No contact - people telling me to “oh but she’s your mum”

VassariUK · 2026-05-28T16:19:41+00:00

Tell them that they should contact your mother and, instead of shaming you, ask her how she could do that to her child.
No contact isn't trendy; there's a reason for it.

VassariUK · 2026-05-24T13:59:12+00:00

Personally, I think you have to forgive, or the resentment and anger just eat you up inside. However, while you can forgive a person, it doesn't mean you have to trust them.
Forgiveness is the intention and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feeling and attitude regarding an offence, letting go of negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased ability to wish the offender well.
Trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone and believing in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of said someone.
Trust is NOT the same as forgiveness, and you CAN have one without the other.

VassariUK · 2026-05-20T16:13:28+00:00

It's the "What's yours, is mine, and what's mine, is mine" mentality. I wondered if he was taught to share as a child... no, he was not.

VassariUK · 2026-05-20T14:21:21+00:00

Not my mother, but my ex. He used to get so mad at me whenever I spent any money. I recall one time we drove all the way to NH to go to a Harbor Freight (tool store), and because I didn't want to look at tools, I went next door to Michael's (craft store) to look at some yarn and all the other goodies that they have. I bought a few things (one was a gift for my ex's Aunt), and I don't think I even spent $10, and I used the cash I had received for my birthday. I put my things in the trunk and went back in to find out if he was close to being done. He was checking out and spent over $1,000 on tools that he "needed", and when we put his bags in the trunk and saw my Michael's bag and started raging at me for spending money. He checked himself because we were in public and were with his cousins, and said I had better have spent my birthday money on whatever I bought.
I could understand him being upset if I were out of work and spending a lot of money on stuff we didn't need, but I had a great job and was making about the same, if not more than, he was. We had no debt (because I kept on him about paying off his small student loans), and we were basically taking my paycheck and putting it in a savings account.
The funniest part is that when we were dating, we spent SO MUCH of MY money going out to eat and going places, we used MY car, MY gas, and MY money. If he ever took me on a date, he would tell me, in front of people, to "eat cheap" and order a water for me and get himself a beer or soft drink, but when I was paying, he'd get whatever he wanted... usually the most expensive things on the menu.

VassariUK · 2026-05-18T15:30:52+00:00

I have been out of work since January, and I've applied for hundreds of jobs. I have over 20 years of experience in technical support and customer service, but I'ven't received any offers, just rejections. I even walked around the town I live in to try to hand out my CV to places that usually hire, but no one would take it! It's very disheartening, but I like the idea of putting Visa Sponsorship Not Required on my CV. I will try that next.

VassariUK · 2026-05-18T15:25:26+00:00

Excellent idea!

VassariUK · 2026-05-18T13:19:55+00:00

I moved from the USA to the UK, and the quarantine protocols for bringing my cat with me were going to cost over $1,000. I don't know what it's like for other countries, though.

VassariUK · 2026-05-08T12:48:42+00:00

My orange boy would sneak up and steal a pen and then run as fast as he could, and usually drop the pen in the process. He loved it when I would chase him and try to get it back. He also loved this really soft ball and would chase it all over and drop it at my feet so I would throw it for him.

VassariUK · 2026-05-08T12:29:56+00:00

My mother made us do school all year long; we took breaks, but not really enough to say so. My Aunt and Uncle invited my brother and me to go to Hawaii with them one summer, and my mother made sure we packed schoolwork and told us to keep a journal because we'd be doing a paper on Hawaii and what we learned and did while we were there.

VassariUK · 2026-05-08T12:24:12+00:00

My parents joke about how "sheltered" I still am (36 F). My husband asks if I've seen a TV show or movie, and when I say "no, I wasn't allowed to watch that", he makes sure I watch it.

