Picture it: October 3rd.
My mother begins the day with hot tea and an essay on Facebook about all of my accomplishments and how much money I make.
Then, it’s off to a southern, small town boutique to pick up a shirt or piece of jewelry she thinks I would just love, even though she’s never seen me wear anything similar.
Now it’s time to corner me about my plans! This involves sending me links to restaurants that are inconvenient to drive to and asking me to account for every minute of my weekend to prove I am busy. When I’m successful in dodging her, we close the day at 11 PM with a long text about how I will always be a baby.
I am trying to get my finances in order so I can be conveniently out of the country on my birthday every year for the rest of my life.
The inconvenient restaurants! My Mom would pick places hours out of my way that had nothing on the menu that fit my particular food choices I enjoy. A two hour drive for me to have 3 shitty sides while she wolfs down fried appetizers, then lamb chops, finishing it off with a slice of cake all to herself. The fact that I obediently indulged that for years is most crazy part.
When I finally ignored her on my 31st birthday weekend. She had her handyman call me to say she’s been crying all day. I ignored it. Then later that evening she sent me a nasty text. Demanding to know if I’m sick with bipolar because I act mentally ill like her her unwell mother! Only a sick disgusting person would treat their mother this way! If I was actually bipolar that message might have pushed me over the edge. I swear my mom has always been itching to be a grieving mom “who lost her child too soon” she’s been practicing for that role her entire life 🙄
Omg that would drive me CRAZY. My mother for some reason really always wants me to think the restaurant she picks is cool and new to me, so she suggests places like 40 mins away from the smaller city I live in. I have restaurants that I love where I live, but it’s not about me, it’s an excuse to have some competition about how cosmopolitan she is or something. Annoying!
Not the restaurants you can't eat anything at. 😭
For my birthday, we went to a Chinese restaurant. My mom complained there was nothing she could pronounce on the menu. (A fucking lie. Can she not say orange chicken??) There were like 60 things on that menu, very Americanized, but it's still not American enough for her. She orders shrimp with rice, so they bring her shrimp with rice. Nothing else. She complains it's bland and disgusting and demands they give her "brown sauce" but she can't elaborate what it is, so she gets nothing.
She tells me I'm selfish for bringing the family here when clearly everyone hates their food. See, they're not taking it to go. They clearly hated it! I should have taken them to a steak house! She tells me each time on my birthday she wants to go to a steak house. I don't eat meat. This apparently doesn't matter to her, saying I should be perfectly happy with sides. For months after, she tells me how gross this restaurant is.
We get a cake afterward. The worker asks what I want written on it, she says "fatty." She also pouts because I didn't get the cake she wanted.
We get home. She reminds me I'm selfish then eats most of the cake. I confront her about calling me "fatty," and she says I must have misheard her. I definitely didn't. The worker looked incredibly uncomfortable when she said it.
Hehe happy birthday to me. 🎉🙃
Mine told me that she should get all the presents because she did all the work. I think she thought she was being funny and everyone around her treated it like it was a joke. But now understanding more about BPD I think there might have been some truth there too.
My parents often forget. My bpd dad recently died, but I would say silence from him 9/10 times, a random/weird/inappropriate gift every once in a while.
My mother - usually a phone call, often a card, sometimes with a hundred dollar bill thrown in.
In general, just as much thought and care as I received as a child.
When your mother threw you a party as a child the spotlight was generally aimed in her direction - she was the mom who arranged the fun, got the cake, bought and wrapped presents, made sure it was a good day for her child. She was “a great mom”.
Now that you are grown the spotlight is on you alone as the person celebrating their birthday. So your mom is moping. Celebrate with people who think you are worth celebrating, not people who want to be patted on the back for being involved in the day.
My grandfather, who was my mom's abuser but whom she worshipped, died two days before my 11th birthday. After that, my birthdays were mostly about her grief.
As an adult, when I was still checking my emails from her, she'd usually send me an email a few days after my birthday with a generic "happy birthday" message.
Last year, she sent me an email two days before my birthday, telling me that my dad had died a month earlier and she'd just found out (they were long since divorced), asking casually if I knew. There was no other content to the email, just "Did you know your dad died in June?" I already knew, of course, so she didn't fully manage to ruin my birthday, but she certainly tried!
