Is my mother gaslighting me?
So before I begin this post, let me just start by saying I’ve battled a chronic illness for the past ten years of my life. I am 20 years old and have Crohn’s Disease.
This road has not been easy, and all my life I have suffered with this pain. When I was young, my mom thought I was faking my stomach issues to stay out of school, until a doctor confirmed that I had hundreds of ulcers in my stomach. He spoke these words to her “When this child tells you she’s hurting, she is,” and handed her the results of my colonoscopy.
When I hit middle school she started making comments to me like “You look really pale today, you should put on some makeup.” Me, being the teenager goes and puts some on, excited about getting to wear it to school for the first time. She has forced me to wear it every single day since, and when I refused she told me I looked pale, sick, and anorexic.
Flash forward to now, I am married and am out of my household. My health isn’t so great, and my flare up came back after we were told it wouldn’t. The medicine I was on for my Crohn’s had stopped working. I had to take a medical leave from college because I can’t be in four 8 week classes and deal with so many doctors appointments. Since being out of the hospital, which has been one month, she has been asking when I’m going to get a job and “that I need to either be work or go to school, doing nothing isn’t an option”.
This evening I receive a phone call from her. My husband is out at some friends house. She asks why I didn’t come up since he isn’t home, because “she asked me to earlier”. I never said yes or no. I tell her that I’ve had a rough day and that I’ve been hurting really bad in my lower back. I have the arthritis associated with Crohn’s as well.
She then states “Well, when you’re at home alone doing nothing l, you’re more inclined to think about how you feel”.
I am in recovery stage. I am literally bouncing back from a low dose chemo treatment. My stomach is trying to heal from the ulcers in my stomach. I have done four loads of laundry today. On days I feel better, I do much more around the house, but today has not been one of those days.
I am trying not to guilt myself into thinking, “you should be doing more”, because that’s exactly what she wants. I am in the process of getting a part time job until schooling is an option again. Why is she being like this, is my mom toxic?