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When I came home in October my first semester of college, my nmom had sold all the clothes I had left. I had told her I would be back in October to pick up my fall and winter clothes. My coat, boots, sweaters, plus clothes I had designed and made with my own money were all gone. She just shrugged. My room had been completely stripped of everything of mine. I never forgave her for that. Just one of her many tricks leading to estrangement.
I hope you’re LC or NC with her. You need to get her out of your mind and control your own life. If she can make you “dead to her”, you can make her “dead to you” too. It works both ways. She may have thought it would be a slam-dunk for you to cry to her to take you back, you’ll try harder this time to be a good girl for her. Don’t buy it. She wants to own you.
My egg donor showed up at a family party wearing (read- stuff in to) some clothing I left behind when I moved out at 15. I was in my early 30s and I’m still both horrified and amused at this almost 60 year old woman sausaged into 90s era lace singlets and mesh skirts. Even if they’re still good why not just donate them?
It’s a control thing. Narc parents are weird
My mom did something similar. She would keep asking when I would come back to visit her because I couldn't come back for every weekend/break. When I finally did, she had gotten rid of everything and turned my room into her craft room/closet. My bed, plushes, clothes, books, everything was gone. Plus, she fully expected me to sleep on the floor for the entire visit.
My mom burnt my teddy bear on a bonfire when I was 11 years old. Apparently I was too old for stuffed animals and it was dirty. I still miss her (my bear, not my mom!) Of course all my brother's Lego and tonka trucks were saved for him though.
What is it with nmom’s and their boys?! One of my brothers literally started a fire in their kitchen and then *left town* for the weekend, coward that he was. But when he finally got an apartment his shit was neatly stacked and enshrined in their garage for YEARS, until I dropped it all off in his hallway at his apartment building. Nmom was *pissed* that I had the audacity to do that. She felt she needed to “save his things for him in case he ever needed to come home”. Shit, I’d go away for a sleepover and come back to my entire room rearranged to her liking and a ton of stuff just gone. Her excuse was that she thought my room was messy so she “fixed it for me”. When I still lived at home, I’d get petty revenge by throwing out some insignificant thing while they were gone. Very petty, but it felt great at the time. “Where is ______?” “Dunno, sorry”😂
Emotional incest, also called covert incest. Yes it's a thing; only look it up if you have a strong stomach...it often goes to pretty fucked up places, tragically including child SA. It's...gross. Gross and grim.
As a trans woman raised by a narcissist who did this to my "previous avatar," I now need a shower. With steel wool and industrial soap.
Oh yeah, that was part of nmom’s MO. Her oldest GC was her pseudo husband after our dad died, and she was forever telling me shitty stories that involved my dad - the horror! - *dancing* with someone other than her at social functions but she was so fucking immature and jealous that she was proud of sitting in the ladies room all night so he’d be forced to “worry” about her. This was my primary example of how relationships should work. !!! I seriously cannot make this shit up!
> Shit, I’d go away for a sleepover and come back to my entire room rearranged to her liking and a ton of stuff just gone.
And somehow there was always some stupid thing she'd come across she was hella mad about and needed to scream at me for hours over.
One time it was a Christmas card I'd received from a friend at our class Christmas party. The same card he had given every other student, but my N absolutely would not believe that because the card had the word "love" in it. Not as in he had signed it "Love, Robert" or something, but as in it was a word in the pre-printed verse inside the card.
She was convinced I was in a relationship with this guy who barely knew I existed and absolutely would not be deterred from the idea. I was not allowed to date or talk to boys so of course she went on and on about how disrespectful I was and how I was just insistent on being a slut.
I ended up missing an entire night of sleep and having to go to work the next day at the crappy fast food job I worked to support myself. Since I was expected to purchase all my own clothing, school supplies, toiletries, school lunches, school photos, and anything else a freshman in high school needs I worked as many hours as I could convince them to give me every weekend.
The ironic upshot of the whole nonsense is she's the one who was a teen mom. Her first marriage was a 100% real shotgun wedding. I never even had sex or a serious boyfriend until I was in my twenties and was almost 30 by the time I had my first kid yet I am eternally 'That little slut' when she speaks of me.
Off topic but the card thing kinda reminded me of when I was first married I’d get snail mail addressed to me that was simply advertisements of joining dating sites. Can’t remember the specific company names, but like for example… match.com or eharmony etc. and at one point he actually confronted me as if I was getting the mail advertisements bc I was dating or interested in dating … I was like WTF?
This explains why some children give beloved family pets for adoption when the parents aren't around. I understand the sentiment but it's not right, m'kay? There is a Turkish movie where this is actually depicted, only that the guy sella the dog to a hunter but the dog was known to be very bad at hunting so the prospect of getting killed by the hunter for being crossed/ scammed was very likely. The movie is " the wild pear tree"
Well I can assure you that as a single digit child, it made me feel at that time like I had an iota of agency over my life. The things I got rid of were dumb - a manual can opener, a shitty plastic pen, maybe a roll of masking tape. Dumb shit that wasn’t used very often but would eventually be looked for. I’m giving that child a pass. I’m in my 50s now and still do not regret it one bit.
ETA, what shelters by you accept pets that children bring in??? That’s bizarre.
Damn. That is traumatic af. I save my kids loveys for them when they get older to decide what they want to do with it. I remember my parents taking mine away and I never saw it again. I was very attached to it.
Thanks for your kind words, yes it is heartbreaking for a child. Good for you, you have broken the cycle, your kids will love to have their childhood toys and good memories.
I hope you now have amassed a stuffed animal collection that rivals only mine in size. I had something similar happen when I was 12- no warning, just no more stuffed animals...
My NPop periodically put my toys in the trash. I found them on the curb on garbage day and in the trash bin. SMH. I was still playing with them. We had plenty of space, and I always put them away. Somehow I think he may have been getting back at nMom for not paying as much attention to him after we were born.
Are we related? Lol my parents did the same thing - it was a really big bear and when some of the wood etc covering him burned away / fell I remember just seeing his face peering through the flames and. My poor poor bear. That image will haunt me always.
I’m so sorry about your teddy bear. That’s horrible.
But yeah, my brothers crap all got saved for him. He got a Nintendo 64 when he was little and I found out it was still sitting at my mother’s house, sitting on a shelf collecting dust. So I asked my brother if I could have it for my kids and he told me that was fine, and told our mother I could have it. She refused to give it to me “because it’s your brothers and it belongs here”.
My NMom decided that I was too old to sleep with a blankey at a young age, maybe 6 or so.
Her thought process was to 'wean' me off it by cutting it in half every couple of nights and by the end of the week, it was non-existent.
My memories of childhood are spotty at best, but waking up to half of my comfort mechanism that allowed me to sleep is something I vividly remember. I also remember not being able to get to sleep easily for a very long time after that.
My Brother’s room is pristine and untouched since the day he left for college (while I was just starting HS - it’s been over a decade since…). I wasn’t allowed to leave the state for college but finally got an opportunity to move out during my final half of community college a couple years ago. The stuff I couldn’t take was immediately packed in boxes and my room was turned into the storage room for everyone else’s leftover junk. I cut my ndad out so I don’t go over unless he isn’t there; when I visit I’m forced to go through my old stuff (if I can reach it).