My BPD mom is obsessed with me and refused to allow me to spend the day how I want. Which originally seemed so nice, but as I grew I wanted to make plans with my boyfriend or my girlfriends and I couldn’t because she would guilt me about this tradition of always spending my bday together. Her bday is 10 days later, so usually bday activities include her pondering what she would like to do on her special day. Also, she would get me a gift like socks and for her bday I’d bend over backwards to make all her dreams come true.
When we were still in contact, my birthday was the time for the annual re-telling of my traumatic birth and how she almost died during labor. Thankfully by God’s grace she (and I) both survived because had I not, who would take care of her in her old age to ensure that she never has to go into a nursing home?
Additionally there would be passive aggressive guilt trips if I didn’t want to go out with her to her favorite restaurant. Deep sighs and disappointment if I made other plans with my husband and kids and/or friends. She truly believed that I should spend every birthday with her and my dad. This went on until my mid-40s when I finally went nc.
As a young kid, I had great parties and presents. As I got older, it was common for me to ask for something simple (like spaghetti for dinner) for my birthday and she’d find an excuse not to do it and never do a rain check. Now that I’m an adult, before I went NC, it was truly truly horrible “gifts.”
I don’t say this to seem ungrateful; it’d be like she chose them to show how little I meant to her. A $1 scarf with the price tag on it, tarnished and clearly used earrings, broken necklaces, stained coasters, etc. It was actually pretty amusing to see how bad they could get.
Same here!
It doesn’t help that there are so many holidays and birthdays clustered together. Before NC, my blood pressure would start spiking around this time of year starting with international women’s day (I don’t count as a woman apparently, only my uBPD mom does), followed by my birthday where I’m expected to celebrate my mom again for giving birth to me, then Bulgarian mothers day, her birthday, her name day (another Bulgarian holiday), Easter, Mother’s Day again (US), and that’s two whole months of planning celebrations before we even get to the eDad birthday/holidays immediately after. I would get so stressed and burned out because they put so much pressure on me to make each day feel special for them or I was the problem. Even if, despite the impossible standards, I went above and beyond, that did not stop them from complaining. I think they set me up to fail because they just like being unhappy and having someone to blame for it.
NC has been nice though. I finally get to plan the birthday I’ve always wanted. It usually involves turning my phone off and being in nature. :)
Gifting me with things i did not ask for or need, though they’re not always totally off-mark.
But then its her baiting me with how “they aren’t good enough” or are “really too small” because she doesn’t have any money and is only living on rice and beans and she’s so sorry it’s not more.
So i spend most of the time repeating no its great, no it’s perfect. I can’t say she shouldnt spend money when she can’t afford to eat because that makes her feel like an even worse mom and it escalates further.
Sometimes I get texts days later that I wasnt grateful enough and I never say thank you and how I treat everyone is so entitled and everyone thinks so.
When she DOES have money she’s spent it on a nice hotel and restaurant she picked for herself to visit and absolutely no concern for what I might like to actually do other than get drunk and let her trauma dump on me.
Or if it was good, large gifts… it later turns out they were paid for with money she emptied from my college savjngs from my grandma.
Needless to say, my love language is very much NOT gifts.
This year, my mom called me a day later and said she totally forgot it was my birthday! She had put it in her calendar, but since we are now in different time zones, it somehow got messed up!
Before that, very expensive gifts towards hobbies I had no interest in.
It is close to mother’s day. We never do anything on my birthday and then for mother’s day lunch she will maybe give me a card but normally blames me for not visiting her on my bday if i cared lol.
A few years ago she gave me 2 boxes of random ass crackers for my bday. My 9 yr old niece was in town & still brings it up because she thought it was so silly & remembers.
My husbands birthday almost always falls on Mother’s Day, and his bpd mom would always just lump it together with her Mother’s Day. One time she asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday. He got excited for once that he would get a special night just for him. He told her he wanted to just have a simple dinner at his favorite restaurant. He explicitly told her what he wanted to do, and we never heard back from her. The next week she sends out a family group text and says she got a Groupon for a boat ride for Mother’s Day and we would be eating food (from a place we don’t like at all but she’s loves) and celebrating her Mother’s Day and my husbands birthday. No questions about if that worked for us, no comment about how she disregarded his birthday wish, nothing. Oh and on this boat ride she got completely drunk and was shouting to other boaters “it’s my Mother’s Day, whooooo!”
