Family Silence

So here it is, the night before Thanksgiving, and my mother has just told me to get away from her. My relationship with my mother is too complicated to explain in one sitting, but there is this history of me giving everything that I can, and when I want to do something for myself, I am considered selfish. Which really begs the question....When does looking out for you best interest become "You are being selfish?" Are they really one in the same?

I think about this a lot. Because I get the insult 'selfish' hurled at me a lot by my mother. Usually when I am doing something that negatively affects her. If I have a laptop that I want to replace because it no longer functions as well as it should, I am selfish to spend money on that when she needs money. When I say that I am going to sell old laptop to make up difference for new laptop, now I am not to sell the laptop because she will use computer. I am going to move out because I am unhappy, and I am selfish for telling her I am going to sell MY laptop. You say that you spent all this time fixing the laptop, and I should not be selfish and think of YOU-which as a by product means that I am neglecting myself- doesn't that make you selfish? The very thing you are accusing me of being?

The problem with being introverted people is that you walk around a house that is FILLED with tension. Everyone is on edge and we go on talking about small things- "Have you talked to your sister? I made coffee. Let me tell you what happened at work today." - when brewing under the surface is everything that we don't say and when that seal is finally broken, it's been so long since you've said anything, that the things you are saying don't seem to relate.

I am not moving out because of a dog. I am moving out because of the way you told me that I could not have a dog. TOLD ME. Like I don't pay money to live here, like you haven't leaned on me in the past, like I am not someone that has picked you up off the floor when you were upset. I am moving out because this is the way it always it with us. If there is something that is good for me and perhaps mildly inconvenient for you, I am selfish for wanting it.

I have spent years loving you, worshipping the person you are, wishing that I could be good enough for you to love me back. I saw these bad sides of you that made me hate you, and you could, in an instant, make me feel like shit for even having the thought that you weren't perfect. You have manipulated me in so many ways it's unimaginable that I am functioning. But you will never see it that way. I keep everything inside of me, I talk more to my therapist than I do to you. Because there are things that you will not let me say, things that you do not want to hear. Because if I tell you the things that make me imperfect, you will take it as a reflection on you. And if you won't let me tell you these things? Doesn't that make you selfish?