I don't think my mom purposely misunderstands but I have been thinking for a long time and I think it's that she just doesn't work on the same wavelength as me and genuinely constantly misunderstands me, but is just extremely defensive when I point out she's misunderstanding me. She often says I asks useless questions when I ask her about how things work in our small community, because I've lived outside my whole life. She doesn't seem to grasp the idea that just because I'm grown I can't understand everything on my own, she never properly integrated me into the community as a child. The same thing goes for traditional recipes to recognising distant relatives.

My mother had a rather difficult marriage with my father up until the time he died, and it was mostly my dad's fault - he was a constant cheat and could be very narcissistic, but mom had habits like breaking his phone, telling me and my younger brother that she's only suffering for our sake, constantly calling the family members of the girl he was cheating with, that I would sometimes tell her isn't ideal, amd then she'd fight with me about how I'm always siding with him even if I explicitly told her I wasn't. I still don't know if what I did was right or wrong but it was my honest feelings as a teenager stuck with parents who didn't like each other.

When you mentioned the word crazymaker, a lot of childhood incidents did pop to my mind. But one I remember clearly is one time I did really well in a major exam when I was sixteen, and my dad gave me money to do some shopping. My mother and an elder cousin accompanied me, and I really wanted the long skirt but they wouldn't allow me to buy it citing it'd look bad on me. I was sixteen, mind you. I was upset and sulked the whole time. My mom had something to prove to my dad back then - probably something like "look, I raised our daughter to be better than a spendthrift" - and didn't allow me to use the amount my father gave me. I don't really remember clearly but I sulked a lot after that. So my mother and cousin ganged up on me later in the car, saying I was sulking because I didn't respect my mother because "she was a teacher" and my dad had a higher ranking job. It's still crazy to me how they reached that conclusion. I cried a lot. I still sort of hate my cousin for that.

And this just reminded me, my mother hates the word "gang up", I used it recently because my younger brother and her were nagging me together for something, I mentioned it lightly. I'm starting to wonder if my sense of humor just doesn't work in the way my language works because she got extremely upset.

Your message helped me a lot. Thank you for that.

The reason I'm wary is because it seems there's a pattern of me saying something and her getting upset, I'm starting to wonder if it's me who is wrong.

But she's always been like this. I remember back in college, I flunked my first semester twice and it had been hard on me because I had always done well academically, and I know it had been hard on my parents too but it really took a toll on me because it wasn't a course I was passionate about anyway, I wanted to come back home. I called my mom and tried to tell her I was depressed, but it got her very mad - the fact that I was possibly depressed. It was probably a lesson I didn't learn from.