The Student Room Group

my mother

Okay i was planning to ask chatgpt to summarise 3 stories for me but it did a terrible job and didnt summarise how i felt properly so here are the long stories please be patient and bare with me I really need a lot of advice right now:

1. i’m thinking of once i go to uni i would cut my mother off either during uni or once i’m done uni bc i’m tired i genuinely cannot experience my teen life i’m sure i need to go to therapy one day and i’m put off marriage due to the things my mother said about when my younger sister asked her cant our brothers also take part in the housework then she told us some bs about it’s a woman’s job blah blah men and all those patriarchal roles yesterday literally finalised all my thoughts on leaving once i’m in uni i’m actually suffering i’ve been watching videos about eldest daughters from african households and they said that i should rlly leave unless i don’t want a life to myself and bro even my mum said multiple times if u don’t like the rules of what she set and in her house i can leave 😭 so i’m genuinely planning to go to a uni far away and also cut her off as i never enjoyed the youth i wanted like going outside with my friends or even calling people i would have to do that secretly or when shes out i couldn’t even go to the library after 5 pm and come back at 6.30pm as i wanted to see my friend from my old sixth form that i left and i could study with her. there has beeen many countless scenarios of things that made me want to leave but i really feel like i’m set, all i have to endure is a year and a halfish then go to uni and save money or either live in an accommodation with friends or save money and live some place small just to get the freedom i want and this is always the problem wth eldest daughters 😭😭 which is one common thing i found out i’m genuinely put offf marriage bc of her and i’m actually serious literally yesterday she gave me motivation to work hard so i can leave and even in the summer holidays i thought to myself i should start saving money now.

2. I went to school even though i knew i didn’t have the right mindset to go and when i went to my socio teacher i kind of broke down and he told me to take a break. This all started yesterday when school finished then i found out from my sister that my younger brother disappeared of course everyone panicked and was worried but then my sister found him and we found out that he was in school waiting for his twin brother since he thought he had detention since out mum got an email about it yesterday. Although apparently when my mum was panicking and was asking our neighbours if they have seen him one was just preaching and talking about how out mum shouldve gave them a phone so this whole thing wouldnt have happened at all. Once i came home the neighbour knocked on our door and me and my sister opened it bare in mind my mum was coming home after my sister told her that our brother came home. She talked to use about that out mother should allow us some more freedom at home since she only sees us go outside when we r going to school or coming from school or hanging out the clothes outside 😭 which is true she kind of has a point since if we did go out more if this situation ever happened again or something we would know where we are the street name or maybe a place to go. she also told us that one friend she has in america her 19 year old packed her stuff up and left since she barely could do anything there then i said you have a point i couldnt even go out to the library recently. unfortunately we have Ring the doorbell camera thing so my mum heard the wholw conversation on her phone. My brothers later started to cry after being influnced by the conversation me and my sister had with my neighbour and started to rant they felt inferior or unfair towards other kids since they didnt have what they had and talked about how they were a laughing stock in some situations and also felt restricted one even shouted “i wanted to kill myself” so we had a whole little empathy moment together. My mum came back home heard the full story about my brother then confronted us and i told her i just wanted to have some more freedom then later it got into a bit of an argument and now according to her i am ungrateful for everything she has done and shes gonna think about herself now. later she cried in front of her kids and talked about the sacrifices she has done is not worth it and when i was trying to talk to her about how i felt and i agreed with our neighbour about we should having more freedom my brother interfered and talked about how i should be quiet and stop talking since now to them “she cooks for us, looks after us, i shouldn’t be ungrateful” her talk has made me sad a lot ofc but however i didn’t cry as i wanted to stay strong. later we just have been given many tiktoks about religion and respecting ur mother many times and now ofc my mum doesnt want to talk to me so im ignored for a while be her and she hates calling my name. anyways she is all that me and my siblings have for now and now the situation is like this at home i just feel like i want to run away from everything and staying strong os really not that good to conclude i dont really feel like doing much now i my mindset isnt great i do know this will pass in a week or so but its unfortunate from just saying i want to go outside more and not feel restricted has led to me becoming ungrateful to her now. i have noticed some of the things i have done yesterday was very wrong such as talking about my mother to our neighbour so she does feel embarrassed now and a bit more but thats it i thought i could go to lesson feeling okay but i couldn’t st all. i just want to have a stable relationship with my mother and express how i feel without her feeling that her kids are ungrateful for everything she has done. i sincerely feel her i genuinely do. i feel *****y.

