Hi, I've name changed for this as I think it's probably quite outing if my mother happens to be on here. I'm in need of some outside perspective. I think I might have been emotionally abused as a child but I'm not sure.
One of my earliest memories is me telling my mother that I didn't want to finish my tea because I didn't like it. She told me I had to finish, and I started to cry. Then she grabbed me by the hair and rubbed my face into the food. Then she laughed a lot.
When I was about 11 I walked into the kitchen to ask her something, and she was sitting in there drinking (she drank a lot). My brother and sister were also in there. As I started to speak she burst out laughing and said "God, your belly is massive". Then she pulled my top up so everyone could see my belly, and grabbed hold of it to shake it and make it wobble. She said "haha, fatty!" And kept laughing. I ran away and cried in my room. Later on she followed me ok there to shout at me more. Looking back at old pictures, I would say my weight was quite normal. I always kept track of my weight because she mentioned it so much, and I was never in the unhealthy weight range for my height.
I used to hide from her a lot when I was at home. I wasn't allowed to go out much and didn't have very many friends. Nobody wanted to come to my house. She would have a few drinks and then come and find me and start shouting at me for things that I had done to her years earlier. Sometimes she would throw things. Once she grabbed a pile of CDs and kept launching them at my head. I managed to duck and miss most of them, which meant they hit the wall behind me and left marks. She told me off for marking the wall.
Most of the time she was angry.
My siblings and I used to take it in turns to cook. I was always so nervous when it was my turn because I was desperate to keep her calm. Whatever I made she would say I'd done it wrong and start shouting. I don't remember the food in much detail, but I think it was fairly normal stuff like pasta and sauce, or sausage mash. I probably didn't make it perfectly but it was usually edible. The meal would often end in her screaming at me and storming out, and me crying.
A few times when I was a teenager she called me a slut. It was never in the context of me hanging around with boys, it would just be said out of the blue.
When I went off to uni she would sometimes call or text me when drunk and say nasty things to me. She didn't turn up to my graduation because she was hungover. She left me waiting outside. Called me at the last minute with a crappy excuse, and I found out later through my sister that it was a lie because she was really hungover.
A lot of my childhood memories are of her saying nasty things that made me cry, and then her pointing and laughing. She often called me fat. I felt afraid of her. She once leaned over the table and grabbed me by the neck because I had "given her cheek". She was holding up a bread knife. I said nothing in response. She let go after a few seconds and sat down. We finished our meal in silence and then she told me to get out of her sight.
I don't know if it was abuse? She always tells me I'm oversensitive. She often tells me she loves me and I think she means it. Can it have been abuse if she really loved me?
There are lots more things but I don't want my post to be too long. If you made it this far, thank you for reading.
I'm so confused. Any insight would be much appreciated.