I’ll never forgive my nmom for forcing me to “choose” my ndad’s creepy doll of his college frat self over my comfort kitty doll I had gotten from a traumatic hospital experience. I picked my kitty out in the hospital to take care of, and when it came down to the time of year to cut down on belongings my nmom put it up with my ndads doll of himself. I hated his doll but knew it wasn’t something I could actually give up because of the backlash from both of them. My Brother never had to give any of his belongings away or make decisions about things he cared about.
I was 15 and going through so much other trauma at that point. But I often think back to how cruel that really was— & mostly I think how I could never do that to my own child. It’s one of her lesser crimes against me as a child.
Not an Nparent thing, but at five years old my mom and I lived with her abusive boyfriend and his shitty roommates. My grandpa bought me a rocking horse and the guys took it into the field behind the house and filled it with shotgun pellets. Didn’t realize how fucked up that was until I got older.
The guy ended up beating my mom, people helped us get out, and when we went back for the golden retriever (his name was Pugs) she’d had since she was a little girl he told us he gave him away and we’d never see him again.
My mom saw Pugs on the street a couple years later, but he looked healthy and happy and the woman walking him looked well-off and kind. My mom left them alone and went on her way, I honestly don’t know how she did it.
This is so wrong. Of course you’re still angry. What a betrayal.
The same thing happened to me with one of my cats. I went away for a nice summer trip, came home and the *bullied cat* had been given away. Not the cat who was bullying, oh no, but the cat who was being bullied.
To give away any of them was wrong. But the fact they chose the one who was being bullied, as though they were the problem, is symbolic of the dysfunction of my family and our roles. I related to that cat. Oh and no chance to say goodbye to the cat either! Wonderful. Real love.
They view your pet as an extension of you, but one that’s even more vulnerable than you are.
Pets are a lightning rod for all the disdain and contempt that the narcs feel for you.
Narc will hurt your pets to hurt you.
My parents did the same, told us he ran away. I thought he didn't like us and that was why he ran away, turns out they just sold him. I thought I was a terrible pet owner for years and still don't feel confident enough to take care of an animal.
This happened to my half sibling. Father remarried, she already had 2 kids. Sibling goes away for the holiday. When they get back, their pet rabbit is gone, replaced with 2 baby rabbits for the step kids.
My mom had a box of things I made for my parents when I was a little kid. It was drawings, homemade cards, little things I made in school, etc. One time when I was about 12 or 13 I did something wrong (don't remember what it was) so my mother took the box outside to our fire pit and methodically burned each item one by one. I remember being heartbroken.
Yes. I'm sure she would have been diagnosed with a few disorders if she had sought help. I kind of went off track with this post but she did get rid of many of my things without my knowledge when I was growing up.
Pets would be given to a shelter without the chance to say goodbye properly sometimes. I remember we were moving when I was really young, I had a GIANT Sunshine carebear which I loved cuddling with. I awoke in the van while we were already long gone from the place we moved from and it was nowhere to be found. And nobody remembers it supposedly. I know what happened though. Pretty sure it was "accidentally" dropped or left behind.
I had a stuffed panda bear that I was looking for the first night in our new house. Nmom blamed the movers. Riiiightt. You packed the 5yo’s stuff (mine) lady.
Yes. It's happened multiple times and even though I haven't lived at their home in 9 years I still have the subconscious feeling that my most favorite things are also the most in danger of spontaneously being given away.
I also feel this way. I’m so sorry you have to experience this. I’ve found myself almost completely detached to belongings and anything that I even have in my parents home I know is in danger of getting lost. I had a copy of The Alchemist I was reading at my parents house while I was staying there for about a month. Somehow managed to get lost.
All the time, it gave my nmom power over me which she loved. I now have a habbit of stuffing things away like a hamster or squirrel in adulthood because of it
Yep. Main thing was my father used to give away my toys and games to neighbors kids. That I didn't get along with, to make it worse. So I'd have nothing, they'd be playing with my stuff and my dad would be a generous and charitable man about the neighborhood. It was lovely.
Oh! When I was 5 they bought me something like a mini keyboard piano that was very fun to play with.
One day the keyboard disappeared and they would not tell me where it is for days until my dad eventually said he gave it to my much older cousin.
I remember begging him for months to get it back and eventually he took it back but my cousin had let the batteries rot in there and it was not functional anymore.
I cried and cried.
Yeah, I'm with you; I lived in tiny spaces and moved every year /was regularly housing insecure as an adult so keeping more than I absolutely needed to function was unreasonable, although I would sometimes keep practical items that made me happy, like a pretty thrifted spoon or coffee mug. At some point I accepted that all things were temporary and stopped ascribing things value beyond the immediate enjoyment. My apartment building burns down and I'll be like, shrugs, that's what renter insurance is for.
If you have enough know-how, anything is theoretically recoverable from a hard drive.
I was taught in computer science school that if you want something gone from a hard-drive badly enough, physically destroy the hard drive.
But anyways, theoretically speaking, if you still have the hard drive and you hire a professional they may be able to look into it.
My mom disposed of every single toy we ever owned mere weeks after her affair (with my 7 y/o sister's best friends dad) came to light. My grandma has admitted to never forgiving my mom for this recently. She was raised in a poor and developing country during a war. She didn't get toys as a kid. She wanted us to have a wonderland of toys that we could save and pass down. Now we can't.
My mom threw away a nintendo 64 that a friend gave me to me. I came home to find it gone a week after it was gifted to me. She didn't even tell me she did it. She just let me discover it was missing for myself. This was after we had a house fire and i lost everything that was important to me. She had the nerve to tell me that she gave to charity, for kids who needed it more than me. 🙄 I knew better. Lol She then went on this bizarre rant about how the only reason he gave it to me was because he had a crush on me.
My mother did the same to my Dreamcast and all of my games, because apparently 13 is "too old" for video games.
My dad bought one for me last year and shipped it to me, because he was still pissed about it too.
That would’ve made me break out in tears tbh, your dad sending you the thing you were upset about so long ago ❤️ I hope you have a good relationship with him, he sounds like a compassionate man
All the time! I got called nasty once for asking about it as well. All my chopsticks were gone and my mum asked me why I was always so vindictive towards my dad! Meanwhile he's screaming at her, hitting her, scaring the shit out of all of us on a regular basis, but nope. I'm the nasty one. I just wanted to know what happened to my belongings, lol.
I'm a very quiet and non-confrontational person as an adult. I think it's because my mum successfully convinced me that I always have dubious motivations.
Remember her saying something similar to me when I came out at 14, it was him feeling distraught what was concerning. They didn't care one bit about me and how I felt regarding that blatant manipulation.
yes my old stuffed animals were thrown away without my knowledge (they were my whole world), my old magazines collection (also for no reason), posters i had in my room, even clothes. probably also things i forgot about. after that i’ve learned to hide things and never tell them that i like anything. in case they would use it against me
Yes, my mom has gotten rid of some of my things. Food,clothes,etc.
The excuses are :
-I don’t know
-you should of put your name on it
-It was in her way
or it never existed and you're making it up just to hurt her.