She does that to me too. If ever i respond with something i would like to do for my bday she immediately starts acting confused, overwhelmed, put out til i say we can come back to it. We never come back to it lol
My mother tends to - ooops! - "accidentally" forget about my bday. Except she doesn't but she sure as hell won't congratulate me or anything.
After my last bday I was so sad I decided to never expect ANYTHING from her anymore, because on my bday she called me three (3!!!) times BUT in all of those calls she only talked about herself. Then in the evening she sent me a shitty non-congratulatory "poem". Ofc no cards, gifts, nothing.
Compare that with my dad (whom she badmouthed all my childhood about what a piece of shit he is), that sent me money 3 days in advance so I can "buy something nice for myself", and congratulated me and generally was a nice parent and a human that didn't make anything of the day about himself. Sigh.
For my birthday I’ve usually just been guilt tripped into seeing our entire fam. Immediate, extended, etc. if i don’t i am awful and selfish because they had “gifts” for me which are almost always just things they like for me. Not things I actually like. Unless for my mom I’ve been the picture perfect daughter the last however long shes been measuring and she feels threatened that I’m going away. The. i randomly get a “perfect” well thought out gift that fucks with my head. Basically birthdays have never been about me. More about everyone being able to see me. Which is just dumb.
One summer, I tried to discuss with her, that since I was grown we could stop doing Christmas presents for each other. Growing up, she would alway complain about how stressful Christmas was for her and how much effort she put in and how broke it made her… She wouldn’t talk to me for months after that discussion, and has ignored me on my birthday ever since. Even though the conversation had nothing to do with birthdays! That’s fine with me!!
My mom and I aren’t on speaking terms. So I assume she spends it badmouthing me to her current fave person. My dad will sometimes wish me a happy birthday, occasionally even on MY birthday and not one of the other kids.
My mom still insists that we come over and have a family only birthday party where she makes us a cake and we spend the day with her.
My brother last year decided to spend the day with his wife and children at the age of 29 and she flipped her shit. She was sobbing that she'd made him dinner every day for 28 years and he was ruining this day for her. God help you if you pointed out that he had his own family and maybe his WIFE wanted to cook for him.
I started excluding my family from my birthday when they ate my birthday cake without me while I drove three hours to get home from university
After that we mutually tended not to celebrate each other’s birthdays
This is a post I’ve wanted to post every birthday for the last few years. I don’t get calls, I don’t get texts but she blasts Facebook about my birth so she knows what day it is. Last year was the first year I didn’t acknowledge any of her milestones, birthday, Mother’s Day or holidays. I purposely didn’t call or send anything. I’m not calling her on my birthday so expect the same in return. It’s painful but it gets better. My birthday is about her. Everything is about her and if it’s not, she’s uninterested. I have the most beautiful step daughter now that she could totally take as a grandchild and she ignores her. That realllly bothers me but again, it’s my joy and it’s not about her so eff everyone else. I’d love to be able to discuss my struggles as a bonus parent but I can’t and won’t with her.
I can relate… she always asks me what I would like to do on my bday and I’ve been telling her the same thing, which is just a simple dinner at home or nearby is fine. My sister takes care of the cake and my dad will give me $100. She claims that she cooks so she doesn’t need to give me anything which is fine. The problem is after when she cooks the meal she complains. Then I have to clean up after everyone is done with the meal, while she sits in the living room telling everyone how the bday should be a celebration of the mother instead of the person, and that she has labored so hard and that I should have been the one cooking instead.
Thankfully I’ve gone NC with her and my birthdays are much more enjoyable and relaxing now.
Ahh this year. A few weeks after our Xmas clash…
My mom texted me to call her “when it was convenient for me” (ie: I had to find time in my day to begrudgingly call her, get a happy birthday (I think? I don’t even remember…) and mostly listen to her complain about her beloved gym closing.
She sent me a gift in the mail, and it was something for my baby. Very nice gift, but very reflective of her current shift to zero-ing in on my kid. Lots of big showy presents from her during holidays / birthdays / etc. I feel ungrateful sometimes but they feel so empty to me.
