noncontroversialpleb: This won’t ruin me because I’ve already had no contact with my mom, but it still hurts and is a big secret I’ve not told anyone.
When I was a kid, I had asthma pretty bad. So, I’d be up all night, coughing constantly. My mom and I lived with her parents. We shared a room, so I slept in her bed often when I was a toddler.
Mom would come home from work and lay down for bed, but I’d keep her awake with my coughing. Sometimes at night, I’d be coughing and she would hug me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.
It would really distress me that I couldn’t breathe but I knew Mom loved me so much and I didn’t want to tell her she was squeezing me to death because I was afraid of hurting her feelings, so I’d just tell her that I loved her so much, and she would cry pretty hard after that.
It took me years after having my kid and treating him gently to figure out that it’s pretty difficult to squeeze a kid so hard that they couldn’t breathe.
My mom is bipolar and has had other incidents of hurting people and abandoning those in her care who need medication and can’t take care of themselves.
So, I finally put it together and figured out, mom would be so agitated with my asthma that she would try to stop me from coughing by squeezing me almost to death. And then she would cry out of guilt when I told her I loved her.