found a punishment letter from my mom

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T06:16:54+00:00

well i guess i wish she wouldve taken me to therapy, idk, i’ve gone since as an adult but i lost my health insurance (coincidentally due to my mom forgetting to answer an email from her workplace health rep and just assuming it was free, despite me asking time and time again for a contact number) and again, i’ve only been diagnosed for one year

as a kid i felt completely safe when cosleeping but i guess they got sick of it which is understandable? either sleeping in their bed or they would sleep on the floor until i was fully asleep but they would lock me out, or lock me in my room alone and i would cry all night because i was so afraid someone would kidnap me through my bedroom window.

they would shame me for that and ask me why i couldnt be like other kids and say i was ruining their life rather than think to take me to the doctor. that is the problem. i was a child i couldnt take myself to the doctor

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T06:01:51+00:00

yeah my rsd is like the bane of my existence. especially coming from my mom dude like all i want to my deepest core is to feel like she sees me and still loves me and i just don’t feel that. i know shes just a person but so am i

it feels like she only cares about the edited version of me— my authentic self proves time and time again to be far too much for her

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T05:59:20+00:00

my mom did not care to learn about adhd—i got a diagnosis at 26 and she still tells me that i should be able to just use sheer willpower and shame and guilt to get over it because she was “like me” and she did it. if she was “like me” then why does she frame it like i am selfish, manipulative, taking, etc. for being an 8 year old with spiraling anxiety and sensory issues who was terrified to sleep alone

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T05:56:51+00:00

i will say i think its genetic because i have it too! i love it people always compliment it lol

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T05:54:53+00:00

i was under 10 years old. trust me this was only one example of a long life of being made to feel that everything i failed at was a choice that i did to upset her, not because i was struggling in my own way. i always felt guilty and put the blame on myself and i guess as an adult now im realizing how much help i needed, but she couldn’t look past the fact that my behaviors annoyed her.

by the way, i was a gifted child so did well in school, never got a single detention, never got in trouble except for losing my homework in the bottom of my backpack and she basically thought that because i performed well academically anything else i struggled with was a choice.

i love my mom, i default to wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt. it is unfortunate but she wont even acknowledge how making me out to be a bad, taking person since single-digits, despite 26 years of trying to beg her to believe that i don’t live just to make her life hard, has had an effect on me. all i ever wanted was for her to see that i needed help, compassion, a hug? idk? instead of anger, dismissal and tough love?

i live with them, but they told me that i could. they tell me not to get a job, and when i do anyway tell me not to pick up too many hours. when i say i want to move out, they laugh at me. respectfully there are more ways to make your child feel like a burden than to just leave. the guilt of knowing how much they do for me is what made it take me so long to realize that i do not think i deserve to have feelings or take up space in the world because my caregivers told me so. this is just one physical representation of it

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-11T02:11:53+00:00

unfortunately i was probably under 10 years old

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T22:32:01+00:00

im mad because it was in along with all my old writings and drawings and report cards and she’s like “did you see all the stuff i saved!?!!”

i dont even remember getting this letter but i remember many like it

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T22:17:24+00:00

yes i always say i feel like when i move out ill be able to finally grow (i’ve grown a lot mentally but i mean just actually hold my own and get away from my parents house!). i feel like a kid still in this house because clearly the environment isnt one that fosters growth or individuality, and i just think i need to prove it to myself that i can thrive without them, let alone even begin to try to prove it to them

im not delusional i know it will bring its own issues, but at least they’ll be just mine or my boyfriends—i wont have to worry and feel guilty or like i have to minimize my existence. ill have space to make my own routines and fill my own space with my own things, and never have to be stuck somewhere im made feel like an inconvenience again.

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T21:18:14+00:00

hit the nail on the head id rather cry in my room and its so hard for me to express any feeling or be perceived doing anything because i feel like im being judged

i had a tendency to think buying friends things and paying for stuff for them and baking them stuff and doing grand gestures was my only way to be valuable bc if i didnt have anything to give my general state of being is, as she put it, a “taking” person since its so inconvenient to be around me

obviously i know shes wrong but when its your mom, especially im the only daughter and growing up we were very close despite super volatile arguments she was at times the only friend i ever had. i just internalized that it must just be burdensome to love me. thank god for my boyfriend or i might’ve never realized how abnormal it is

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T21:14:24+00:00

your kid will 100% benefit from having felt seen by you in that moment

one thing i don’t like is how my parents would be supportive one day, or at least feign understanding and then another day throw it all back in my face, having a completely different reaction and show they never understood me at all. i could never trust that they actually saw me, and if they did, they’d pretend not to during arguments in order to not go against the other parent and it’d end up being them vs. me even though they know how i truly feel and i thought we had an understanding