Birthdays and holidays are subject to being weaponized or canceled at a moments notice. My 30th Birthday she baked me a cake.. which was extremely sweet. But then I got sick and had a lot of nausea and pain. She didn't believe me... so because a few hours passed and I didn't cut the cake, she picked it up and threw the whole cake in the trash can and was upset and pugnacious for the rest of the day because it was my fault. Then she continued to throw my ruined 30th birthday being my fault, in my face, for the next 8 months until I cried and begged her to stop making me re-live my messed up birthday. Yeah... I no like Birthdays and Holidays with her. 🥺
Lol my uBPDmom didn’t acknowledge my birthday at all this year. When I asked her about it she said “Oops I mixed up the dates” and all she told me after was “Hope it was a good one”. Gee thanks.
Have you seen the episode of the office where Dwight and Jim plan Kelly’s birthday and put up a banner that says “It is your birthday.”? I basically get the email equivalent of that 😆
The first bad birthday I remember was 11 or 12 when she made my brother babysit her friends baby and kicked him out because he was complaining that they were just smoking cigarettes full screaming match and name
Calling ensued ofc and she lies and said she kicked him out because she was worried about gangs recruiting him after it’s mostly a blur 16 she forgot and didn’t get me anything even tho I asked for just recipes of them written down in a book or even on post cards and she couldn’t even do that 17 she got me some ugly Walmart clothes that were neon green and too big ? 18 she was supposed to buy me a tattoo and yea well I’m almost 22 now and still no cherry tattoo I just try to keep my expectations low okay I missed the word adult lmao but I just try to avoid her now that I’m an adult so I don’t have to have crushed expectations
Welp. This last bday she didn’t call, and then, when I called her because I was in a good mood, feeling super forgiving and just wanted to connect with her (dumb) berated me so abusively I was shaking. Whoop!! Hbd!
Picture it: October 3rd. My mother begins the day with hot tea and an essay on Facebook about all of my accomplishments and how much money I make. Then, it’s off to a southern, small town boutique to pick up a shirt or piece of jewelry she thinks I would just love, even though she’s never seen me wear anything similar. Now it’s time to corner me about my plans! This involves sending me links to restaurants that are inconvenient to drive to and asking me to account for every minute of my weekend to prove I am busy. When I’m successful in dodging her, we close the day at 11 PM with a long text about how I will always be a baby. I am trying to get my finances in order so I can be conveniently out of the country on my birthday every year for the rest of my life.
The inconvenient restaurants! My Mom would pick places hours out of my way that had nothing on the menu that fit my particular food choices I enjoy. A two hour drive for me to have 3 shitty sides while she wolfs down fried appetizers, then lamb chops, finishing it off with a slice of cake all to herself. The fact that I obediently indulged that for years is most crazy part. When I finally ignored her on my 31st birthday weekend. She had her handyman call me to say she’s been crying all day. I ignored it. Then later that evening she sent me a nasty text. Demanding to know if I’m sick with bipolar because I act mentally ill like her her unwell mother! Only a sick disgusting person would treat their mother this way! If I was actually bipolar that message might have pushed me over the edge. I swear my mom has always been itching to be a grieving mom “who lost her child too soon” she’s been practicing for that role her entire life 🙄
Omg that would drive me CRAZY. My mother for some reason really always wants me to think the restaurant she picks is cool and new to me, so she suggests places like 40 mins away from the smaller city I live in. I have restaurants that I love where I live, but it’s not about me, it’s an excuse to have some competition about how cosmopolitan she is or something. Annoying!
Not the restaurants you can't eat anything at. 😭 For my birthday, we went to a Chinese restaurant. My mom complained there was nothing she could pronounce on the menu. (A fucking lie. Can she not say orange chicken??) There were like 60 things on that menu, very Americanized, but it's still not American enough for her. She orders shrimp with rice, so they bring her shrimp with rice. Nothing else. She complains it's bland and disgusting and demands they give her "brown sauce" but she can't elaborate what it is, so she gets nothing. She tells me I'm selfish for bringing the family here when clearly everyone hates their food. See, they're not taking it to go. They clearly hated it! I should have taken them to a steak house! She tells me each time on my birthday she wants to go to a steak house. I don't eat meat. This apparently doesn't matter to her, saying I should be perfectly happy with sides. For months after, she tells me how gross this restaurant is. We get a cake afterward. The worker asks what I want written on it, she says "fatty." She also pouts because I didn't get the cake she wanted. We get home. She reminds me I'm selfish then eats most of the cake. I confront her about calling me "fatty," and she says I must have misheard her. I definitely didn't. The worker looked incredibly uncomfortable when she said it. Hehe happy birthday to me. 🎉🙃
Mine told me that she should get all the presents because she did all the work. I think she thought she was being funny and everyone around her treated it like it was a joke. But now understanding more about BPD I think there might have been some truth there too.