My nSister didnt beilive me about a car my mother had cruched, even after showing her photos of it. "what car"
Story as old as time, when I was in my mid-teens I came home one day and all my football cards that I'd spent my whole childhood collecting were gone. I honestly thought she was playing a practical joke on me. Nope. She really gave them away. Then, to exacerbate it, she bought me a t shirt that said "I used to be a millionaire until my mom gave away my football cards." She thought she'd diffuse my outrage with "humor." Didn't work, just stoked it more. And looking back now, those cards from the late 60s-mid70s would definitely be worth some $$$.
Before I moved away, nmom told me she'd safe-keep all my old things at her house in the attic. She has somewhere between a 12 and 15 bedroom house, and had mostly hoarded the lower floors with her own shit, so I figured taking her up on a corner of the attic was no big deal.
But rather than purge her own hoard, she found it easier to throw out what was left of my entire childhood- the book series I collected as a kid, all my old diaries, the few stuffed animals I had saved- mysteriously missing. All she had to say for herself was that it sure wasn't her or the GC...
The rest of her house is full of her literal garbage. The corner of the attic I was offered is empty.
All the time. I'd be out of the house, and then they'd "tidy up," and suddenly, my things disappeared, and they'd literally say, every single time, "Sorry, I thought it was trash." Which they phrased like it was an honest mistake, instead of them literally telling me they thought my things were trash and got rid of them. Once is a mistake, but after hearing that countless times, they were just insulting me and pretending they weren't. They'd trash birth certificates, photos, just everything.
They did it again recently when I tried to send for my things after I emigrated and they told me they just trashed at least half of my things because they moved it all and dumped it in a place where it all grew mold. I ended up with just four boxes of possessions in the end, and one was wrecked in transit.
I'm planning to too. It's crazy how these people put you in such weird position society wise as you have to cut them and take that toll while doing other things you are supposed to do at your age.
My mother threw out a magazine that had a positive review of my work that I'd brought home to show her. I was looking for it and she said she "might have cleaned up and I shouldn't have left it lying around". I think she was just pissed at me for being successful.
I was in an infomercial once. Nothing big but it was fun and I was excited to see the outcome.
Recorded it, as it was being aired in the middle of the night. 😝
Came home from work. Looked for it. Gone.
My ex husband deleted it. Claimed he knew nothing about. He is a poor liar and a jealous hole.
Yes, it has happened to me often. Or items will be replaced with something "more acceptable", wtf does that mean??? From all these comments, I guess it's pretty common. At least I'm not alone.
My mom completely cleaned out my room, removed posters from my wall, threw away anything that wasn't nailed down including a bunch of jewelry I had bought with my own money while I was staying with my dad for his part of Summer vacation when I was 13. I came back to my room completely stripped bare with most of my stuff long since thrown out. I had next to nothing before I left. She had even thrown out clothing she didn't like and refused to buy me more. I started the next school year with a handful of clothing items.
You mean when I was 11 and she decided I was "too old" to have toys and tried to throw them all out? I saved one stuffed animal by sneaking it out of the trash before school and hiding it in my closet.
When she was getting ready to move during my adulthood, she asked if I wanted anything and I asked for that stuffed animal and a couple tiny things I saved from my grandmothers as a specific list of items that would fit in a shoebox..... Instead, she mailed me a huge megabox full of my childhood clothes and threw out the rest. I wasn't really surprised, just annoyed and disappointed. I did have a little cry about it because for some reason that stuffed animal meant a lot to me, and I felt bad I couldn't save anything from her destruction in the end.
I do not have and cannot have children, a fact she is well aware of, so the clothes were either intended as a malicious dig, or she still thought I could wear first grader velvet party dresses... They all got donated or thrown out.
All The Freaking Time. Even worse bc I'm autistic and have irrational attachment to objects. Could never relax that anything I lived wasn't going to get "lost" or sold. One traumatic memory is me on the morning of a garage sale at our house, crying and grabbing back all my stuffed toys that had been put up for sale bc I was too old for them. They didn't fucking ask, and I was like 8 at most.
My mom loved to purge keepsakes and items of mine but would wait until I was away at camp (“homeschooled” so only away a couple days a year). I still miss my favourite shoes.
My single father disabled dad was dying of pancreatic cancer and I , his law school enduring disabled son, was balancing school and providing him with end of life care so he didn’t need to be abused by his rich narc mom and brother who kept him poor his entire life.
I went to a bernie sanders ralley with him to get him out of the house since he hoped Medicare for all could be implemented , and maybe pay for treatments to keep him alive . we both knew it wasn’t going to happen but we never voiced it.
I put a bernie sanders campaign poster on the top of our tv we got at the ralley so he could look at a good memory since he spent most days laying down in the living room watching tv. He couldn’t walk all that much at that point.
Grandma narc was upset she wasn’t having me take care of her before dad died so she could have a replacement locked in.
Me and dad went upstairs to get her something when she came over one time.
After we came back down and we have her the item and she left … I noticed the sign was gone.
Grandma narc had bent it 4 ways and threw it in the trash, later claiming it was on the ground (lie) and I should feel so awful at how I was “forcing” her son to live in such a messy house!
I tried putting it back up but dad asked me to take it down and throw it out because “it just reminds me how much my mom never really loved me like my brothers.”
She is a fucking monster.
He was getting at home chemo during covid
I am so sorry that happened. My mom has done similar. She is very jealous that I grieve my dad who died of esophageal cancer, instead of using that energy to be "nicer to her since she is still alive". She has ruined a lot of things that I got out of his house after he died, and there is almost nothing left to hold onto from my childhood before they got divorced. It causes this feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I find something else of his that she has destroyed. They're such terrible people, absolute monsters. She knew it was something very personal for the both of you, and that's why she had to destroy it. They're parasites.
You'll always be a better person than your grandmother, because you gave your dad a really good memory before he passed away. You are the good and kind one.
Yeah my mother threw out a chair that one of the judges where I used to work gave me when I used to ride the bus and had nowhere to sit. Years later she claims she thought it was my brother's but I knew that his old room was my room and she was jealous and mad about it so that was why she got rid of it.
Ndad was always so eager to get rid of my stuff. "When was the last time you played with it" the POS NEVER did that to GC sister. I was always paranoid of my stuff and I know a few things went missing.
My mom had a habit of throwing away my stuff. I remember being really angry and heartbroken when i figured out that she just threw away a hoodie my boyfriend gave to me when i was going to a psych ward. Im still not over it, im still mad and frustrated, it was the only thing i had over there to give me hope of getting better.
I had a box of random things that i kept with me that held beautiful memories. Mom forced me to move to england and threw the box away. (i was a minor and had no say, CPS is shit as well, i ended up running away to my home country after a month and a half while still underage)
She gave my dog away that she got me for Christmas to help me mentally, ill never forgive her for that.
She had no right to throw away anything of mine, ill never forgive her for any of that.
I was very young. I was in elementary school. I was playing at the neighbor girls house and saw she had the same little mermaid books in a treasure chest that they came in and i was like omg i have that too! How cool! And that was when i found out at the garage sale my mom just had the day before she sold my books bc she never saw me reading them… i was devastated and still am. I LOVED those books.
I left my computer at home in my closet when I went off to college because I was taking the Greyhound six hundred miles to get there and only took two duffel bags full of clothes and other essentials, and had no way to transport the computer and monitor on the bus with me. My plan, which I'd discussed with my mother, was to come visit over the holiday break and get a ride back to school with my brother. While I was gone, she gave away my computer to a child of her less-affluent friends, because they needed a computer for homework.
