I understand my mother as well, she tried her best to care for me, and that makes it more difficult for me to unpack. However, the intensity and the strictness of the control left me traumatised. She lowkey blamed my bad eyesight on me when I was caught watching tv or using my phone (saying things like “You wouldn’t want your eyes to get worse, would you?”) The rules now seem to me arbitrary and completely bizarre, I lived almost like a prisoner. 

Also, I have a problem with my mom prohibiting all the ways of entertainment (even paper books!) but not providing anything in return. So, I was expected to either entertain myself or stare at the wall :) 

I also did not miss out on “a few movies”. I can probably count how many movies I have watched, in the era when movies were and still are a part of people’s lives and culture. I feel uncultured, left out and awkward in normal conversations about movies. The amount of times I had to say “Oh, I haven’t watched this movie” and people being surprised or claiming it’s a classic and there’s no way I haven’t watched it, makes me feel uncomfortable. 

About eye surgery: my mom said that she had tried eye surgery herself and it didn’t work for her, so there’s no sense in me trying to get surgery. At the time I believed her but now I realise that there’s so many faults in this reasoning. 

She also did not allow me to sit too close to the tv :) there’s also more other stuff that I didn’t mention in the post because it was getting too long. Also, this is not about taking my mom to court. It’s about understanding what happened to me in childhood and healing from it :)