Abandoned as a teenager, who would you blame for this?

[Latenightponderings]

A few months before my 17th birthday I was temporarily staying with a new boyfriend, my mum upped and left town without a backward glance. We had a rocky relationship once i hit my teens as I practically raised myself, she took to drinking with the neighbours alot which I didn't like. She has a mild learning disability + depression.

One day I went to her house to see her only to find my two aunts there which was strange as they lived 300 old miles away. It turned out they'd come down to move her and she was doing a moonlight flit to the other side of the country near her sisters. It was her intention to go without telling me but my unannounced visit scuppered that.

Obviously I was upset. I didn't have any other family locally, or much by way of a support network and dispite her limitations i loved her and needed my mum.

She assured me she'd wait a few days so I could get the rest of my stuff before she went but she didn't. When I returned the next morning to get what was left of my belongings they had already gone.

I then couldn't reach her by phone for about 6 months as she changed her number and my aunt refused to facilitate a phone call and blocked all my attempts of contact. I later found out my pushy aunt was the one who was pushing for the change of number, also the one spearheading the relocation and going NC with me (she admitted this - she said she thought being in touch with me would prevent DM settling in)

We are now over a decade down the line and we have rebuilt our relationship to an extent, I allow her (supervised and limited) access to my DC. I have low expectations ofc.

All that said, if you were me who would you hold responsible for all of that?

Does her (mild) learning disability absolve her of any blame?

Would you be mad at the aunts?

Her sudden departure sparked a really crap time of my life, domestic abuse, a mental health decline etc. Things were really shit for a long time.

Well, it’s not a simple question. Learning disability or no, she still made a bad choice. But your Aunts sound awful. You could blame the neighbours encouraging the drinking too. And probably lots of other things you haven’t me mentioned. Almost always, when something goes wrong like it did for you, there are a lot of contributing factors eg. What was her experience of being parented? What about your aunts. Has your mum been abused/suffered with poor mental health (this is more likely due to her LD)?

Ultimately, blame doesn’t get you anywhere. it’s definitely not your fault. You are protecting your own children, which is great. I wonder if you’d benefit from some counselling or therapy to help you process it all?

The only thing I can say is that you were not to blame.

Nobody in their right mind would abandon their child in such a way, but whoever it was behind it, none of it was your fault. I cannot imagine ever doing such a thing to my own dc, no matter what the circumstances,

I’m so sorry you went through this. As previous poster said, whoever pulled the strings, none of this was your fault.

Are you asking if you must forgive your mother? The answer is that no, you don’t have to. You can acknowledge what happened and what SHE did, and draw your own boundaries and know for yourself why you’ve made those decisions.

I don't understand how a mother and her two sisters could treat a 16 year old daughter / niece like this.

I don’t have children and I didn’t have a great mother, but she would never have done anything as bad as that. I have a niece that I am not particularly close to, but in this scenario, I would be supportive to my teenage niece not my adult sister. I don’t know why you bother with any of them.

I'd be upset with all three of them. As others have said, none of it is your fault. Not one bit.

Your mother is first to blame, but maybe with some compassion given she was obviously not in sound mind at the time.

I'm sorry you had to go through that. You didn't deserve it.

It sounds like you are breaking the cycle of abuse which is amazing. I am going to take a guess that your mother's upbringing was not trauma free, that being said she made a choice to have and raise a child and to then later abandon her.
Do her sisters feel her learning disability was a lot worse than what you remember? Either way they offered you no support.
They are all in the wrong, you don't have to forgive any of them. You can allow yourself to let go of the past but you don't have to forgive. I hope life is a bit easier for you now.

I'm so sorry.

Sounds like you are in a good place now, kudos to you.

What is the extent of her learning disability? What is her life like?

Either way, she made a very poor decision, and your aunts behaved very badly.

Well done you for rising above it all x

Jesus Christ your mother is entirely to blame. And your aunts. I think you are being very gracious.

Your mother is entirely to blame, are you being pressured to think she isnt?

Is your mum now being abused by your aunts, or is she happy?

It was appalling and not your fault. They may have felt she was in a crisis, at risk of harm from her own dangerous behaviour and needed an intervention. They may have felt that there was no way of involving you without effectively preventing her from going.

It sounds like it was a difficult situation all round.

Would you have gone if they invited you or would you have stayed with your boyfriend?

At 17 we are generally quite self involved and you may not have been aware how bad her situation was.

