Dear Bob256:

First, I will retell what  you shared, with quotes, second- my comments. You shared that your parents were never married, and later separated. They “always had problems with each other”, and your childhood “was filled with arguing, court battles, and stress” while you lived in “two ‘stable households'”, mostly with your mother, and from one point on, with your  grandmother as well,  “in an upper-middle-class family”.

Your grandmother dominated your mother, being “in control of everything my mother did.. what she said, how she raised me, and every aspect of her life, even up to this day”.

When you met and clicked instantly with a girl, November 2019, your grandmother and mother harassed you and made rude comments about your love interest, “constant arguments happened for months”, and you “said things to them that was hurtful after months of harassment”. Your mental and physical health was declining, having gained excess weight and developed “a chronic condition similar to chronic fatigue syndrome”, and you decided to live with your father for a while.

For months at your father’s, you had no contact with your mother and grandmother, you “began to exercise more, read, concentrate on school and college searching, and not once did I feel he was stressed or rude towards me”, you lost a lot of weight, and you now you realize that your grandmother and mother brainwashed you against your father, having told you lies about him.

Your grandmother and mother discouraged you from pursuing your dream of majoring in economics and mathematics and later applying to your dream school for a graduate degree, “continuously put my goals down”, wanting you to pursue a path that will make you more money, while your father encourages you to pursue your dream, telling you: “I don’t care about money we can work that out, work hard, apply to your dream schools”.

Your health at your father’s home improved, but you decided to “restore the relationship I had with my mom’s family”, you apologized to them for the hurtful things you said, but “no improvement on their part, and they refuse to apologize to me. I feel like I have exhausted every attempt to heal with them”.

Currently, while you are “working on applying for colleges and starting my life”, your “mental health is again declining from the stress this has put on me”. You are conflicted: on one hand, your grandmother and mother are bad for your health (“I worry that my mental health will be at severe risk if I visit them more”), and on the other hand, you “would do anything to have the happiness I had when I was little with my mom. I miss the time we spent together.. I don’t want to cut my mom and her family out of my life”.

My comments: (1) the happiness you had when you were little- you can’t get it back. A big part of that happiness has to do with having been a young child whose world is magical. In a young child’s mind everything is possible, the sky is the limit. What appears trivial to you as an adult, appeared magical back when you were a young child. You can’t get that young-child magical brain back, therefore you can’t get that happiness back.

(2) Your grandmother controlled your mother, probably never apologized for it. I assume your mother rebelled against her controlling mother once in a while, and there was tension and arguments between the two. And yet, your mother wants to control what career path you take and what girl you should date (and she did not apologize to you just like her mother did not apologize to her).  I suppose she is keeping the family tradition of controlling a child into adulthood. I figure that just as your grandmother did not change her controlling, argumentative behaviors with your mother, your mother is not likely to change her controlling and argumentative behaviors with you.

(3) You closed your original post with: “I don’t want to cut my mom and her family out of my life, but I feel it’s increasingly heading towards that”- I think that it better head toward that, so that your health improves and you can re-start your adult life healthier. Better choose your health over nostalgia (nostalgia= a state of longingly remembering and wanting back the lost happiness of earlier childhood, a happiness an adult cannot possibly get back).

anita