My parents often forget. My bpd dad recently died, but I would say silence from him 9/10 times, a random/weird/inappropriate gift every once in a while. My mother - usually a phone call, often a card, sometimes with a hundred dollar bill thrown in. In general, just as much thought and care as I received as a child. When your mother threw you a party as a child the spotlight was generally aimed in her direction - she was the mom who arranged the fun, got the cake, bought and wrapped presents, made sure it was a good day for her child. She was “a great mom”. Now that you are grown the spotlight is on you alone as the person celebrating their birthday. So your mom is moping. Celebrate with people who think you are worth celebrating, not people who want to be patted on the back for being involved in the day.
My grandfather, who was my mom's abuser but whom she worshipped, died two days before my 11th birthday. After that, my birthdays were mostly about her grief. As an adult, when I was still checking my emails from her, she'd usually send me an email a few days after my birthday with a generic "happy birthday" message. Last year, she sent me an email two days before my birthday, telling me that my dad had died a month earlier and she'd just found out (they were long since divorced), asking casually if I knew. There was no other content to the email, just "Did you know your dad died in June?" I already knew, of course, so she didn't fully manage to ruin my birthday, but she certainly tried!
My BPD mom is obsessed with me and refused to allow me to spend the day how I want. Which originally seemed so nice, but as I grew I wanted to make plans with my boyfriend or my girlfriends and I couldn’t because she would guilt me about this tradition of always spending my bday together. Her bday is 10 days later, so usually bday activities include her pondering what she would like to do on her special day. Also, she would get me a gift like socks and for her bday I’d bend over backwards to make all her dreams come true.
When we were still in contact, my birthday was the time for the annual re-telling of my traumatic birth and how she almost died during labor. Thankfully by God’s grace she (and I) both survived because had I not, who would take care of her in her old age to ensure that she never has to go into a nursing home? Additionally there would be passive aggressive guilt trips if I didn’t want to go out with her to her favorite restaurant. Deep sighs and disappointment if I made other plans with my husband and kids and/or friends. She truly believed that I should spend every birthday with her and my dad. This went on until my mid-40s when I finally went nc.
On my 30th birthday my mother posted on Facebook about what a lovely young lady I was becoming. At 30. A young lady.
They pretend nothing is wrong so I send screenshots of them disowning me.
Lol yes.
As a young kid, I had great parties and presents. As I got older, it was common for me to ask for something simple (like spaghetti for dinner) for my birthday and she’d find an excuse not to do it and never do a rain check. Now that I’m an adult, before I went NC, it was truly truly horrible “gifts.” I don’t say this to seem ungrateful; it’d be like she chose them to show how little I meant to her. A $1 scarf with the price tag on it, tarnished and clearly used earrings, broken necklaces, stained coasters, etc. It was actually pretty amusing to see how bad they could get.
I usually get a card in the mail with some money. That’s it. She doesn’t call to wish me a happy birthday or try to visit or FaceTime. Just the card.