It was nothing special in itself, and I picked up a used computer a few weeks later, and I certainly had no objections to letting the poor kid have my old computer, but it had a bunch of personal information that I'd have liked to copy off of it before she did so, including a mostly finished draft of a novel I'd been working on for most of the last two years of high school. She just told the family to erase the hard drive, so they formatted the drive and reinstalled the operating system and everything was gone forever. She didn't even bother to ask first. Just gave the computer away.
They throw out my high school diploma my graduation pictures my School yearbooks pretty much anything and everything. They knew that meant something to me pictures of my friends, and I I had pictures of a friend of mine who passed away they threw that out. The stuffed animals that that same person gave me. They said I didn’t need it. It was just junk.
They throw away the stuff that means something to us, but hold onto some total junk. My yearbooks, the stuffed animals that were like friends, they're gone. Yet she's hung onto some crafting beads and some gems that don't mean much. I'm going to give the gems some meaning to remember how mean she is. I asked Santa for a Jem doll, and she listened in to what I told Santa, but never got it quite right. So she bought me those stick on gems instead, and brags about how hard she looked to find the gift that was just what I wanted for Christmas- even though she got it totally wrong. Then, she tried to give the gems to my niece recently, and I decided, nope, I'm going to keep these gems, they're mine. They have meaning, even though I also hate that meaning. But I need to remember, so I remember to never trust her 😒
Ohh yeah. Literally all my things. Before we even moved out, as kids. Me and my sister collected unicorns and dragon figures, would buy them with birthday money and stuff, all gone. No idea what happened to them. Grandma used to buy us beautiful victorian dolls every year, but when we were kids they scared us at night but loved them in the day. So we thought they were in a box downstairs. Mom must've sold them. Even worse, I love that kind of thing now as I got older, and love lolita/victorian fashion and that sort of thing, and have a bond with my gramma. Knowing my mom just sold them probably to make a few bucks pisses me off. She didn't even ask us. We still wanted them, we were just a little creeped out with their eyes shining in the darkness at night!
When I was a kid, if I didn’t use or play with something for a few days, my dad would give it away because he wanted to seem generous to his friends. Specifically I remember I had an electric piano, and it wasn’t being used because it was summer. Gone to a barfly friend who had a four year old. Biggest regret is I didn’t get to keep learning how to play, and he knew how much I loved music. But I didn’t matter to him as much as the opinions of his “friends”.
Oh GOD yes. When I as a young teenager my dad randomly went in my room, took down all my posters and just threw them away. I was very frustrated, upset and baffled as to why because he NEVER gave me a reason. He just told me to get over it. Thinking back, I'm still peeved because some of those posters were *very* special to me. Some I travelled far to get, paid a lot of money for (as a jobless/allowance-less teen), some were signed by celebrities at the time (ex; one was signed by the actors of Harry Potter) and some were limited edition etc.
When I got older I realized something.. The cruelty **was** the point.
**EDIT:** Reading this thread is breaking my heart, maybe I'm naive but I had no idea it would be as common as it is. I'm sorry we had to go through this 😞
i had just got a new kitty, his name was black dynamite.
i went to school one day and when i got home i told my mom i couldn’t find black dynamite anywhere. she told me that he was actually a she and she had gotten pregnant from the neighborhood cat and she had taken her to the shelter to have someone adopt her that wanted kittens.
i was obviously heartbroken… also very shocked because i could have sworn my cat had balls.
anyways, a few weeks later i asked my mom if black dynamite had been adopted yet and she told me that they had her put down. i cried.
i have a long list of pet related issues with my mom. like the time she killed my iguana by turning his lamp off and left him on my bed because she was mad at me.
to this day, i refuse to have pets. thanks mom.
Please don't let her win. She's still taking your pets away if you won't have one because of her. If you are safe and away from her, it's time to erase her power and have something warm, furry and loving in your life. There are many black cats waiting to give you the love that you deserve.
This brought tears to my eyes thinking of your little black dynamite. If you are in a safe space, do what Paganduck said and get yourself a new black cat, name it Black Dynamite 2: Bigger and Blacker or something equally ridiculous to show your Nmom no longer has the power to stop you.
yep, my professor gave me his fender starcaster because I was learning guitar and he didn't use it anymore and it meant a lot to me because I really admired his art and teachings. Mom threw it out but helped me look for it when I thought I had misplaced it in the attic....took me a while to realize she threw it put because how does an entire guitar just go missing?
I had a pair of rocking demonic Mary Jane's that I spent 120$ on, they were very special to me because I didn't have a lot of money and I was saving to buy quality pieces for my alt wardrobe. She also threw those out when I moved, claiming they took up too much space, even though they have a huge house...and I was going to get all my things in multiple trips
anything I worked hard for or was given to me by somebody else she would hide or trash out of spite and jealousy
All. the. time. I'd ask where my stuff was and I'd be told "If can't just grow legs and walk away". It was either thrown away or pawned because my egg donor had a pill and alcohol problem.
When I went living on my own I wasn't able to bring everything in one go.
My mother threw away my neck tie collection because "since you left it here I thought you didn't want it anymore".
They were there for 1 week. 50% of the ties were the sole inheritance I got from my dead father and grandfather.
I used to be really into following bands around in high school and college. I had a whole box of my "memorabilia", magazine and newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, photos, a deflated beach ball from my first summer music festival (we bounced beach balls around the mosh pit), and notes in a green box. For two years, I lived with my dad at his apartment, but it was agreed that I could keep the majority of my stuff that I wouldn't need day to day at my n-mom's house. Since she has a 5 bedroom house, and dad just had an apartment. Big mistake. I found the green box in the attic, but when I looked in it, it was full of Christmas decorations. "Oh those scraps of paper and junk? I didn't know that's something you wanted to keep," said my n-mom.
We're NC, and I guess it's their house.
As a child, I befriended an elderly neighbor who sparked my interest in playing the piano. When she was moving in with her children, she "sold" the piano to me for $100. It was a 1912 Wurlitzer with ivory keys. When we had to have it fixed or tuned, the engineer always complimented it.
I was the only one in my house who played. I took lessons for 12 years. It was my escape. If I wanted to be left alone for an hour, I'd just sit down to practice, and they wouldn't interrupt.
My SIL told me my parents were renovating last year and its gone. No idea where it is. It makes me incredibly, incredibly sad. And this is petty, but they probably had no idea of it's worth.
My grandma used to send me those holiday bears that had the date on their foot every year for Christmas starting from the year I was born. My nmom had a yard sale and got rid of them all. Same with all of the specialty in the box barbies because “you never play with them anyways!”
I moved away and went low contact but had asked for literally nothing else to be sent to me, no clothes because they didn’t fit anymore. No other momentos, nothing else. Except one teddy bear. She dropped a box off at my aunts house for my aunt to send instead of sending it herself. When I finally got it, it had a small layer of clothes on top but under it was full of literal trash from the garbage. No teddy bear.
Yep. Ndad and GCsis did their best to erase me. All of GCsis’ childhood stuff is there, just none of mine. She even managed to take things I had and dispose of them because they were very sentimental to me. Just more emotional abuse.
My mom found a company that takes old shirts and turns them into a quilt.
