Mother Doesn’t Know Best
My secret is that my mother has only ever seen me as a financial opportunity by means of child support (until I was 18) and “college money” from my grandfather that I’ve never ever seen. She has no interest in my life otherwise. You’re probably thinking, “Well she obviously spent money on you the entire time you lived with her”.
This isn’t the case, unfortunately. My dad had to give me a secret debit card because he knew my mom was using all the money on herself after he gave her a $1,400 check to buy me a laptop that I never got. Since I was a teenager and my grandfather would send me $200-400 checks for my birthday and Christmas, my mom would always get me to give them to her because she “needed it” and “family was first”.
When I tried to put up a fight, she would call me selfish and a spoiled brat and tell me how ashamed my grandparents would be and what a terrible daughter I was and didn’t I love her? I was never allowed to have my aunt’s, uncle’s, or grandparents’ phone numbers or emails and I only talked to them on her phone. She constantly tries to drive a wedge between my dad and I.
She says that he is trying to buy my love and make her look inadequate due to the fact that she hasn’t had a job in years, is living off of a trust fund (having blown through my 100,000 in college savings), and my father is now paying for my entire college education so that I can avoid student loans. It drives her crazy that nothing I own she has provided me.
She hates this because it prevents her from the ability to “cut me off”, something she did to my cell—when she still paid the bill—every time we got into a disagreement. My phone was shut off at least twice a week during this period. Even though I know, and have known, that she is emotionally unfit for motherhood and that I am a good daughter, I can’t fight the feeling that I’m a bad daughter and that I owe her something.
Luckily, I have the most amazing dad in the world and a stepmother who has gone above and beyond in filling the motherly void in my life. To them I am incomprehensibly grateful, but I do wish my real mother would care for me as much as the woman who’s known me for nine years. And on top of that, she’s developed an addiction that scares the heck out of me night and day.
Wow, that felt good.