When Your Mom is an Insufferable Chihuahua
This post comes out of a conversation I had with a friend of mine--who will be referred to as “North” for the sake of anonymity--on the subject of his mother, a grievance in his life that is well-known among those close to him.
Ever since he was adopted at age 4, North has been living in a toxic household with an overly strict and controlling mother and a father who doesn’t help as much as he should.
“Being adopted is the reason our chasm between us has grown as I’ve gotten older. I know for a lot of cases, adoption doesn’t make the parents love the child any less. At the same time, it’s like, I didn’t come out of your vagina, I feel like you don’t feel like you owe me anything. She’s always very quick to pull me down. The first thing to come out of her mouth when we’re having a fight is that I’m lazy and ungrateful and I’ll never amount to anything in life. I feel like if she'd given birth to me she would feel more of an obligation to me.”
“When I was younger [my father] used to be really cool. He was the kind of parent who was cool, who would stand up for me, who would let me do things my mother didn’t let me do. As I got older and my mom started to get to him, so he’s become a lot more like her. He’s still the cool parent. But that’s like saying that Stalin was better than Hitler.”
The two nearly divorced in his freshman year of college. They didn’t go through with the divorce due to it being financially disadvantageous. His mother unfairly blamed it on him, for whatever reason. His father simply gave in to the situation at that point.
“She’s really controlling. If you’re not doing what she wants you to do, you’re doing something wrong, you’re doing something bad, and that’s not okay. She won’t let [my father] retire or buy land. He’s well past the age of retirement now cuz he’s almost 70. That’s put a huge strain on the three of us. They don’t want me to move out until I graduate because they want to make sure I leave with a job. There’s nothing I can do about it because they have control of my college fund.”
“The house doesn’t feel like it’s a house anymore. It doesn’t feel like a family anymore. It feels like 3 people occupying the same space.”
In North’s house, technically nothing he owns is his, not even his room or things he has bought with his own money.
“It’s not ‘my room’ it’s ‘her room’ because it’s in ‘her house’ under ‘her rules’ and what she’s put ‘her money’ into.”
North and his father often describe her as a chihuahua. “She’s small, she’s angry, she’ll bark at anything. You never know what will set her off.”
She often looks for reasons to pick a fight with someone, even the smallest things. That sort of pettiness is the reason North was kicked out of the house over Thanksgiving break.
“I was hanging my jacket over my bedpost, so part of it was draping down and brushing the floor. She didn’t like that, because it would ‘ruin the floor’ and ‘lower the property value of the house.’ She starts demanding that I pick up the jacket and hang it in the upstairs closet. My room is in the basement; it’s always cold, which is great in the summer, but is a pain in the winter. I always wake up freezing. They won’t let me keep the heat on in my room during the night because it’s a waste of energy. She’s not listening at all. She eventually just snatches the jacket off and storms upstairs with it. I follow her upstairs. I try to take the DVD player because it’s 10:00 and I want to watch some movies. She complains that it’s late and I’m going to keep them up.”
His father tried to advocate for him, but his efforts were in vain.
“Why do you even come home for breaks anymore?”
She kicked him out of the house, and he spent the rest of Thanksgiving break with a friend from college.
The treatment of his mother has had some very obvious negative effects on North. One of them that he mentions time and time again is that his mother often dismissed physical ailments and injuries as excuses for not wanting to do one thing or another, which has led him to dismiss such things even when at college. A little over a year ago, following an accident an event which resulted in him falling and hitting his head on hard concrete, he put off going to get his head checked out for a few days until several friends and fellow participants verbally pushed him to go to the health center. It turned out that he had a concussion, which negatively impacted him for the rest of that academic year.
“I tend to do a lot more reckless things when left to my own devices because I’m not used to freedom.”
North wasn’t allowed to have money as a child. Now that he is in college and makes his own money from his job, he spends it more than he should.
He has also become a very skilled pathological liar. “You just have to lie sometimes to save your own hide. It’s easier to lie to mom than to explain things to her because explaining them only makes things worse.”
His academics also suffered as a result of the mistreatment. “I never learned to properly study and do my homework because she always fights me on it. So I kinda just stopped doing it. Which resulted in me just doing bad in school sometimes because I lost motivation for it.”
“I’ve never seen a medical professional outside of ‘I need this for a job.’ I’m sure I have ADHD and anxiety and depression. I can’t get those diagnosed which means I can’t get the help that I need. The medications probably could have helped me. Because I don’t have those because of her, that’s probably the reason I do badly in school. It’s probably not the only reason, but it’s probably a large contributing factor.”
His mother’s memory is awful. One weekend over Spring break, North planned to go to the mall with a friend from college. The Thursday before, he informed his mother of this.
“I’m going to the mall this Saturday.”
“Who are you going with?!”
“[Name of friend].”
“Who is he?!”
“A friend from school.”
“Who’s talking you?!”
“Dad.”
“When are you going?!”
“2:30.”
“When are you coming back?!”
“Sometime before 8.”
On the Friday before:
“Don’t forget, Mom, I’m going to the mall this Saturday.”
“Who are you going with?!”
“[Name of friend].”
“Who is he?!”
“A friend from school.”
“Who’s talking you?!”
“Dad.”
“When are you going?!”
“2:30.”
“When are you coming back?!”
“Sometime before 8.”
The day of:
“I’m going to the mall today.”
“Who are you going with?!”
“[Name of friend].”
“Who is he?!”
“A friend from school.”
“Who’s talking you?!”
“Dad.”
“When are you going?!”
“2:30.”
“When are you coming back?!”
“Sometime before 8.”
After he got back:
“Hey, Mom.”
“Where have you been?!”
“At the mall.”
“Who were you with?!”
“[Name of friend].”
“Who is he?!”
“A friend from school.”
“Who’s took you?!”
“Dad.”
“When did you leave?!”
“2:30.”
Throughout all of this, North’s coping strategies simply involve escape. He hides out in his room and plays video games or goes on his laptop, essentially exploring the world. His father, on the other hand, simply smokes his pipe in the garage and goes to the Y.
“Fighting back only makes it worse. You kinda stop fighting it after awhile because you realize it’s pointless. If you learn to play her game, if you learn what to say, and you learn all the tricks and stuff she’ll try to pull on you, it’ll make things easier. But it’s exhausting to always have to try to outsmart her, to always have to one up her, to always have to beat her to the punch, so to speak.”
When I asked North what lessons he’s learned from his experiences with his mother, he gave an answer I didn’t quite expect.
“I’ve learned ironically enough not to trust my elders. Adults will very often have a hidden incentive that they don’t tell you about, and be careful around people because you don’t know how they’re going to react to things.”
Knowing North personally, I see a different lesson here: recognize the effects that toxic family members have on you. Recognize those effects, and try to fight them. Don’t let injustices to you prevent you from taking care of yourself, or trusting people who probably don’t actually mean any harm. Take notice of the signs of abuse and toxicity, and learn to love yourself and take care of yourself despite what they say. Perhaps this is me overstepping my boundaries, since I did not grow up in such a situation, but that is my hope for people in such situations: to be able to--if possible--break free mentally of the ill effects that such people can have.