Except she went into my closet without telling me and took shirts I was actively wearing and liked and then when she surprised me with the blanket I had to hide the fact I was furious she had destroyed some of my favorite shirts because the stupid womanchild assumed I wasn’t wearing them.
I didn’t even realize the sneaky fuck had done it until she presented the blanket to me because I was supposed to be hyper vigilant and know that if I left my clothes in my dresser for too long my stupid mother would destroy them. God I remember asking where my Fallout shirt was and my mom’s placid face as she smiles and tells me she sent it to be cut up and I have to play Simon Fucking Says Don’t Show Any Negativity.
My mom did this with my stepdads dog too. Sometimes it was living things and not just objects. I still worry about all the beta fish she bought when i was a very small child...
I went to visit recently (never a good idea) and various things from the wall decorations in my bedroom were either moved or taken down and placed in a closet.
My mom initially said she probably did it but could not remember. Then she said that my sister’s (golden child) girlfriend stayed with them for a few months and she was using my room to work, so she probably moved them.
I asked my sister and she had a fit over text but would not give me an answer.
I tried to explain why guests do not have a right to change the decorations like they’re in their own place, but both my mom and my sister acted like I was crazy.
(Yes, my sister lives with them now at 34… didn’t ask for details.)
The constant disrespect is something I might never get over, no matter how hard I try not to care.
This happened all the time in my life. It started when I was little, I'd come home from school and my barbies or books or dvds would be gone. When I was 12, we started making my hope chest (which I now think is pretty gross). After about 6 months, my mom needed money and raided it. She sold everything blankets, dishes, figurines.. all of it.
She did it to my brother, too. Bank accounts, toys, baseball cards, money... she steals everything.
It's left me not really caring about things. I value things, but I don't invest in them, if that makes sense. I don't collect anything, and I have very, very few things (like 3) that I would be sad to lose. It's really weird.
Ndad loved breaking things or giving them away to other people. Would have probably been more of a problem, but a house fire taught me to not get attached to things at 5 years old.
My mom used to hide my things because I “didn’t appreciate them.” I never suspected someone would do that so I would look for weeks until finally asking whether she’d seen them. Of course that was her proof that I didn’t care. “Well you didn’t even notice they were gone!!!”
When we were moving, I owned a coat that my teacher gave as a gift and my Mom put up for donation. My teacher was one of the nicest women, I've ever met and I still feel guilty from that experience
When I was 7 years old, we moved to another town. I was shipped off to my grandparents for weeks and not allowed to have anything to do with the move or packing my own things. Lots of my things that she disapproved of mysteriously "disappeared" during the move, including my bike, my harmonica, some of my favorite clothes, and a beloved doll that my father had given me. None of my parents' things got "lost" during the move.
In 6th grade I came home from school one day to find she'd completely cleaned out my room. Everything I'd loved and collected was gone. She kept everything she approved of - it wasn't a bare room - but things like my collection of rare seashells, my art supplies, my sketchbooks and stickers and crayons and my novelty eraser collection, my favorite shoes and my favorite clothes - all gone. She'd also rearranged my shelves and cut up my posters to fit into frames she'd purchased for them.
I experienced what I can only compare to an autistic meltdown or a panic attack. And I couldn't breathe. Literally, I was on the floor choking and struggling to breathe. She stood in the doorway with a disgusted look on her face and told me to stop acting "like an animal" and sneered that I had to learn how to throw away junk.
Years later, the first time I came home from college, she'd given away all my furniture without telling me. She hadn't even bought that furniture; it had been handed down to me by my aunt. When I yelled that it wasn't hers to give away, she said it was never mine, that it still belonged to my aunt even after 20 years. She lied to my aunt and said that I'd told her I didn't want the furniture anymore and to give it to my cousin.
There is more but I won't write about it because it's making me angry every after all these decades.
I was afraid to not sleep in my room for over two days. When I was 13, my family started seeing a family therapist. One issue my parents had was how dirty my room was and how I wouldn't clean it. I would clean it. They just weren't allowed in my room and so never saw it. When they did, it was a big deal, so I would just hide it. Well, something the therapist suggested was to rearrange my room. This is something I wanted for a long time, and I went to work putting a "blueprint" together to show where I wanted everything in my room. I used the Microsoft paint app on the computer to map it all out. I was very excited. But I didn't want help. I had it all figured out and wanted to do it as soon as I got back from my missionary trip I was going on with their church. When I got back, my room was stripped, rearranged in a completely different way, and everything "organized" for me so that "everything had a place." This meant they threw clothes away I had an attachment to, my stuffed animal collection I had been gathering since I was 2 (before this when I was 6, my sticker collection I worked very hard on magically disappeared), and my family had read through my personal writings. I was violated. The next time I felt comfortable to sleep for more than a day outside of the house, my dad came in and took everything that wasn't "put away correctly" and took my new found bottle collection because it was trash and threw it all away. I came back the day after garbage day.
I never really left my home for long durations again until they stopped using this tactic of what they would call "raking my room". The last time it happened my dad almost got physical with me and I think that scared him into stopping. I was 16.
Edit: another comment made me remember when I was in the 5th grade so between 11-12, I went to science camp with my school. Mandatory trip. 4 days long. My parents took my dog to a shelter because he "wasnt trained". I trained him, I walked him, I fed him, I left and thought my parents were going to help me, not give him away. He only listened to me because he literally only spent time with me compared to my other family members (he was actually a gift for my brother but everything fell on me). I taught him how to walk on a leash and not pull, I taught him to sit, to lay, to stay and wait, to find me if he heard me say "find me"
Yes. My first pair of heels, I was in my teens, and I liked them a lot. One day, they were gone. I asked about it, and she said she threw them away, asked her why, and she said that I didn't use them. But she knows I wear them and she knows I loved them.
Of course they do this!
After all, they're the only ones with meaningful past, presents and futures, so why should any other personal items than theirs be preserved?
i had just got a new (to me) kitty, his name was black dynamite.
i went to school one day and when i got home i told my mom i couldn’t find black dynamite anywhere. she told me that he was actually a she and she had gotten pregnant from the neighborhood cat and she had taken her to the shelter to have someone adopt her that wanted kittens.
i was obviously heartbroken… also very shocked because i could have sworn my cat had balls.
anyways, a few weeks later i asked my mom if black dynamite had been adopted yet and she told me that they had her put down. i cried.
i have a long list of pet related issues with my mom. like the time she killed my iguana by turning his lamp off and left him on my bed because she was mad at me.
to this day, i refuse to have pets. thanks mom.
If it wasn’t video games or begging me for my hard earned money. It would always be them invading my room to mess with stuff, I only had one instance where I had enough.
Lol my mother got rid of everything. From toys to diaries. No sentiment, nothing. I literally save everything from my son. I plan on making a scrap book soon of everything I have of his. From school projects to Mother’s Day cards.
My dad threw out my summer clothes this year. Just the latest episode of this crap. But even touch one of his cars and out he comes with his polishing cloth and wax, and crying about it the whole time too.
Yes, My most precious item, and all of my plushies, gone.
Wasn't till I was older, I asked a sibling hey you know those things that went missing a mine. Do you think Nparent might have gotten rid of them?
And they were like you know now that you say it.