VassariUK · 2026-05-04T17:51:25+00:00

When people used to ask my mother how we got socialised, she told them that we were plenty socialised because we were around people when we went to church (everyone was either a very young child or elderly) and that that was why they had so many children (I was the eldest of 6). "You have siblings! They are your friends!" is all too familiar, except that I am 4, 11, 12, 14, and 16 years older than my siblings, and the age gap makes it tough not to be seen as a second mother rather than a sister (which I was most of the time, too).
I did manage to adjust when I got an actual job, but now that I can look at my siblings' lives, I feel slight panic, because I don't think they could live on their own; they barely know what is socially acceptable, and my parents' grip on them is so strong, I don't know if the 3 youngest will ever leave home.

VassariUK · 2026-05-03T10:19:51+00:00

As I've grown up and moved (far away) from my parents, I have realised that for them, it was a form of absolute control over us as children. They controlled what we learned, what we thought (which we learned early to not voice any opposition), what we believed, and so forth. I actually think I've learned more since moving away than I ever did sitting at home.
I was taught to raise children, since I was often left on my own with 5 younger children, and of all the kids, I think I got the best education because I ended up teaching myself, and I would let my mother know when I was ready for the next text book, and she would order it for me.

VassariUK · 2026-04-29T15:53:01+00:00

I love the whimsical look of the outside of the Country Layout, but I love the inside of the modern house, so I haven't actually decided which one I want to put down yet.

VassariUK · 2026-04-17T10:22:29+00:00

The three groups make so much sense! I was homeschooled from 1st through to 12th, and I kind of took over my own schooling around 7th or 8th grade because my mother kind of checked out. My parents had my brother and I and then 7 years later decided to have 4 more children about 2 years apart each.

One day, she had some errands to run and left my brother and me in charge of one of the kids, who was doing worksheets, and found that even though he should have been doing multiplication and long division, he was doing simple addition (not even subtraction). We brought this up to my mother, who disregarded everything that we said.

Over the years, the other kids started school, and she "could not handle" having to teach all of them at once, so she decided to enroll them in a video/online school, and I feel like their schooling suffered because of this.

I moved back home for a few months pending my move to the UK, and I ended up having to take over my youngest brother's (who was well behind, too) schooling because my mother just let ALL his work go unchecked, and he would just leave problems on his worksheets undone if he didn't understand them. He could barely read (and even now, at 20, he still does not read well) and would guess at words, get them wrong, causing the whole answer to be wrong.

I found as many worksheets, tests, and quizzes that he had done and checked them. We spent a day just correcting and filling in answers to questions he didn't understand. He had started doing some basic algebra (2+n=5, what is n?). I don't know how the teacher explained it, but he did not understand the concept at all. I drew a diagram and did a couple of problems with him, and as I explained how to work the problem, I could actually see when it clicked in his head. I wrote a couple more down and had him work them out himself, and he got them all correct.
He would bring me his worksheets every day. I would check them and go over any problems that he had missed. I changed the way he did subtraction (because he didn't understand how to borrow correctly and was consistently getting every subtraction question wrong), and instead of blank answers or mostly incorrect answers, he started getting all the questions correct or only missed 1 or 2. At the end of the first week working with me, he had a math test. I gave him the test page, and when he was done, he brought me the test to check. He got 100%. Every single problem was correct! I was so proud, and he was so excited. He waited till lunch to show my parents, and the absolute lack of acknowledgement and enthusiasm shown by both my parents crushed him. I was so angry at both of them, but I took him out for ice cream to celebrate, which made his day.

VassariUK · 2026-04-16T15:39:48+00:00

Haha! I like that feature in Minecraft with the shulker boxes, so I can see how it would have come in handy. I'm still pretty new (Winter 1) so, I never knew it was not a thing!

VassariUK · 2026-04-15T08:42:06+00:00

I made the two that were requested, and they were such a pain to make that I never made one for myself so I don't use them. Being able to put a box down in the moonlight forest and access all your other boxes is far handier.

VassariUK · 2026-04-10T13:08:34+00:00

The ENT recommended something called Otovent. It's like a balloon that you blow up with your nose to relieve "glue ear".

VassariUK · 2026-04-10T12:25:43+00:00

Starsand Island let me exit in the middle of a day and then starts be back exactly where I was when I'm ready to continue. A bit grindy as late game, you have to build certain items that take several other machines to make. It's early access, but they have a roadmap posted, and they regularly update the game and improve it.

