<p>Love hearing this harvestmoon! What a great accomplishment!</p>
<p>Glad it ended up being a good experience. I learned so much from all my experiences abroad. </p>
<p>Congrats to you, Harvestmoon! May this be the first of many wonderful adventures for you!</p>
<p>Thanks so much for letting us know how it all turned out. You are an amazing person with lots of interesting journeys ahead!</p>
<p>Harvestmoon. Thanks so much for allowing us into your life as you struggled with this transition.</p>
<p>I have always believed that life is just one transition to the next. The sooner you start learning the best way for you to transition the easier it gets the next time. Grade school, high school, college, first job, first move, long term assignments etc. marriage, kids , deaths, divorces. It is all about adapting. </p>
<p>Look at you. You now have some strategies for your next transition. Congrats!! Well done.</p>
<p>There should be a thread with links to various types of CC ‘Happy Endings’ stories - like this one, as well as admission and financial aid stories. People would enjoy reading them.</p>
<p>Excellent!! Thank you for the update and it’s wonderful to hear you enjoyed your time and discovered a lot about yourself. Definitely go for the study abroad program.</p>
<p>I agree, definitely go for study abroad program, even for a short one. For some kids they found out they actually missed their parents. Go figure!
My husband and I were laughing so hard.</p>
<p>Thank you all SO, SO much for all of the continued support!!! It truly does mean a lot to me, and to be honest, it really helped smooth everything over. Just reading all of the encouraging words and anecdotes really helped me out!!</p>
<p>However, though my time abroad would definitely be considered a success, I’m afraid that my transition home has been anything but one. To be honest, my mom hasn’t gotten any better and I don’t know what to do. She told me she stopped taking her depression pills because they made her sick and because they weren’t working (she only took them for a few days), and she then snapped that she didn’t need medicine and that she could work on it on her own.</p>
<p>I got home late on Saturday night and everything started off okay since my mom was happy to see me hop off the train. However, after we got home, it already started to go downhill. I was sort of unpacking while I showed her the things I bought, gave her the gifts I got her, and showed her all my pictures, but then the little “comments” started.</p>
<p>She said “See how clean the house is because you were gone? I bet it won’t take long for you to mess it up again.” She had bought me a “welcome back” balloon which really was quite sweet, but then she ruined it by saying “why don’t you take a picture and put THAT on Facebook instead of all your pictures with your friends?”</p>
<p>I was really tired and just wanted to go to bed, so I didn’t confront her about anything until yesterday. She had practically made me wash and unpack everything throughout the day, and by around 4 o’clock, I was really quite bored and wanted to go see one of my friends. My mom had rolled her eyes and said “I knew that was coming. You just got back and you already need to go see them.” Then when I was walking out the door, she was complaining about going back to work on Monday and I told her I wasn’t happy about going back to work myself. She then started talking over me and basically saying “yeah, well mine’s worse,” and I finally snapped and told her that it wasn’t a competition and that she was being negative and selfish.</p>
<p>She then started crying angrily and was going on about how she hadn’t worked in 3 weeks (she’s a pre-school teacher/tutorer and had no jobs the past three weeks) and that she can’t afford anything. She then yelled about how I just ran off across the continent while she was struggling, and when I reminded her that I had given her a couple hundred dollars before I left, she snorted and said it all went to gas and that it didn’t help anything anyway.</p>
<p>Just to appease her, I actually showed up to her work today to see her and her co-workers. She immediately put on this like “oh my daughter is here!” show and was smiling at me, hugging me, going on about how wonderful I am, and it just made me sick to my stomach. When someone asked how my trip was, I blurted out “it was wonderful and I can’t wait to study abroad in France for 5 whole months next year”, and my mom snorted and was like “we’ll see about that” and then changed the subject. She then made me do some grunt work and then run to the store for her, and I just felt so utterly trapped and suffocated by my mom and her little show.</p>
<p>Now, I know that there’s always more than one side to a story, but I literally feel like I’m getting dumped on in this situation. My mother is DEFINITELY suffering from depression and narcissism and it’s just too much for me. I just came back from the best 3 weeks of my life and now I have my mother guilt-tripping and nagging me about things that are outside of my control and, quite frankly, concern. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I am living at home this year because some stuff happened with my housing application and because I wanted to save some money, so I’m afraid that I’m stuck at home unless I lease an apartment off-campus. I just feel so smothered and trapped, and I literally am at a loss of what to do because I realized these past 3 weeks how happy I was without her and away from this god-awful small town and how I just need to get away for my own sanity. I can look forward to maybe going abroad somewhere next summer and fall and maybe even over Christmas break, but besides that, I’m stuck.</p>
<p>If I need to start a new thread for this, please redirect me, and I’m sorry that everything went from being bad to good and now bad again. I feel like my life is just bi-polar sometimes, and I’m just trying to cope with it the best that I can. Thanks so much for sticking with me.</p>
<p>Go to campus and look for housing; find a roommate with whom to share an apartment. I’m quite sure the Housing Office will have ads. Check your university’s facebook page if there’s one, contact your friends from your French classes.