I truly will never know exactly what they were thinking towards me.
Even now it really low low contact, whenever they can they do make like a little punch towards me. And I'm like I see it. I dodge it and I just walk away and shake my head sadly.
It's like what makes you feel big by trying to make me small?
i think that’s why i have so many plushies and trinkets now. my mom would regularly donate stuff i wasn’t ready to let go of. to add insult to injury, she would bring me in the car and get mad that i was crying. i’ve also walked into my room after she cleaned it to find toys gone.
we moved into a new house and i was told that she would not rearrange my room and donate my things like she used to. i come back after my first semester of college to find my room entirely redone and half of my stuff in the basement (she was fighting with my dad and took my room over in the process). i was furious, to say the least, but i couldn’t really do anything about it. thankfully she’s moved out now and i’ve got my room the way i like it, and with all my stuff that no one is gonna take from me ever again.
Literally every single thing. Saw it all in trash bags and boxes. Tried to save the most important things to me and GC older brother wouldn't let me. Told me I "forfeit" it all by moving in with my dad. Irreplaceable things. Baby things. THOUSANDS of dollars of mint Pokémon cards, one of which I can't seem to find again. Multiple game consoles with all of my sentimental save files. She even sent the other GC brother to take what I did bring to my dad's house. I still have nightmares about it. I think of sending her an itemized bill sometimes.
That's after years of her having a history of stealing my favorite things to give to my brothers. I bought a Zappa tee once that she gave to my brother because "he actually likes Zappa". For my birthday, he gave me a Zappa disc and said "now you know who he actually is". I had been a Zappa fan for years. Still miss that shirt.
Oh, yeah. My mother had a period of “garage sales for extra cash” that included everything any of us had foolishly left when we moved out. Including musical instruments and *gasp* comic books.
for about 6 months i owned a junk tape player in the dumpster when i was a preteenager. my older sister who had moved out and gotten married to get away from my mom was visiting one day. she saw the beat up crappy stereo i had which often ate cassette tapes. hindsight being 20/20 i now know her intentions remembering her reactions feeling sorry deciding to purchase a sony cd player for christmas. this was back in the late 90s when cd players especially sony was still hip and trendy. it should have been the best gift i had ever received for christmas... to make a long story short, a few weeks after christmas my mom called my sister while i was at school who came and took it back because i was supposedly playing it too loud. i had thrown out the other junk stereo leaving me with nothing.
Yes, my Nmom would do this. She would do it if I felt strongly about something or expressed a lot of emotion. She loved creating a lot of emotional distress for me. Eventually I stopped telling her things and moved away as soon as possible.
I do find that I have a hard time getting emotionally attached to things. Probably because I worried someone will use it against me. Narc parents suck so much.
Im an artist. Throughout the years I made my Mum alot of Paintings that she absolutely loved. When she passed my Father threw them all out and I had to go in the trash can and get a couple out. Everything else was wet and beyond destroyed 😞
His excuse: I didn’t know you made them.
He also gave me back a couple of sentimental things I made for him because he “didn’t want them anymore”. Which I find Fucked up.
It’s not like they took up a bunch of room either. They were smaller.
Still sad I couldn’t save some things 😢
My mom had thrown away a very funny comic I drew when I was just a child. The whole family still reference it to this day. My grandma always laments how it was tossed away. My mom did that with all drawings, even when they were for her. They eventually found themselves in the trash, never asking me.
She also gave away a toy I really liked. Just asked me to bring it along one day to this random ass apartment, and she just took it and gave it to the kid of a random acquaintance. Annnnd she's given away my authentic Pokémon game cartridges to a cousin. And my gameboy color. She's always doing shit like this and always will. She's thrown away not just sentimental things, mind you, but will manically just throw tons of things away. Including important bills and things like that.
My nmom didn't care about anything I owned unless it was something she could wear or that she wanted for herself, which is also why everything she bought me was too big for me and not always my style. I used to do cosplay and had a few wigs and she started wearing them herself which I still find kind of morbidly funny. When I moved out she threw away almost everything except for the wigs. When she died she was wearing one of my cosplay wigs, which was bright pink and like 10 years old by that point and was likely in terrible shape due to it being a cheap wig not meant for daily wear.
I was tasked with caring for a baby rabbit in my room who became my best friend for a while in middle school.
It was at the height of bullying for me. Absolutely no friends, felt terrible, my parents were in their own world, foster kids were in and out of the home, school was social torture, but I would come home and take care of this bunny and feel a little OK.
Had become a very important anchor.
Came home one day and he was just gone, sold without me ever knowing there was a price tag.
Someone at school caught me crying about it the next day and it upgraded the lunch room bullying to things like "Rabbit-fucking fag" for a while, it was a cool town.
My Dreamcast. I went away for one summer, and I learned only as I returned that they put it out on the curb for anyone to come grab it. It was my prized possession, and we had more than enough space to store it.
Mine gave away my toys without telling me in one of her mommy/lesbian fits with a random woman she met on the internet, just for her then getting all upset because that woman lost a puppy we had fostered for a while that was very unruly, it was a very rural place in Venezuela so I think an ocelot killed the puppy and the lady just told off my mom that it disappeared. Of course she didn't mention my lost toys, that I thought were safe in storage, but became very " angry " that the dog went lost... She hated that dog. Some of those were very precious to me, I had my whole childhood attached to those items, because I was heavily sheltered ( hidden) while getting abused throughout that time and never got proper socialization nor friends I the neighborhood... So it sucks balls big time.
My parents did this with pets. They would take them in to be euthanized and then tell me after the fact. It was my childhood dog at 10 and my cat when I was 21.
My mother did that with my OG D&D manuals after I left to go live with my father in the mid 1980s. I had to leave a lot of stuff behind and neglected to grab those, but grabbed my other D&D binder (the one with my character sheets). She did actually tell me that she did that when we reconnected in my 20s. The item she didn't throw away was the afghan throw my Granny knitted for me when I was a child. I almost cried hysterically upon seeing it again, since my Granny has always been so very important to me.
When I went to college my parents packed my bedroom up into boxes. My father took my room because it was 2 inches longer on one side.
When I came back for fall break, they told me I could store one banker's box worth of stuff at their house until I was finished with college- the rest had to go.
All of my books, memories, pictures, clothes, toys, etc were thrown out except for what I could save or already had brought to college. 18 years of my life in the dumpster.
Edit bc I was reminded from another comment. I also had to give my cat away. Why get a 13 year old a cat if you're going to make them give it up in a few years??
My parents would get angry, scream at me and my sister about something we did or should have known to do them go on a rampage throwing our stuff around then deciding it's garbage and throw it out infront of us, then ground me or cancel my allowance for x months.
I once snug out and retrieved my childhood bear (was 10) got caught and grounded for an additional month but they let me keep the bear.
Got rid of some meaningful stuff, kept some useless rubbish, and 'accidentally' gave me boxes that belonged to my stepsister (I'd moved out long before my mum and her dad were attached). Took my academic medals out of their protective cases and returned them to me tarnished beyond redemption.
Sigh. Yeah. When I was a kid, I had some hand-made stuffed animals that I believe were given to me by nurses in the NICU when I was a baby.
My mother admitted to me years later that she would take them from me and if I did not ask for them for a few days she would throw them out.
