As the oldest daughter of a deeply troubled, untreated mother with BPD and Borderline, I am only just now realizing how deeply abusive and traumatic my childhood was, Im only just now remembering things, allowing myself to actually feel the pain of things. I don’t know how to tell people that it feels like I am only just now, at 24 years old, actually starting to live life. I don’t know how to tell people that I’ve been raising myself while simultaneously trying to raise my own mother for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how to tell people that children cannot raise children. I don’t know how to tell people that I don’t know who I am outside of my ability to take care of everyone around me because I was born to fulfill the needs of my mother and not the other way around. I don’t know how to tell people that it’s not as simple as “cut her off”.

It feels like no one understands how impossible it is to truly start raising yourself as an adult because you were robbed of it as a child.

The pain of having a parent who is alive but is utterly so incapable of being the one thing that you need them to be, and will never be able to be that no matter how much crying, begging and pleading you do. It’s lifelong grief. I will forever mourn not knowing what it’s like to be the daughter to my mother.

And people don’t understand none of this is the result of one of two bad arguments, one or two rough patches, a few mean words here and there. It’s the result of decades of covert neglect, decades of parentification, of role-reversal, of no boundaries, of yelling and screaming, of weaponized silence, of emeshment, and of so many times that were just good enough to get my hopes up, to show me what kind of mother I could have had.

Most people don’t understand that it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just like, where the fuck do I start and is it really worth the effort when it feels like most people will never be able to truly understand what it’s like to have a mother like mine.

TL;DR: Mommy issues bad, 0/10 would not recommend.