Most of us must feel this way when we are new to opening up about personal things such as family and such deep rooted issues. I will try my very best, and know that this is just the beginning of my journey here on tiny buddha.

My mom has had a tough life – objectively. Treated really poorly by her siblings after immigrating to India (youngest of 6) and they isolated her and made it a point to treat her quite poorly for years into my childhood. Factors related to this are just plain bad people exist in the world, jealousy (my mom turned out to have a more fortunate life – on the outside to her siblings).

In addition, there was a lot of mistreatment from my father’s parents (the negative in laws is nothing new in Indian culture!), and strife between my father and her. See in India arranged marriage was common then, and not necessarily bad. But my mother felt for many years that she moved to America, to a country of loneliness where even her own siblings (all she had) shunned, ridiculed, and harassed her – and then arranged to a man that was quite different than she (with his own issues such as a temper, anger issues more on that later).

All in all, this was while she was hardly 25, newly wed, new mom with me a few years later, and during those years she truly suffered. She was as bright and positive as someone could be I recall, and she REALLY did try. I remember those early days when I could feel all this around me, but she made it a point to say we are okay, we are happy, life is wonderful, and I did grow up to be a quite happy “normal” child.

Now I am 31. If I look back now, knowing what I know about psychology/psychiatry and just plain personal experience – I would say all the negative people and things happening to her at once scarred her for life, and transformed who she was.

I like many children of immigrant families lived in a dual culture- but i LOVED it, there was nothing toxic about this, I liked that my parents upheld their values while still supporting me to as modern, educated, and free as I desired. Life wasn’t bad at all. And then around my teens I started realizing although I was really happy, I was different. My mind didn’t process negative emotions in the same way, I had an affinity to overanalyze, fixate, and create a lot of burden of guilt on myself. Needless to say, at this point (years later) my mom had formed into a quite negative and anxiety ridden women herself, in some ways in my teens. background- As a housewife she faced a lot of loneliness her whole life, since her first move as mentioned above, and I feel it was engrained in my whole childhood to “feel bad” I always recall feeling, wow how sad my mom’s life was, how sad people can be, why did people do this to her? and at that time I found that my mom was strong and that despite it all she remained positive, yet i do remember always feeling worried that she was lonely, or is she happy? hard to explain. my mother after my teens to around the time i went to ccollege (i have a sister 7 years younger than me) started taking a different approach. It was the “i’m sick of being sad and lonely” approach, she started traveling – and not just traveling, obsesesed with travel and reading and voracious about learning about the world – which we were happy about, esp because it was a healthy way to stay occupied. During this time too I noticed how negative she had made me, I had odd views of the world and people – some of which may be common to all immigrant children, but most of which I saw were not.
i felt disappointed constantly, birhtdays as a teenager I found myself focusing more on “who wasn’t there for me” then the celebration or party at hand. small things, but early glimpses. my mom started becoming more intense, she always was quite particular and we would joke “OCD” and a perfectionist – but it was extreme. i would come home and say something like ok “lets make tacos” and she would be overburdened with stress from cleaning the house – no worries of course we didn’t need to cook, but just exammples. she would say things like i had to spend so much time planning our trip that i’m exhuasted, to which my sister and i would say – well mom it is supposed to be fun don’t worry too much about it – we would get “easy for you to say, it takes a lot of planning.”
fine – if thats how you want to approach it fine, whatever floats your boat.
but itgot worse. we are fortunate enough for tons of travel, and for my mom to have the liberty to plan very wonderful vacations, but on one particular trip in thailand my mother was so “crazy” about the plan for that day my sister and i just lost it, we said listen we are here to relax, we both are in school (i in med school) and we need a break too, and small little fairly normal arguments would form between three ladies of the house. the small bickering is fine – but so many comments throughout about “oh no one elses parents takes them on trips like this, you guys have no appreciation, etc.” but then the next morning say oh you know moms say that when they get angry, you can’t take it all personal. still fine, we laughed it off to crazy indian parents so to speak.

but i know that the “worse she got” the worse i got. i noticed into my 20s i felt worse, worse ability to deal with disappointment (personal) but able to shine like a rock start in medical school and career. i had broken up with a long term Bf, my choice, and I lived wiTH severe dread and guilt about making the wrong decisions for YEARS to the point that it took over my life. surprisingly my mother was not very negative about this, and just supportive. around 25 i started dating seriously again, and i felt often that I wanted to find a good guy not just for me, but also that fits in my familly (normal Indian family values) – a girl we know from my town who isn’t the best of characters had gotten engaged to a good guy, and i felt constantly from my mother, “look how smart she is, she snagged a good one – you have so much going for you but we never have good luck with these things”
once again, focus on meeting a good boy – totally fine, its the other stuff, it starteed the “we have bad luck, the world is against us” feeling that has perpetuated. she was different now, always talking out loud about how much she travels and how great her life is, to which my sister and i sometimes felt wow what happened to mmom, shes now becoming showy almost – like “it’s my turn to be happy now, i’ll show the world.” and that she does.

this is so long winded and i feel so jumbled, but a quick synopsis of the present. indian parents have a LOT of involvement in weddings, I am getting married in less than a year, 500 person wedding, im first born and my fiance is an only child – parents are going all out. familly involvement, family pressure, not an issue – and expected. but my mother has become pathologic.
less than 24 hours after my surprise proposal and amazing party, she calls me frantically and says “his side is going to try to do things their way, we need to control them, – in regards to the familly engagement party that they will plan.” she terrorized me about this all week that I was in tears by friday – my fiance says wow its only been 5 days since the proposal and somehow your mom has made you upset again, this is when he started really seeing it.
indian parents have many ups and downs about how to go about planning, and differences in particular traditions. but that is not the point –my mother is unable to deal with anything normally anymore – if we try to reason with her, “we are against her.” if we try to say something about her over – reacting, “all mother’s act like this, you will see one day.” my sister (my right hand) will say mother we know the engagement party is important to you, but was it worth not letting her (me) have even one week to relax and be happy after a proposal. to which she is INFURIATED AND SAYS, after all we did for you all we do is help you. she feels i am “brainwashed” by my fiances parents bc they are quiet and passive, and so I side with them.
it has become unbearable. she frantically calls me or even my fiance’s parents when things are not going in a way she deems right, just to take the joy out of everything – and it is deeper than a focus on events or weddings, it’s mentally ill

and the reason i write this now is not because of the wedding, that is the least of my concern and only one weekend of life. its that it shows me my mother, who sadly had a terrible life in her younger years, has now become toxic herself. she was so damaged that now she is damaging, as though now that she finally has a chance to not suffer she has no awareness of how she treats others and her fixations on things. it is difficult to explain but in short, my sister and i feel this is the pinnacle – we have a mother with a mental illness, or at least a personality disorder such as borderline. there is so much mmore to the story but I don’t want to ramble, and hope to just start something.

and background, my mother’s own mother suffered from severe depression, and committed suicide In India – clearly a genetic link and predisposition.