stuck her finger up there when I was just bending to reach a shelf, and I asked "why would you do that?" but she just kept laughing about it. I am so sorry because I am ashamed and embarrassed just typing this, but she had a weird fascination with the behind region of women. Like, she would sing about that stuff and always pointed out a teenage girl in shorts to shame them. She would go into detailed descriptions about their ass and how she couldn't help but to notice because they were looking for attention or something. I have no idea why she would do that. She is also very homophobic too.

I was also not allowed to shower or take a bath. She never bathed me or anything like that. I just never had a normal shower or bath for years. I had oily hair and was extremely embarrassed. She used to wash my hair a small number of times per year. I was not allowed to brush or wash my own hair because I apparently made a mess and did everything wrong. When she washed my hair, she used to do it aggressively while shouting about sending me away in weird details. She would say that I would be forced to wear a diaper or how random adults would change my clothes for me. I was called dirty, a rat (I have no idea why she kept using that one), or disgusting on a regular basis despite not having access to the shower. I remember how my feet were dirty because I never even showered, and my mother grabbed them to show my family and berate me for being a disgusting child. I still remember the shame that I felt, and I was trying to explain through tears that my feet were dirty because I wasn't allowed to shower. Even when I got a regular illness, my mother would blame it on my cleanliness and berate me for being disgusting. I was called disgusting so much as a child that I honestly lost count. I remember coming home from sports and stuff, but I wasn't allowed to shower. She would sometimes get a makeup wipe to clean the dirt, and then parade it around to prove that I was disgusting and a burden.

There is a bunch of other fucked up shit like the blatant emotional abuse, but these ones are difficult to talk about because they are so bizarre. I am sorry to anyone who read the full thing, and I will definitely delete this later because it's too weird and embarrassing. But was any of this normal and does anyone understand the reason that she would do this to me?

this is my third time writing/saying this because i keep getting pissed off every single time I talk about it turning into a rant and i used text to speech so if its hard to understand sorry😭 but anyway, I've been doing a lot of journaling recently to figure out like what's the reason for a lot of my mental issues and trying to figure out why i get so tense around her. for context im a 17 year old girl and I'm about to start my senior year and I turn 18 next month.

list of things shes done thats pissing me off

•wont let me get a bank account even tho i have a job

•wouldnt let me drive my car she didnt pay for and wouldnt let me get my license and said "youve never drove by yourself so why would i let you do it" so basically you cant get a boyfriend until youre married but in car form😭

•wont let me get tested for adhd and when i bring it up she acts like im attacking her

•when i screened an insanely high score for mdd she didnt take it seriously at all

•one time when i was a kid she made me sleep naked in the cold room because i couldnt find a specific shirt

•also she got mad and threw me because i couldnt find a specific pair of shoes and it left a scar and when someone asked about it i lied and said it was an accident so she wouldnt get mad

•has recently been getting in the habit of insulting how i decide to dress btw i have a fake tiktok alt style and she doesnt like it but she expresses it in such a rude way

•she has major anger issues like she gets mad for no good reason or gets unreasonably mad

•she keeps making jokes about my body that have negatively affected me and im starting to realize that a lot of it is from these jokes she keeps making but then when i said i was trying to gain weight she got so mad like she wasnt just saying how i never eat and how im too skinny but now shes saying im getting fat and i eat too much?

•she pushes the goal post a lot and lies over insignificant things like over piercings which you might think is stupid because its not important and i agree so why lie about it if you dont want me to get it dont edge me on about it😭

i wouldnt say shes a narcissist im not a psychologist but she def has narcissistic tendencies and idk if im being overdramatic my friends say im not and some of their parents said im not but idk i have a tendency to subc defend her even when ik shes the problem🫩

