to blame my mother for my shit life?

[SlippingMask]

I have nc but have been a regular until a few months ago.

My mother physically and emotionally abused me throughout my childhood from the ages of 8 onwards at least. I was sexually abused and she punished me for it, blamed me for a pet dying (I was nowhere near it), prevented me fom having contact with my father and told me she had to lock away the knives at night because she was sure I would get up in the night and kill everyone. I was called awful names like slut, stinking bitch etc. I was singled out amongst my sublings , not bought clothes and stuff. Despite this I was a top class student with not so much as a detention on my record. i spent most of childhood shut in my bedroom, left out of family events and holidays, wishing I would die in my sleep

I now suffer from mental health issues such as OCD (the harm kind where I am terrified I may go crazy and harm someone), panic attacks and anxiety. I have never been able to build a career as I have such low self esteem and leave jobs as soon as I start getting good at them. This has impacted massively on my finances. I am an ineffective parent as I am crap at disciplining my DC because I dont want them upset, so they are unfortunately rude and uncooperative which makes life very stressful.

For most of my life, I have believed that I am defective and not normal and don't deserve anything nice in material things or experiences.

I was 40 before I realised I was not the demon I thought I was. So much life wasted! AIBU to blame my mother for this or should I not be blaming her for the way my life turned out?

No Yanbu - it sounds like you were abused and bullied. Rather than 'blaming' her now, perhaps you could look into some counselling? This might help you with understand and accepting what has happened so you can move forward positively with your own life.

Yes, she is to blame for the past.

But the future is yours. If you are not already having therapy, please look into it. Also parenting classes. Kids need limits, you might need some help in learning how to parent confident, because your own childhood was so crap.

Yes of course she is to blame for what she did. My mother wasnt a nice person to say the least, but the one thing she did was give you life. Get counselling and find a way to forgive her, then you can move on and be who you truly want to be.

This is going to sound really clique (can't do the bit above the e) but your hurting yourself by holding it against her. The best revenge is to live a happy life. My mums a bitch although not I'm the same league as yours and I had to let it go. I saw it as her still hurting me by me being affected by it still.

Apologies. I posted this thread twice somehow. Thank you for the replies. i know I need to move on. I have had counselling but my thought processes are so ingrained now, it feels impossible to feel differently about myself.

What has made it worse is that my mother cut me off while I going through therapy as she 'didn't want to get involved in my problems and didn't want her old age ruined'. My siblings followed her and now I have to live with the fact that my DC have no extended family in their lives and they know that they are not interested in them which just gives me something else to beat myself up about.

My mother ripped me to pieces and then literally waltzed off merrily into the sunset. Can't quite believe that this is my life sometimes!