She violates your boundaries. You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your property may be repossessed and no reason given other than that it was never yours.
On the eve of our emigration to Canada, my mother came to my apartment in my absence, sorted through my clothes and books, and gave them away. When I confronted her about it, she waved me away with, “Well, it’s not like you will need all this stuff in Canada.” I still miss my favorite books that she gave away. By a strange coincidence, the books she gave away were precisely the ones I loved the most and was hoping to keep. It is impossible for her to see me as a separate human being, so my possessions are, by extension, her own.
While I still lived with my parents, there was absolutely no way in the world to convince my mother not to rummage in my underwear and my things.
Once, at the age of 15, I came home and discovered my mother in a blinding rage in front of my dresser. All of my underwear was lying in a heap on the floor.
“Where is your bra?” she yelled in a fury that was unexpected even for her. “Where is it? What have you done with it?”
“I’m wearing it,” I said. I felt entitled to wear it because I had bought it with my own money in England. I was 15, I had started developing quite early and by that age already had noticeable breasts. We had to wear these scratchy school uniforms that were leaving me raw without a bra.
“Why are you wearing it?” she vociferated. “Who allowed you to wear it? You are too young to wear a bra! I’ve wasted hours of my time looking for it? How dare you?!?”
She yelled for several more hours, informing me that I was a little whore and a horrible disappointment as a child.
“I curse you!” she screamed. “Do you hear that? Your own mother damns your existence! What kind of a monster do you have to be for your own mother to curse you?!?”
Since then, my mother has tried giving me bras as gifts on regular occasions. Every time, these bras were ridiculously tiny for me. It is really enough to see me once to figure out that I cannot possibly be wearing an A cup. But whenever I told her that I couldn’t wear these bras, she would get incensed.
“Of course, they fit you,” she would protest. “You are pretending that you can’t wear them for some weird reason. Put them on now! Just do!”
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m sorry for what you went through. I have a few issues with my mother, but nothing this bad.
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I have this very pathetic need to hear, “yes, this was bad, yes, you have the right to be upset.” So thank you, thank you, the acknowledgment really helps.
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Nothing pathetic about this need, and I’m sure the main reason the comments for this series aren’t full of hundreds “wow this is a terrible thing to do to one’s child” is that people tend not to state the obvious. You’re not crazy and this is some stupefyingly nasty shit.
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And these aren’t even my worst stories. I haven’t gotten into the really heavy stuff yet.
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I too think you have a huge right to be upset. Just reading it makes one feel bad.
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Not that I want to make people feel bad, but this is helping me. Maybe one day I will even manage to convince myself that I’m not insane. 🙂
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Yikes. This is a horrible story, as are the others, but this one really made me shudder. Teenagers are so vulnerable about their changing bodies, and for sure narcissistic parents notice this and somehow are driven to hurt them exactly where it hurts most. I am really sorry you had to go through this.
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The next story in the series will be really hard-core in this sense.
” I am really sorry you had to go through this.”
– Thank you! Maybe I should have put trigger warnings but it’s too late now.
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I was also considered a horrible disappointment as a child and was disowned a few times. That’s because I asked for help when it was inconvenient.
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Yes , I was disowned several times but never for good. I’d like to be disowned once and for all because being owned sucks.
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Yeah same sort of thing here. Once my father came by to visit me for my birthday and took me out to lunch. he had a severe talk with me about how disappointed he was with me, and then dropped me back home.
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I’ve been waiting for you to come and comment all day. 🙂
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ah.
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