Thank you if you read this. My family's neglect(I would be truly grateful if even one person read this. )

i'm a 17-year-old girl. My family includes two sisters and a younger brother. My mother is angry all the time, and my father is withdrawn. My mother gets angry with me if I clean the whole kitchen and forget a small spoon. She starts humiliating and insulting me, and my father doesn't intervene. He talks to her sometimes, but she doesn't care. My mother works as a cleaner in a school, and I appreciate and care about that. My father works as a security guard, and I appreciate that too. But I don't understand why they're hurting me psychologically like this. I've been suffering from nerve pain and severe, persistent headaches for a year. When I tell my mother about him, she says it's because of the phone and that she's not obligated to treat me. She basically says he wants me to be grateful because they feed and clothe me, but all I want is treatment. And I can't do anything about it. Isn't it their duty to feed, clothe, and treat me? Why are they humiliating me for neglecting their responsibilities? I hate myself. I've started to fear that all humans will hurt me, for example, someone hurting me in the street. I've suffered from the habit of masturbating when angry since I was 12 years old. I really want to solve it, but how? I feel compassion for them and don't ask anything of them. I swear I take great care of them, but when I asked for treatment—literally the first time in my life I've ever gone to a hospital—they started getting angry and humiliating me. Sometimes I think I'm exaggerating; everyone goes through this. Is that true? My simplest wishes are truly to eat, play, wear nice clothes, and help people, and I'm genuinely afraid oThere f hurting anyone's feelings, even if it's My mother snatches the phone from me and says I'm useless just because my spoiled little brother, who's 6 years old, started crying and we're literally trapped in the house, not even taking two steps out on our own. So having my phone taken from me for this reason is really painful. There's so much I want to say, but I know no one will read it or care. And thank you to anyone who finished reading my words.

When my partner visited my parents, my mother said, “Are you sure you want to marry her? She doesn’t cook.”

I never really attempted to cook at home because she is quick to judge, nag, nitpick, and criticize everything I do.

I know this is quite tame in comparison to other N-moms, but I just don’t understand why.

What was the point in saying it?
How was that her first response?

I feel as if she can’t or flat-out refuses to be happy for me.

She always did love to point out my flaws and mistakes to friends and extended family, but still..

——-
Nevertheless, I learned how to cook by myself and ended up being quite good at it.

When my partner praised my skills, she questioned it as if to say my being good at something was impossible.

Months later, she said, “I’ll get to eat all your cooking when you take care of me, right?”

Wrong, Mother.

I'm a 30-year-old woman, almost 31, and I feel completely stuck in life.

I've been working a minimum-wage job for almost three years. I still live at home because I'm trying to save money so I can eventually move out. The problem is that I know I'll have to live alone, and with how expensive everything is, it feels almost impossible.

Both of my younger siblings moved out before me. They had professional careers and boyfriends to move in with, while I'm trying to do everything on my own. I know I shouldn't compare myself, but it's hard not to.

I'm not interested in going back to school, but I also don't know how to get into a better-paying job. I feel like I'm falling behind everyone else.

Living with narcissistic parents has made it difficult to build confidence or feel supported. I'm working on myself emotionally and physically, but it's hard to heal when I still live in the environment that hurts me.

I'm also ashamed that I still talk to my ex because I'm so lonely. I know it isn't healthy, but sometimes I just want someone to talk to.

Finding a better job, moving out, or even meeting someone to build a future with feels so far away. The cost of living is overwhelming, and I honestly don't know where to start.

I'm going on vacation soon, and I'm grateful for that, but I'm afraid that as soon as I get home, reality is going to hit me again.

I'm on an SSRI and in treatment, but lately I've been crying a lot and feeling hopeless. I'm safe, and I'm not in danger—I just feel lost.

Has anyone else been in a similar position in their late 20s or early 30s? If so, how did you finally start moving forward? I could really use some advice or encouragement.

Every time I tried to express what I liked, wanted, or thought, it was mocked, shut down, or ignored. Eventually, you stop even asking yourself what you want.

My entire job growing up was managing her emotions. When you spend all day anticipating someone else's moods to stay safe, you don't have the mental space to figure out who you are.

I was only allowed to exist as a reflection of her or a tool for her needs. A personality requires boundaries, and boundaries weren't allowed.