3.Later today my mum told my sister to call me to do the dishes since she wasn’t talking to me. Then when i went she told me to eat and asked how do i feel since she has been neglecting me for a while and focusing on her other children i said “okay” since i did. Then she told me i was stupid and said what are u supposed to do when something happens i didn’t know what kind of answer she wanted so i hesitated. Then she said u should apologise which I did after that she started to project onto me and tell me all about how friends are bad, friends will only lead you either to the grave or to jail, friends are bad, i shouldn’t compare myself to others, you don’t know where people came from and more things like this. I didnt say anything i just listened to her since i didn’t want much to happen. Then she started to compare me to others with one of our other neighbour whose household is Muslim, and told me I don’t need friends i have my cousins who i can arrange to go out with. She doesn’t even know how all my cousins i’m close with tell me how they feel sorry for me about having a strict mother . After she has finished projecting about it i was just in my bedroom minding my own business and revising then she asked me to give her the phone so i gave her my phone and did panic of course because i talked about it with cel and bella on imessages and luckily i did have my ipad next time so i quickly managed to delete the conversations after then she looked through my imessages which only fulfilled with imessage games with celeste and others. and started to judge and said are these the so called friends you are talking about which is leading you to disrespect your mother. i made a joke with an irl friend once i got her number i first texted her “i am your mother” as a joke ofc she knew it was me but my mum perceived it as to her me disrespecting her i continuously told her it was a joke. Then she went to whatsapp and looked through a gc which i had woth a group of friends then she saw a vlog we did together at school and we uploaded it into the gc then she watched it and started to make fun of me and judge me while watching the vlog and rhen she also encountered some tiktoks i made with them when we were out and told me that i am disgracing her in public and i'm making myself look like a fool outside as well as in addition to making things more worse my younger brothers were laughing at me and was also finding me as a joke beside my mother. she compared to me one friend who didn't take part in the tiktok since she was shy and she told me that i should be like her being “shy” and saying thats how muslims should be and not take videos of myself outside with others and look like a fool. She even told me that i shouldnt be friends with the one friend i took the tiktoks with because according to her she is messing up my mind and thats why it led to me disrespecting my mum and mostly just made fun of me. i did ofc deleted some conversations with others which hallelujah i did which would have made it worse but i did lose the whole conversations i had with those people and if i ever chosen to which i doubt to look back on it is gone now.