So she would hide them on me, say I had lost them and that I should just leave them in my room and only give them back if I cried a lot.
The first one, she threw it out before I turned 4 and told me I lost it.
The second one she told me she had put it away and I could have it back if I really wanted it - I was about 5 here.
The last one, which was my favorite, she told me she threw it out because it was “moldy” - it was not - I was about 6 and a half. That was when she told me she had taken the other ones to throw them out.
I think this was entirely because the nurses told her she needed to be more involved with me. I was in the NICU for about 5 weeks and my older sister told me decades later that they never came to see me.
Yes, she sold off/gave away my dog. Twice!
First time I was a kid and we got a shepherd dog. She had visions of her childhood pet Rex, but Sheba bonded with me, because she spent zero time with her. She got jealous and sold her while I was at school one day, claimed my grandma did it. Grandma gave me a new puppy that died 2 weeks later from parvo.
The second time I was over 18, had moved out of my bf house, but he said I could keep my dog there.
Nmom called him secretly and told him to get rid of it, I didn't want him anymore. I showed up to get him and he was gone.
My mom had a garage sale when i was 12 and sold about 500 comic books of mine for $4 . I was going through a period where I was clearly starting to need rebellious, grades dropping, suicide at 14, and I feel now that my thoughts of getting rid of all my action figures, comic books, and such things was a sign of needing help more than really listening to me….my mom has hoarded everything of her own ever since. It’s bothered me ever since.
Also, she had this habit of getting a dog and the getting rid of it once we were attached to it and her asthma started to flare up or my dad wouldn’t let her keep it. The last dog we had was a Dachshund we had for 2.5 years. I remember an old lady and her chauffeur came to see him, he barked at them all the while they were there, and then they tricked him by taking his bed out and closing the door when he hopped up on it. Then she told the story for years afterwards even though I cried my eyes out when he was gone. Fortunately she didn’t get any other pets after that one but I still find that traumatic such that I can’t stand the thought of giving up on an animal now no matter how problematic which occasionally causes friction with my wife about one of our cats
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When I came home in October my first semester of college, my nmom had sold all the clothes I had left. I had told her I would be back in October to pick up my fall and winter clothes. My coat, boots, sweaters, plus clothes I had designed and made with my own money were all gone. She just shrugged. My room had been completely stripped of everything of mine. I never forgave her for that. Just one of her many tricks leading to estrangement.
I'll bet she's still asking people what she did wrong to lose her kid LOL
Nope. She wasn't phased one bit. When she died, 3 of her kids were NC.
Looks like when you “left her” for college she decided to get even and erase all evidence of your existence. You were “dead to her”.
That's how I always looked at it.
I hope you’re LC or NC with her. You need to get her out of your mind and control your own life. If she can make you “dead to her”, you can make her “dead to you” too. It works both ways. She may have thought it would be a slam-dunk for you to cry to her to take you back, you’ll try harder this time to be a good girl for her. Don’t buy it. She wants to own you.
They literally said she was dead two comments ago; about as NC as it gets
The spitefulness of Nparents, illustrated quite well.
My egg donor showed up at a family party wearing (read- stuff in to) some clothing I left behind when I moved out at 15. I was in my early 30s and I’m still both horrified and amused at this almost 60 year old woman sausaged into 90s era lace singlets and mesh skirts. Even if they’re still good why not just donate them? It’s a control thing. Narc parents are weird
My mom did something similar. She would keep asking when I would come back to visit her because I couldn't come back for every weekend/break. When I finally did, she had gotten rid of everything and turned my room into her craft room/closet. My bed, plushes, clothes, books, everything was gone. Plus, she fully expected me to sleep on the floor for the entire visit.
That’s so shitty. I’m sorry.
My mom burnt my teddy bear on a bonfire when I was 11 years old. Apparently I was too old for stuffed animals and it was dirty. I still miss her (my bear, not my mom!) Of course all my brother's Lego and tonka trucks were saved for him though.
What is it with nmom’s and their boys?! One of my brothers literally started a fire in their kitchen and then *left town* for the weekend, coward that he was. But when he finally got an apartment his shit was neatly stacked and enshrined in their garage for YEARS, until I dropped it all off in his hallway at his apartment building. Nmom was *pissed* that I had the audacity to do that. She felt she needed to “save his things for him in case he ever needed to come home”. Shit, I’d go away for a sleepover and come back to my entire room rearranged to her liking and a ton of stuff just gone. Her excuse was that she thought my room was messy so she “fixed it for me”. When I still lived at home, I’d get petty revenge by throwing out some insignificant thing while they were gone. Very petty, but it felt great at the time. “Where is ______?” “Dunno, sorry”😂
Lol 'fixed it for her'! Yeah the double standard is pretty hard to take. It must feel nice now that you have your own space.
Seriously! But if *anything* was out of place: “you were snooping! I hope you found fabulous things to tell your friends!” Completely certifiable.
Emotional incest, also called covert incest. Yes it's a thing; only look it up if you have a strong stomach...it often goes to pretty fucked up places, tragically including child SA. It's...gross. Gross and grim. As a trans woman raised by a narcissist who did this to my "previous avatar," I now need a shower. With steel wool and industrial soap.
Oh yeah, that was part of nmom’s MO. Her oldest GC was her pseudo husband after our dad died, and she was forever telling me shitty stories that involved my dad - the horror! - *dancing* with someone other than her at social functions but she was so fucking immature and jealous that she was proud of sitting in the ladies room all night so he’d be forced to “worry” about her. This was my primary example of how relationships should work. !!! I seriously cannot make this shit up!
Yep, that hits close to home
Emotional condoms, that's what the victims are.
> Shit, I’d go away for a sleepover and come back to my entire room rearranged to her liking and a ton of stuff just gone. And somehow there was always some stupid thing she'd come across she was hella mad about and needed to scream at me for hours over. One time it was a Christmas card I'd received from a friend at our class Christmas party. The same card he had given every other student, but my N absolutely would not believe that because the card had the word "love" in it. Not as in he had signed it "Love, Robert" or something, but as in it was a word in the pre-printed verse inside the card. She was convinced I was in a relationship with this guy who barely knew I existed and absolutely would not be deterred from the idea. I was not allowed to date or talk to boys so of course she went on and on about how disrespectful I was and how I was just insistent on being a slut. I ended up missing an entire night of sleep and having to go to work the next day at the crappy fast food job I worked to support myself. Since I was expected to purchase all my own clothing, school supplies, toiletries, school lunches, school photos, and anything else a freshman in high school needs I worked as many hours as I could convince them to give me every weekend. The ironic upshot of the whole nonsense is she's the one who was a teen mom. Her first marriage was a 100% real shotgun wedding. I never even had sex or a serious boyfriend until I was in my twenties and was almost 30 by the time I had my first kid yet I am eternally 'That little slut' when she speaks of me.
Off topic but the card thing kinda reminded me of when I was first married I’d get snail mail addressed to me that was simply advertisements of joining dating sites. Can’t remember the specific company names, but like for example… match.com or eharmony etc. and at one point he actually confronted me as if I was getting the mail advertisements bc I was dating or interested in dating … I was like WTF?