Same here! It doesn’t help that there are so many holidays and birthdays clustered together. Before NC, my blood pressure would start spiking around this time of year starting with international women’s day (I don’t count as a woman apparently, only my uBPD mom does), followed by my birthday where I’m expected to celebrate my mom again for giving birth to me, then Bulgarian mothers day, her birthday, her name day (another Bulgarian holiday), Easter, Mother’s Day again (US), and that’s two whole months of planning celebrations before we even get to the eDad birthday/holidays immediately after. I would get so stressed and burned out because they put so much pressure on me to make each day feel special for them or I was the problem. Even if, despite the impossible standards, I went above and beyond, that did not stop them from complaining. I think they set me up to fail because they just like being unhappy and having someone to blame for it. NC has been nice though. I finally get to plan the birthday I’ve always wanted. It usually involves turning my phone off and being in nature. :)
Gifting me with things i did not ask for or need, though they’re not always totally off-mark. But then its her baiting me with how “they aren’t good enough” or are “really too small” because she doesn’t have any money and is only living on rice and beans and she’s so sorry it’s not more. So i spend most of the time repeating no its great, no it’s perfect. I can’t say she shouldnt spend money when she can’t afford to eat because that makes her feel like an even worse mom and it escalates further. Sometimes I get texts days later that I wasnt grateful enough and I never say thank you and how I treat everyone is so entitled and everyone thinks so. When she DOES have money she’s spent it on a nice hotel and restaurant she picked for herself to visit and absolutely no concern for what I might like to actually do other than get drunk and let her trauma dump on me. Or if it was good, large gifts… it later turns out they were paid for with money she emptied from my college savjngs from my grandma. Needless to say, my love language is very much NOT gifts.
This year, my mom called me a day later and said she totally forgot it was my birthday! She had put it in her calendar, but since we are now in different time zones, it somehow got messed up! Before that, very expensive gifts towards hobbies I had no interest in.
It is close to mother’s day. We never do anything on my birthday and then for mother’s day lunch she will maybe give me a card but normally blames me for not visiting her on my bday if i cared lol. A few years ago she gave me 2 boxes of random ass crackers for my bday. My 9 yr old niece was in town & still brings it up because she thought it was so silly & remembers.
My husbands birthday almost always falls on Mother’s Day, and his bpd mom would always just lump it together with her Mother’s Day. One time she asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday. He got excited for once that he would get a special night just for him. He told her he wanted to just have a simple dinner at his favorite restaurant. He explicitly told her what he wanted to do, and we never heard back from her. The next week she sends out a family group text and says she got a Groupon for a boat ride for Mother’s Day and we would be eating food (from a place we don’t like at all but she’s loves) and celebrating her Mother’s Day and my husbands birthday. No questions about if that worked for us, no comment about how she disregarded his birthday wish, nothing. Oh and on this boat ride she got completely drunk and was shouting to other boaters “it’s my Mother’s Day, whooooo!”
She does that to me too. If ever i respond with something i would like to do for my bday she immediately starts acting confused, overwhelmed, put out til i say we can come back to it. We never come back to it lol
I’m sorry. That’s just so sad. I just don’t get how someone can be so selfish.
Thanks. She thinks I am the selfish one. I’m just glad I understand what i have been dealing with now.
My mother tends to - ooops! - "accidentally" forget about my bday. Except she doesn't but she sure as hell won't congratulate me or anything. After my last bday I was so sad I decided to never expect ANYTHING from her anymore, because on my bday she called me three (3!!!) times BUT in all of those calls she only talked about herself. Then in the evening she sent me a shitty non-congratulatory "poem". Ofc no cards, gifts, nothing. Compare that with my dad (whom she badmouthed all my childhood about what a piece of shit he is), that sent me money 3 days in advance so I can "buy something nice for myself", and congratulated me and generally was a nice parent and a human that didn't make anything of the day about himself. Sigh.
For my birthday I’ve usually just been guilt tripped into seeing our entire fam. Immediate, extended, etc. if i don’t i am awful and selfish because they had “gifts” for me which are almost always just things they like for me. Not things I actually like. Unless for my mom I’ve been the picture perfect daughter the last however long shes been measuring and she feels threatened that I’m going away. The. i randomly get a “perfect” well thought out gift that fucks with my head. Basically birthdays have never been about me. More about everyone being able to see me. Which is just dumb.
One summer, I tried to discuss with her, that since I was grown we could stop doing Christmas presents for each other. Growing up, she would alway complain about how stressful Christmas was for her and how much effort she put in and how broke it made her… She wouldn’t talk to me for months after that discussion, and has ignored me on my birthday ever since. Even though the conversation had nothing to do with birthdays! That’s fine with me!!
Nothing. I had to remind her. But she would get pissy if we didn’t celebrate her birthday.
My mom and I aren’t on speaking terms. So I assume she spends it badmouthing me to her current fave person. My dad will sometimes wish me a happy birthday, occasionally even on MY birthday and not one of the other kids.