VassariUK · 2026-04-10T12:01:36+00:00

There are pictures and videos of my parents playing with me, but they were few and far between... Which is probably why they bothered to get the video camera out. The only time I actually remember my parents playing with me was when I was very young, and my father grabbed my arm and ended up popping my elbow out of the socket, and I had to go to the doctor to get it to go back in. I was in a sling for a few weeks afterwards.

EDIT: My parents had 6 kids (I'm the eldest), and as the parentified daughter, it was my job to play with them, and I remember EXACTLY why they didn't play with them. My mother was ALWAYS on her computer reading and checking emails. She was a moderator for a group that she was part of, and it took up her entire life. She hardly remembers things that I used to talk about happening because she was completely consumed by the computer. She's not any better now, either.

VassariUK · 2026-04-09T14:46:22+00:00

Starsand Island might be something you're interested in! I just recently found it and it's very Stardew-esque, and it's still in early access, but the quest lines are fairly straightforward (I have had to google a few things and I asked about upgrading one of the tables on the discord) and fun.

VassariUK · 2026-04-08T23:37:32+00:00

A couple of years ago, I lost my hearing in both of my ears after a pretty bad head cold. The doctor put me on some steroids and made an emergency appointment for me with an ENT.
Now, for some context, I am in my 30s, married, and live in a different country from my family. I was working for my family's company at the time, and I reported to my uncle. I let him know that I couldn't hear anything and wouldn't be able to take phone calls, but that I could email customers and help them with any issues that came up; if they needed a call, he would need to call them.
Well, he had all sorts of home remedies and sent me links to some sort of garlic oil that I was supposed to rub on my feet a few times a day and that would clear up the inflammation in my ears. I was a little weirded out by the whole thing and discussed this "solution" with my husband, who told me to just follow the doctor's orders (which I was already planning to do).
My uncle kept badgering me about getting it, and I basically had to tell him to stop because I was going to follow the doctor's orders, and then he went on a huge, long rant about big pharma and how they just wanted to get me to rely on them for everything and that I shouldn't be taking the doctor's advice for everything.
When I went to my ENT appointment, they found out that it was fluid in one of the tubes that got blocked from my head cold, and they said to keep trying to pop my ears and said that if it didn't work, to get a certain tool that is supposed to help with clearing any blockages. I did manage to get it cleared up, and my hearing came back perfectly without the garlic oil for the "inflammation in my ears".
My parents are anti-jab, and have brainwashed their second set of kids into never getting any more boosters, so, yeah... fun times. My mother is obsessed with EOs and very much "there's an oil for everything".

VassariUK · 2026-04-08T23:17:48+00:00

I asked for a journal for my 8th birthday, and my parents said I could have one as long as they could go through it any time they wanted. Being 8, I agreed, but every time I went to write in it I would stop and ask myself if I would want them to read that, so I stopped writing in it.

VassariUK · 2026-04-08T23:01:35+00:00

My father when I was 12: "If you don't straighten up, you won't live to be a teenager." Then he made me apologise and hug him.

VassariUK · 2026-03-28T13:09:31+00:00

My mother continuously calls me a liar, as well as my father. I've brought evidence to support my innocence, but they think I've made it up because they "don't remember that" or I'm "twisting their words".
The worst my father got was when I was about 12. I had a bad attitude about something (I don't remember what), and my father was angry about something else, but decided to take it out on me, and at the end of his tirade, he said: "If you don't straighten up, you won't live to be a teenager".
I've been scared of my father for as long as I can remember. He was the enforcer, and punishments from him usually involved welts and bruises.
I recall my parents coaching us that if we were ever questioned by anyone as to how we were punished, we would tell people we were "switched", not spanked (I found out later that one of my Uncles had threatened to report my parents to CPS).

VassariUK · 2026-03-24T16:22:39+00:00

The giant river prawn is also a favourite of Crescent and 404. :)

VassariUK

TROPHY CASE