my plan:
I have genuinely took in all of your advice and possibly try one day in the future but i do know my mother and from the time i was born till now her intentions has been very clear to me today. I do wish and will try to talk to her about it but one thing is that African parent or any strict parents will never change no matter how much you try best you would be seemed as disrespectful to them.I do not want to have a restricted life of how she wants my life to be. I have noticed my self esteem decreasing mental health and courage as a result. I really have been contemplating these past few days. If I leave now, who would take me in? how would i survive? since i'm not financially stable. But after all these situations and future situations i can already sense which will come in the future. I, who have been wishing to leave ever since I was 10 or even younger, will proceed once I'm in university either in my 2nd year, hopefully if I live in a shared accommodation in a university far away. I am planning to go no contact with my mother. The life she wishes upon me is not what I want and I don't want to stay in this environment anymore for the rest of my life.
Original post by baaazcv
Okay i was planning to ask chatgpt to summarise 3 stories for me but it did a terrible job and didnt summarise how i felt properly so here are the long stories please be patient and bare with me I really need a lot of advice right now:
1. i’m thinking of once i go to uni i would cut my mother off either during uni or once i’m done uni bc i’m tired i genuinely cannot experience my teen life i’m sure i need to go to therapy one day and i’m put off marriage due to the things my mother said about when my younger sister asked her cant our brothers also take part in the housework then she told us some bs about it’s a woman’s job blah blah men and all those patriarchal roles yesterday literally finalised all my thoughts on leaving once i’m in uni i’m actually suffering i’ve been watching videos about eldest daughters from african households and they said that i should rlly leave unless i don’t want a life to myself and bro even my mum said multiple times if u don’t like the rules of what she set and in her house i can leave 😭 so i’m genuinely planning to go to a uni far away and also cut her off as i never enjoyed the youth i wanted like going outside with my friends or even calling people i would have to do that secretly or when shes out i couldn’t even go to the library after 5 pm and come back at 6.30pm as i wanted to see my friend from my old sixth form that i left and i could study with her. there has beeen many countless scenarios of things that made me want to leave but i really feel like i’m set, all i have to endure is a year and a halfish then go to uni and save money or either live in an accommodation with friends or save money and live some place small just to get the freedom i want and this is always the problem wth eldest daughters 😭😭 which is one common thing i found out i’m genuinely put offf marriage bc of her and i’m actually serious literally yesterday she gave me motivation to work hard so i can leave and even in the summer holidays i thought to myself i should start saving money now.
2. I went to school even though i knew i didn’t have the right mindset to go and when i went to my socio teacher i kind of broke down and he told me to take a break. This all started yesterday when school finished then i found out from my sister that my younger brother disappeared of course everyone panicked and was worried but then my sister found him and we found out that he was in school waiting for his twin brother since he thought he had detention since out mum got an email about it yesterday. Although apparently when my mum was panicking and was asking our neighbours if they have seen him one was just preaching and talking about how out mum shouldve gave them a phone so this whole thing wouldnt have happened at all. Once i came home the neighbour knocked on our door and me and my sister opened it bare in mind my mum was coming home after my sister told her that our brother came home. She talked to use about that out mother should allow us some more freedom at home since she only sees us go outside when we r going to school or coming from school or hanging out the clothes outside 😭 which is true she kind of has a point since if we did go out more if this situation ever happened again or something we would know where we are the street name or maybe a place to go. she also told us that one friend she has in america her 19 year old packed her stuff up and left since she barely could do anything there then i said you have a point i couldnt even go out to the library recently. unfortunately we have Ring the doorbell camera thing so my mum heard the wholw conversation on her phone. My brothers later started to cry after being influnced by the conversation me and my sister had with my neighbour and started to rant they felt inferior or unfair towards other kids since they didnt have what they had and talked about how they were a laughing stock in some situations and also felt restricted one even shouted “i wanted to kill myself” so we had a whole little empathy moment together. My mum came back home heard the full story about my brother then confronted us and i told her i just wanted to have some more freedom then later it got into a bit of an argument and now according to her i am ungrateful for everything she has done and shes gonna think about herself now. later she cried in front of her kids and talked about the sacrifices she has done is not worth it and when i was trying to talk to her about how i felt and i agreed with our neighbour about we should having more freedom my brother interfered and talked about how i should be quiet and stop talking since now to them “she cooks for us, looks after us, i shouldn’t be ungrateful” her talk has made me sad a lot ofc but however i didn’t cry as i wanted to stay strong. later we just have been given many tiktoks about religion and respecting ur mother many times and now ofc my mum doesnt want to talk to me so im ignored for a while be her and she hates calling my name. anyways she is all that me and my siblings have for now and now the situation is like this at home i just feel like i want to run away from everything and staying strong os really not that good to conclude i dont really feel like doing much now i my mindset isnt great i do know this will pass in a week or so but its unfortunate from just saying i want to go outside more and not feel restricted has led to me becoming ungrateful to her now. i have noticed some of the things i have done yesterday was very wrong such as talking about my mother to our neighbour so she does feel embarrassed now and a bit more but thats it i thought i could go to lesson feeling okay but i couldn’t st all. i just want to have a stable relationship with my mother and express how i feel without her feeling that her kids are ungrateful for everything she has done. i sincerely feel her i genuinely do. i feel *****y.
3.Later today my mum told my sister to call me to do the dishes since she wasn’t talking to me. Then when i went she told me to eat and asked how do i feel since she has been neglecting me for a while and focusing on her other children i said “okay” since i did. Then she told me i was stupid and said what are u supposed to do when something happens i didn’t know what kind of answer she wanted so i hesitated. Then she said u should apologise which I did after that she started to project onto me and tell me all about how friends are bad, friends will only lead you either to the grave or to jail, friends are bad, i shouldn’t compare myself to others, you don’t know where people came from and more things like this. I didnt say anything i just listened to her since i didn’t want much to happen. Then she started to compare me to others with one of our other neighbour whose household is Muslim, and told me I don’t need friends i have my cousins who i can arrange to go out with. She doesn’t even know how all my cousins i’m close with tell me how they feel sorry for me about having a strict mother . After she has finished projecting about it i was just in my bedroom minding my own business and revising then she asked me to give her the phone so i gave her my phone and did panic of course because i talked about it with cel and bella on imessages and luckily i did have my ipad next time so i quickly managed to delete the conversations after then she looked through my imessages which only fulfilled with imessage games with celeste and others. and started to judge and said are these the so called friends you are talking about which is leading you to disrespect your mother. i made a joke with an irl friend once i got her number i first texted her “i am your mother” as a joke ofc she knew it was me but my mum perceived it as to her me disrespecting her i continuously told her it was a joke. Then she went to whatsapp and looked through a gc which i had woth a group of friends then she saw a vlog we did together at school and we uploaded it into the gc then she watched it and started to make fun of me and judge me while watching the vlog and rhen she also encountered some tiktoks i made with them when we were out and told me that i am disgracing her in public and i'm making myself look like a fool outside as well as in addition to making things more worse my younger brothers were laughing at me and was also finding me as a joke beside my mother. she compared to me one friend who didn't take part in the tiktok since she was shy and she told me that i should be like her being “shy” and saying thats how muslims should be and not take videos of myself outside with others and look like a fool. She even told me that i shouldnt be friends with the one friend i took the tiktoks with because according to her she is messing up my mind and thats why it led to me disrespecting my mum and mostly just made fun of me. i did ofc deleted some conversations with others which hallelujah i did which would have made it worse but i did lose the whole conversations i had with those people and if i ever chosen to which i doubt to look back on it is gone now.
my plan:
I have genuinely took in all of your advice and possibly try one day in the future but i do know my mother and from the time i was born till now her intentions has been very clear to me today. I do wish and will try to talk to her about it but one thing is that African parent or any strict parents will never change no matter how much you try best you would be seemed as disrespectful to them.I do not want to have a restricted life of how she wants my life to be. I have noticed my self esteem decreasing mental health and courage as a result. I really have been contemplating these past few days. If I leave now, who would take me in? how would i survive? since i'm not financially stable. But after all these situations and future situations i can already sense which will come in the future. I, who have been wishing to leave ever since I was 10 or even younger, will proceed once I'm in university either in my 2nd year, hopefully if I live in a shared accommodation in a university far away. I am planning to go no contact with my mother. The life she wishes upon me is not what I want and I don't want to stay in this environment anymore for the rest of my life.