That's no excuse for what they did, but it may have been less clear cut than it looks.

looking for blame will eat you up you need to move forward, get some therapy and be the best parent for your own kids.

I suspect it was a horrible situation which had its roots in the distant past, and difficult to know where the blame lies. Your mother had learning difficulties and was depressed and drinking excessively in bad company, which was likely to lead to her being abused. I can understand why her sisters wanted to get her out of that situation, but they should have given you the chance to go with them.

Like others, I am wondering what their childhood was like, and what age they left home. It may be that they left school at 15 and were independent at 16 - and I am guessing you were not in school at this time? And, from their point of view, had moved out to live with your then boyfriend.

Obviously they should have let you speak to your mum, and move to their town if you wanted. I would forgive your mother though, while keeping low expectations of her.

My niece walked out of home on her 16th birthday and went live with her boyfriends family - just like that, they had been arguing for years, in that case it was the father was the problem. Currently my 18yr old nephew has his 16
yr old GF living with his family, at least her mother knows she is safe.

There is a lot of family estrangement

I agree, it's unforgivable.

So do I, I'd have nothing to do with any of them.

How absolutely awful and unforgivable of them. You poor thing. I have a 17 year old daughter. She's just a kid. Can't imagine just sodding off and leaving her all alone in the world.

The question you're asking won't bring you any peace.

You would be better on working through your very legitimate feelings of hurt in therapy and reparenting that incredible 17 year old girl that survived so much.

This. Your mother and Aunts were so, so cruel.

I wouldn’t let them anywhere near your children.

What @RodiganReed said.

I agree with others that blame will not give you much comfort. Chances are they didn't really appreciate that what they were doing was wrong because their own upbringing wasn't nurturing. In my era, people could leave school, get a job and a flat aged 16. We were treated as adults by then. If you had already left home, they probably thought of you as fully independent, moved in with a man etc. Not a very intelligent or empathetic way to look at a teenager's life, but quite normal for that generation.

So sorry to hear about what’s happened to you.

Sadly, there are almost always two sides to a story, and the blame game is never usually a healthy practice. Let’s be blunt, 16-17 year olds can be some pretty awfull people to be around at times - and some adults can struggle to manage that relationship and stay healthy. I’m not saying you were, and you don’t really share what type of teen you were, but staying with a bf temporarily at age 16 suggests there could be another side to this, that your mother struggled with, hence the intervention by her family, which does sound rather unconventional and excessive, if there is no backstory.

If you’ve rebuilt some sort of a relationship, that’s great, but let bygones go.

Why did the two Aunts felt your mum needed to be closer to them AND away from you?

I mean I understand why they thought your mum needed support. She clearly needed some.
But the idea that it was ok to just leave you in your own fending fur yourself Wo even talking to you about it, giving you time to get organised etc…. That’s nit just a question if ‘times were different and they’d just treated you as an adult’. Because you would not treat an adult like this either.

Yes being 17 and in a relationship was considered (wrongly!) to be adult territory when I was young (90s).

It's also not uncommon for there to be a sense that adolescent children of people with a learning disability can 'overtake' their parent somehow (also common in sibling relationships where the elder one with a disability is 'overtaken' by the younger one) - so the extended family views the person with the disability as being in greater need and so the needs of the younger child/ sibling get lost. I'm not saying this is right or that it diminishes your experience in anyway, but having spent nearly 2 decades in socal care its a dynamic I've seen play out over and over again.

@Bard6817 even if thecOP had been awful, it STILL. wouldn’t make it right to leave a teenage, or an dependent adult fur that matter, on their own, simply moonlighting and nit telling them at all about the move.

Implying that somehow the OP must have brought that in herself is disgraceful Imo. Incl the ‘you must have been bad if you were already living with a bf at 16yo’ missing the fact her mum wasn’t there fur her, she was kept to raise herself. And that the OP was trying to avoid the drinking sessions her mum indulged in.
Talk about attacking the victim there.

You were still a child, and of course you still needed your parents!

No child can fend for themselves adequately at such a young age. I am so sorry you had to go through such terrible abandonment op. There is absolutely no excuse for it, and I am not even going to try and imagine one.

I don't think I could get past it op. I would not want a relationship with my aunts either. It is possibl;e your mother had a breakdown and they moved her to better support her, but they should have absolutely taken you as well.

Counselling is the way forward. I hope you have a happier, kinder life now