My F(24) mom F(58) said something horrible in the heat of the moment weeks ago and I can't let it go

Posting this now since I'll be failing my final anyway.

I have a bit of a complicated relationship with my parents. I love them, they love me, they don't love each other and should have been divorced many years ago. We simply don't fit well together, especially after I returned to their home because of the pandemic after living on my own for nearly 3 years - and what a blessing that was.

I talked about my dad in another post. My mom is a different story. She loves me fiercely, no doubt about that, and I love her. She's a hard worker and never missed a day even though she suffers a lot in the health department. I admire and respect her. Both of my parents. (Just wanted to establish that first). For context: the three of us live together.

The issue is: my mom likes to present herself as perfect. She never says or does something wrong, and if she does and you try to correct her, it's seen as disrespect. She never listen to my advice, because since I am her daughter and therefore younger, everything I say is stupid. She bottles up all her mental and physical struggles and then blows up at home. I have become a master at nonverbal cues because of her - the side effect is that I'm tuned to her, so I always think my friends are mad at me. My dad is either dumb or he doesn't care about her triggers, so he doesn't bother walking on eggshells around her like I do.

In recent years, I started standing my ground to the both of them. With my mom, it's more difficult: she is a master of emotional manipulation. Silent treatment, guilt-tripping, gaslighting, bringing up the past, reminding how much money she has spent for me, my health and my education, etc. She says "we're DONE" and walks off to shut me up, then marches right back in and continues to attack. If you then try to answer, she screams "I said we're done!" and cuts you off. Basically: she can talk, the other party can't. In this kind of situation, she completely forgoes logic and only speaks out of spite.

I learned that the best way to handle her is ignore her and don't take to heart anything she says - if you can. The thing is, after a while of behaving nastily, she feels guilty, because she knows how she's acted. But it's a passive-aggressive guilt: she will wait until you breathe wrong in her direction and then attack you, saying things like "are you feeling some type of way towards me, huh?! Did I do something??" knowing full well what it was.

WHAT HAPPENED: It's been hell these past weeks. I have a final the next week, am super duper stressed, haven't been able to find energy and concentrate to study after work and in general very burnt-out. She behaved kinda nasty 'cause of work. I ignored her, but one day I didn't greet her fast enough and the floodgates opened. She vented to me every bad feeling she had in her and it devolved into a verbal fight. I made the mistake of standing up for my dad, which she thinks of as a betrayal.

She then dropped the bomb on me: she didn't divorce my dad because of me. Because she wants me to graduate before doing that. She never told me that. She then adds "but if you like your father so much, you can go live with him". I burst out crying, it was so unfair. She knows full well how much I love my dad but don't like living with him, that if I had to choose I'd be her. But she always uses my dad as an insult ("you're just like your dad") at every given opportunity.

I replyed with a saying very dear to her "sometimes, you'd look better if you didn't saying anything" (roughly translated it means you make a better impression if you keep your nasty thoughts to yourseld). She took it as I was saying to her "shut up", and jumped me. I defended myself by shielding myself and catching her arms. She backed off and calmed down, but she reiterated what she said about me living with my dad with a nastly glint in her eye. We fought some more until eventually, it died down. I avoided her for 2-3 days thanks to my job. I didn't have time or energy to manage another fight, so the next time I saw her, seeing she was unsure on how to act, I decided to pretend nothing ever happened. She hesitated, but then followed my lead. It's now been two weeks. I still can't forget what she said to me, the malice with which she repeated herself, knowing she was hurting me.

She hasn't apologized. My dad doesn't know anything - maybe it's for the better. He's old school, if he heard I blocked her arms I'm dead meat.

I already had trouble getting used again to these living arrangments, but I've had that fight replaying in my head for 2 weeks. I feel like one lick of wind could make me topple at any given time and cry my eyes out. I've been... numb, for 2 weeks. I don't care about anything. About my final, my work, my future. I know that it's bound to happen again - it works like that between the three of us. It happened many times in the past. I'm... so drained.

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TL;DR: fought with my mom. She told me to go live with my dad, which she knows I'd rather hug a crocodile. She then jumped me. I pretended like nothing happened and she followed my lead. But I still can't get what she said and did out of my mind.

Submitted August 28, 2021 at 08:25AM by CantabiLore https://ift.tt/3mFWtJ3