Hey, I'm sorry about all this

Me personally, i would definitely say leave as long as you're not doing a super hard degree like med or dent then you'll be fine balancing a job to keep yourself stable (im not sure how much studentfinance youre eligible for, if its the higher end then you can definetlylive comfortably with a part time job and even save money). Obviously please do keep in mind that uni is a lot of work and having a job to support you will put pressure on you.

That being said, definitely prioritise your mental health. I went through a similar thing, my parents were so strict and never let me go anywhere and I missed out on so much ****. This one time i got home at 9pm BECAUSE OF TRAIN DELAYS (i was at the station at 6 and the trains were crazh delayed) and i got yelled at sm i started crying, and then my mum blamed me for crying and said im hiding somefhing and im lying about where I've been and who i went with. Thats just one event, she alwasy crazy stresses me out everytime i used to go anywhere, calling me and yelling at me and constantly locating my phone. THE HANGOUTS WERENT EVEN FUN ANYMORE BCS I WAS SO STRESSED OUT
And anytime i brought it up, she'd be like you can have all the freedom you want once you get married. ONCE I GET MARRIEF?? are you okay?? What about now IM YOUNG AND ITS THE BEST TIME TO DO STUFF I WANT WITHIUT CARING TOO MUCH ABIUT CONCEQUENCES

So for me, i decided that uni is the only way I'll be able to get away because it was now or never. If i didnt go away for uni then after I'd graduated id be married to someone and wouodve never had a chance to experiencethe freedom i wanted(my parents were strongly against dorms and theuy wanted me to live at home so i applied to unis really really far so dorms are the only option)

Bro when i say i dont regret it. I DONT REGRET IT AT ALL. I have enough student finance to support myself fully and am focusing on myself and my studies. As much as i love my family despite everything, if i didn't gwt away my mental health would've deteriorated. My parents argued every other day and there was always sm work to do, i couldn't focus on myseld at all.

Its so peaceful, sure i get homesick from time to time but i wouldn't change my decision, ever. Its so nice to only make breakfast for myself and noone messing witb my things and i dont lose anyhting, i go out whenever, come back whenever and its WORRY FREE. Ofc uni has its challenges, but they'd be even harder if i was at home.

Definitely dont feel guilty abiut your decision and as soom as you're accepted into the uni u really want to go to, start applying for jobs nearby so that you can start as soon as yiu get there.

I hope my reply helps, sorry it got long with my story and everything but i just wanted you to know thay i went thru a similar thing.

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