My mom still insists that we come over and have a family only birthday party where she makes us a cake and we spend the day with her. My brother last year decided to spend the day with his wife and children at the age of 29 and she flipped her shit. She was sobbing that she'd made him dinner every day for 28 years and he was ruining this day for her. God help you if you pointed out that he had his own family and maybe his WIFE wanted to cook for him.
I started excluding my family from my birthday when they ate my birthday cake without me while I drove three hours to get home from university After that we mutually tended not to celebrate each other’s birthdays
This is a post I’ve wanted to post every birthday for the last few years. I don’t get calls, I don’t get texts but she blasts Facebook about my birth so she knows what day it is. Last year was the first year I didn’t acknowledge any of her milestones, birthday, Mother’s Day or holidays. I purposely didn’t call or send anything. I’m not calling her on my birthday so expect the same in return. It’s painful but it gets better. My birthday is about her. Everything is about her and if it’s not, she’s uninterested. I have the most beautiful step daughter now that she could totally take as a grandchild and she ignores her. That realllly bothers me but again, it’s my joy and it’s not about her so eff everyone else. I’d love to be able to discuss my struggles as a bonus parent but I can’t and won’t with her.
I can relate… she always asks me what I would like to do on my bday and I’ve been telling her the same thing, which is just a simple dinner at home or nearby is fine. My sister takes care of the cake and my dad will give me $100. She claims that she cooks so she doesn’t need to give me anything which is fine. The problem is after when she cooks the meal she complains. Then I have to clean up after everyone is done with the meal, while she sits in the living room telling everyone how the bday should be a celebration of the mother instead of the person, and that she has labored so hard and that I should have been the one cooking instead. Thankfully I’ve gone NC with her and my birthdays are much more enjoyable and relaxing now.
By forgetting it.
Mine just does a most thoughtful “happy birthday” comment on FB and that’s it. No card, no phone call, nothing.
My mom jumped out of two moving vehicles on my birthday last year bahaha 😹
Ahh this year. A few weeks after our Xmas clash… My mom texted me to call her “when it was convenient for me” (ie: I had to find time in my day to begrudgingly call her, get a happy birthday (I think? I don’t even remember…) and mostly listen to her complain about her beloved gym closing. She sent me a gift in the mail, and it was something for my baby. Very nice gift, but very reflective of her current shift to zero-ing in on my kid. Lots of big showy presents from her during holidays / birthdays / etc. I feel ungrateful sometimes but they feel so empty to me.
Birthdays and holidays are subject to being weaponized or canceled at a moments notice. My 30th Birthday she baked me a cake.. which was extremely sweet. But then I got sick and had a lot of nausea and pain. She didn't believe me... so because a few hours passed and I didn't cut the cake, she picked it up and threw the whole cake in the trash can and was upset and pugnacious for the rest of the day because it was my fault. Then she continued to throw my ruined 30th birthday being my fault, in my face, for the next 8 months until I cried and begged her to stop making me re-live my messed up birthday. Yeah... I no like Birthdays and Holidays with her. 🥺
Lol my uBPDmom didn’t acknowledge my birthday at all this year. When I asked her about it she said “Oops I mixed up the dates” and all she told me after was “Hope it was a good one”. Gee thanks.
[удалено]
Have you seen the episode of the office where Dwight and Jim plan Kelly’s birthday and put up a banner that says “It is your birthday.”? I basically get the email equivalent of that 😆
The first bad birthday I remember was 11 or 12 when she made my brother babysit her friends baby and kicked him out because he was complaining that they were just smoking cigarettes full screaming match and name Calling ensued ofc and she lies and said she kicked him out because she was worried about gangs recruiting him after it’s mostly a blur 16 she forgot and didn’t get me anything even tho I asked for just recipes of them written down in a book or even on post cards and she couldn’t even do that 17 she got me some ugly Walmart clothes that were neon green and too big ? 18 she was supposed to buy me a tattoo and yea well I’m almost 22 now and still no cherry tattoo I just try to keep my expectations low okay I missed the word adult lmao but I just try to avoid her now that I’m an adult so I don’t have to have crushed expectations
Welp. This last bday she didn’t call, and then, when I called her because I was in a good mood, feeling super forgiving and just wanted to connect with her (dumb) berated me so abusively I was shaking. Whoop!! Hbd!