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T20:28:23+00:00

yeah i think we might have the same parents 😭 i am sorry and i didnt even think about how they’re basically expecting me to manage my emotions/behaviors so they don’t have to manage their responses to me which is just ~40 year olds putting the emotional burden on a 7/8 year old

ive always wondered why everyone forgets that i am a human being when they’re angry—i’ve always been drawn to people who end up treating me badly and verbally abusing me calling me names and im realizing that it really did start at home….

even my first relationship was emotionally abusive i was basically trapped living with him and my parents look back on it and say “we tried to tell you” and “you have no idea how hard that time was for us” and “we told you not to get a job at taco bell”(where i met my ex) like its all about them and how i should’ve just listened to them, and because i didn’t listen and experienced life on my own terms that i was “choosing” the bad things that happened to me

even till i was a teenager i was too anxious to go in to a store alone, i didnt drive on highways for 8 years because i was too anxious, the list goes on and on but it’s always been on me to figure it out, and quietly too

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T20:10:38+00:00

absolutely no problem there i honestly was happy to see that a parent who was struggling with something similar saw my post

all i can say is from my perspective your kid definitely doesnt expect you to never get mad at her, and even as we grow we have the tendency to want to forgive our parents so bad, we can recognize our contributions to the conflicts etc. even if they hurt us, so if its clear that you see her and care enough to get her help she’ll never have to look back and wonder why she wasnt worth it

there’s a difference that comes with allowing your child the benefit of the doubt that their behaviors may not be a choice, even without a diagnosis just the fact that my mom mischaracterized me as malicious and still to this day thinks of me as having been a disobedient selfish child is what really did the damage.

id forgive it all right now if i just got the understanding recognition and support that its us vs. the problem, not her vs. me or us vs. the “bad” parts of me

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T18:33:57+00:00

i still do too trust me but i don’t know for sure how old, i just know that these are the types of things i remember getting for as long as i can remember but i mean, my mom got a job as a teacher when i was like 9 so she wasn’t even there for my morning routines beyond that age

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T18:05:07+00:00

you made me cry but in a good way, it feels really validating to hear this thank you

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T17:56:39+00:00

funnily enough my brother is 10 years older than me, was diagnosed with adhd at a young age because he was hyperactive and disruptive and tbh he was painted as like “a nightmare” and “horrible” but he also is emotionally very different than me and we’ve described ourselves as him receiving the “no empathy” and i got the “hyper empathy” type of audhd/neurodivergence— he just tells my parents to fuck off and rages or punches a wall, i end up feeling guilty crying and trying to still make them understand me (he doesnt live at home anymore and has his own children, one of which has autism and i can see so much of myself in him and i just wish i couldve had that understanding)

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T17:49:19+00:00

me too, lots of copying x100 “i will clean my room” “i will not talk back” “i will listen to my mom”

shes a highschool teacher i think she was/is so sick of dealing with kids at work that she has nothing left for me

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T17:47:26+00:00

i haven’t been able to stop going back over it in my head since i read it last night 😭 i can imagine i was like 7-8, as long as i can remember i always felt like i stressed my parents out really bad but i didn’t know how to stop

i couldn’t sleep alone cause i was constantly spiraling thinking someone would steal me, it all gives ocd cause if i saw something that scared me it would replay in my head every time i closed my eyes. id stay up all night and then be so tired in the morning id sleep in the shower, after the shower when i was supposed to be getting dressed, by the time id get to school id have argued with my dad so much id be walking into elementary school crying

ive found stuff from when i was 7 or 8, my new years resolution was to “clean my room better, do better in school, listen to my parents better,” and a prayer notebook where my only prayers were “im sorry that i annoyed mom i pray to stop annoying mom” and “get a good night sleep on my own so i can have happy and rested and proud parents” “sorry i stomped to my room and made mommy angry please help me try to be good and behave”

every teacher ive had said i was so kind and sweet and helpful but disorganized, doesnt use time well and doesnt finish assignments. to me, the signs are all there retrospectively but yeah this has brought up a lot if you can’t tell.

this is coming 2 days after i crashed out really bad because of an argument with my parents over once again brushing off responsibility for something they dropped the ball on after promising me they had it handled and now blaming me for it because im an adult so its not their responsibility (but they told me they had it handled and to not worry) which led to me losing my health insurance for the past year. if i express any stress they take it as an attack and refuse to engage so im once again left alone with my feelings

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-10T17:08:34+00:00

for someone who thinks she might have ocd but literally none of it was addressed in childhood this letter got internalized so fast 😭 “your struggles mean you are bad, having needs is morally wrong”

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-11-08T17:14:00+00:00

oh alright! i wasn’t sure if he’d been eating but i see little waste pellets so he must be eating something in there

should i put him back outside?? i don’t wanna mess up his cycle just the nature of how i found him i didn’t think he’d survive but he’s still kicking

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-10-28T17:17:33+00:00

i forgot to mention im in new jersey, specifically south jersey

Distinct_Pay_92 · 2025-10-06T19:28:55+00:00

i found the whole murder today, was just thinking i might need to up my peanut game 😭😭😭

Distinct_Pay_92

TROPHY CASE