I don’t like the holidays. I’m a mess when it comes to my mother, we have always had a rollercoaster relationship. I’ve been told she’s narcissistic / borderline, but I feel guilty putting those labels on her. What I know for sure is that she has essentially cut me out of her life since last month when I called her and told her how something she said hurt my feelings. I tried to just tell her without a story attached it to it, simply “when you said this, I felt this”. She immediately just said “I’m not apologizing, you’re ridiculous”, and continued to invalidate my experience, and made it about how I never listen to her. She ended up telling me that “she’s done with me” because all she has ever done is unconditionally love me, and I told her that she hasn’t – unconditional love doesn’t have an “I’m done” to it, especially when all I did was tell her how I felt.

Yeah, I have a manual here – but all I wanted was for her to recognize that what she said hurt my feelings. That’s literally it. I do believe that I have the right to want that from anybody who I allow into my life. I understand that I can set a boundary, and that she doesn’t have to act the way I want her to.

Today I woke up and she had posted this whole sappy thing on Facebook about her mom who died many years ago. I know it is to make me feel guilty for having such a shitty relationship with my own mom. It infuriates me that she will publicly rant on about missing her own mom, yet she ignores her own children (she is doing this to my sister too).

It feels like nothing I ever do is enough, she’s never satisfied or happy. But when I tell her that, she says she never feels like what she does is enough. I have no idea what to do. I’ve done years of therapy, tons of coaching, and I’m so sick of longing for a relationship with a person who will not even talk to me. I’m so tired of doing everything I can to make her happy, and it never does – it’s exhausting. But I’m afraid if I stop trying, that she will completely cut me out of her life like she does everyone else.

This is a mess. I don’t want to call her a narcissist, but I can 100% related to a lot of the narrative around daughters of narcissistic mothers. I feel like longing for this relationship has screwed up all my romantic relationships as well, and I intuitively feel I have to let go of hope of having a relationship with my mom in order to truly have my own life.

I want to stop feeling guilty – “maybe it IS my fault and if I just did the right thing etc etc etc” – this narrative is ruining my life.

I don’t even know what to do anymore. Any help or insight is appreciated.