Right now, your being home causes your mother to “regress” and act out. The relationship has grown past unhealthy. She needs to let you go. If she can’t do it on her own, you need to be the grown up and do it. Since keeping in touch “normally” didn’t work, don’t keep in touch for several weeks. Don’t answer the phone. For some people, the “little by little” approach doesn’t work - you’ve been trying for two years and her behavior has grown worse, not better. So you need the “cold turkey” approach - no contact whatsoever until she’s made it through therapy and is taking her meds and can prove it. Tomorrow, drive to campus and look for a place. Go back home, explain things to your mom, pack, and leave. If she throws a tantrum, tell her it’s a proof you’re right and she needs to get better as this very behavior is what she needs to address.</p>
<p>Yes it’s probably a good idea to start a new thread.</p>
<p>And congratulations on planning your next study abroad trips after doing so well on that one. :)</p>
<p>We know from your posts, now and before, that you are a good kid, that you’ve been trying to do what’s right for your mother, including the financial support and other ways kids your age don’t often have to. You also come across thoughtful and balanced. And open to suggestions (from us, from faculty, etc.) When you remember your summer, try to also remember adults here have faith in you. And that we send our hugs.</p>
<p>You mom has had trouble separating herself from some bad luck, heavy challenges and, as I think you know, that can be harder when our kid is now starting her own real life. She needs the help in venting (not at you) that a professional can offer. None of this is your fault. </p>
<p>As a somewhat independent kid (job, decisions, ability to plan for goals,) you may need to do the separation she can’t do. If you can’t get back into a housing situation, try to know that this last time at home will come to an end. I don’t know how your mother will react to the idea of counseling, haven’t you said she’s been resistant? That in itself can be a signal of depression. All the more reason to encourage. But you can also see, asap, what’s available for you, via campus services, find someone you can confide in and get advice from. If the first one isn’t a good match, for any reason, try another. The ones who focus on college age kids can really get it. Even a few meetings, or every few weeks, can help you know how to comfortably navigate this rough terrain. Best to you.</p>
<p>Having had some experience with mental illness and family members I strongly suggest you find some professional support yourself. Go to the counseling center at school, or a support group for family members at a local hospital. You need to take care of yourself, set limits with your mother, and find ways to process the guilt and anger that inevitably develops from dealing with this type of situation. Best of luck. Stay strong.</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestion to try to find someone with an off-campus apartment who’s looking for a roommate. This can often be a much cheaper option than on-campus dorms. If you can’t find anything for this fall, maybe something will turn up after the holidays.</p>
<p>It sounds like your mom is a single parent? That’s a tough job, and it seems to have made her pretty bitter and resentful. However, she should not be taking it out on you, if for no other reason than that it’s clearly poisoning her relationship with you. I agree that distance is what’s called for. In the end, it’s not you giving your mom money or letting her show you off to her co-workers that’s going to salvage your relationship, it’s getting back to a place where you can spend time together and have fun and genuinely like each other. It sounds like that’s not going to happen while you’re living under the same roof.</p>