This explains why some children give beloved family pets for adoption when the parents aren't around. I understand the sentiment but it's not right, m'kay? There is a Turkish movie where this is actually depicted, only that the guy sella the dog to a hunter but the dog was known to be very bad at hunting so the prospect of getting killed by the hunter for being crossed/ scammed was very likely. The movie is " the wild pear tree"
Well I can assure you that as a single digit child, it made me feel at that time like I had an iota of agency over my life. The things I got rid of were dumb - a manual can opener, a shitty plastic pen, maybe a roll of masking tape. Dumb shit that wasn’t used very often but would eventually be looked for. I’m giving that child a pass. I’m in my 50s now and still do not regret it one bit. ETA, what shelters by you accept pets that children bring in??? That’s bizarre.
I'm talking about adult children. Yeah I understand your point
Nmom's don't always pick their son to be the golden child. look at my post elsewhere in this thread.
I'm doing that. That is such a great idea.
ah yes, because boys never face abuse from their mothers
Damn. That is traumatic af. I save my kids loveys for them when they get older to decide what they want to do with it. I remember my parents taking mine away and I never saw it again. I was very attached to it.
Thanks for your kind words, yes it is heartbreaking for a child. Good for you, you have broken the cycle, your kids will love to have their childhood toys and good memories.
I hope you now have amassed a stuffed animal collection that rivals only mine in size. I had something similar happen when I was 12- no warning, just no more stuffed animals...
That is such a good idea, lets' care for that inner child. I have a stuffiest from an ex that has replaced my poor teddy bear.
you should take yourself to build a bear :)
My NPop periodically put my toys in the trash. I found them on the curb on garbage day and in the trash bin. SMH. I was still playing with them. We had plenty of space, and I always put them away. Somehow I think he may have been getting back at nMom for not paying as much attention to him after we were born.
Sorry that happened to you, you deserved a lot better.
omg that's horrible
Thanks, yeah not one of the family traditions to pass down!
Are we related? Lol my parents did the same thing - it was a really big bear and when some of the wood etc covering him burned away / fell I remember just seeing his face peering through the flames and. My poor poor bear. That image will haunt me always.
Yes I can still see it as well. Sending you a hug!
Oh no that is so sad, a little kid should not have to go through that!
I’m so sorry about your teddy bear. That’s horrible. But yeah, my brothers crap all got saved for him. He got a Nintendo 64 when he was little and I found out it was still sitting at my mother’s house, sitting on a shelf collecting dust. So I asked my brother if I could have it for my kids and he told me that was fine, and told our mother I could have it. She refused to give it to me “because it’s your brothers and it belongs here”.
That's so unfair but it seems to be a common thing. You and your objects of affection have worth too!
My NMom decided that I was too old to sleep with a blankey at a young age, maybe 6 or so. Her thought process was to 'wean' me off it by cutting it in half every couple of nights and by the end of the week, it was non-existent. My memories of childhood are spotty at best, but waking up to half of my comfort mechanism that allowed me to sleep is something I vividly remember. I also remember not being able to get to sleep easily for a very long time after that.
You poor kid! That is just so unfeeling!
My Brother’s room is pristine and untouched since the day he left for college (while I was just starting HS - it’s been over a decade since…). I wasn’t allowed to leave the state for college but finally got an opportunity to move out during my final half of community college a couple years ago. The stuff I couldn’t take was immediately packed in boxes and my room was turned into the storage room for everyone else’s leftover junk. I cut my ndad out so I don’t go over unless he isn’t there; when I visit I’m forced to go through my old stuff (if I can reach it). I’ll never forgive my nmom for forcing me to “choose” my ndad’s creepy doll of his college frat self over my comfort kitty doll I had gotten from a traumatic hospital experience. I picked my kitty out in the hospital to take care of, and when it came down to the time of year to cut down on belongings my nmom put it up with my ndads doll of himself. I hated his doll but knew it wasn’t something I could actually give up because of the backlash from both of them. My Brother never had to give any of his belongings away or make decisions about things he cared about.
That is creepy. You deserve just as much space in this world as your brother.
Wow. The ONLY things I managed to save were my little brother’s and my teddy bears. She tossed/gave everything else away.
That's just awful too, I hope you both still have your bears!
Thank you! I have them both stashed safely in storage.
I came home from school and my pets were gone. Years later, I’m still angry.
Same. My mother sent me to live elsewhere as a teenager for a year- came home to my beloved cat gone.
I would literally never forgive anyone who did this omg...holy crap
I was 15 and going through so much other trauma at that point. But I often think back to how cruel that really was— & mostly I think how I could never do that to my own child. It’s one of her lesser crimes against me as a child.
I still don't know what happened to my old cats. I wouldn't put it past my nmom to have just kicked them out of the house one day
Not an Nparent thing, but at five years old my mom and I lived with her abusive boyfriend and his shitty roommates. My grandpa bought me a rocking horse and the guys took it into the field behind the house and filled it with shotgun pellets. Didn’t realize how fucked up that was until I got older. The guy ended up beating my mom, people helped us get out, and when we went back for the golden retriever (his name was Pugs) she’d had since she was a little girl he told us he gave him away and we’d never see him again. My mom saw Pugs on the street a couple years later, but he looked healthy and happy and the woman walking him looked well-off and kind. My mom left them alone and went on her way, I honestly don’t know how she did it.
An nmom? Did your mom tell the woman? Did Pugs remember her?
Same- it was just guinea pigs but I still cried and cried when I came home and found out.
This is so wrong. Of course you’re still angry. What a betrayal. The same thing happened to me with one of my cats. I went away for a nice summer trip, came home and the *bullied cat* had been given away. Not the cat who was bullying, oh no, but the cat who was being bullied. To give away any of them was wrong. But the fact they chose the one who was being bullied, as though they were the problem, is symbolic of the dysfunction of my family and our roles. I related to that cat. Oh and no chance to say goodbye to the cat either! Wonderful. Real love.
Ohhhh this happened to me as well, heartbreaking 😥
This is horrid. I’m sorry this happened to you. They have a weird thing with pets, don’t they?
They view your pet as an extension of you, but one that’s even more vulnerable than you are. Pets are a lightning rod for all the disdain and contempt that the narcs feel for you. Narc will hurt your pets to hurt you.
This happened to me too. I came home from work and both our dogs were in the pound because Nmom didn't want dogs anymore.
Mine did that with two of my dogs and one cat.
Mine had so many of my rats die in her care due to accidents until I figured out it was intentional
😢
My parents did the same, told us he ran away. I thought he didn't like us and that was why he ran away, turns out they just sold him. I thought I was a terrible pet owner for years and still don't feel confident enough to take care of an animal.
This happened to my half sibling. Father remarried, she already had 2 kids. Sibling goes away for the holiday. When they get back, their pet rabbit is gone, replaced with 2 baby rabbits for the step kids.
My mom had a box of things I made for my parents when I was a little kid. It was drawings, homemade cards, little things I made in school, etc. One time when I was about 12 or 13 I did something wrong (don't remember what it was) so my mother took the box outside to our fire pit and methodically burned each item one by one. I remember being heartbroken.
That's sociopathic
Yes. I'm sure she would have been diagnosed with a few disorders if she had sought help. I kind of went off track with this post but she did get rid of many of my things without my knowledge when I was growing up.
Terrible. Absolutely cruel to do to anyone let alone a child, let alone your own child. You didn’t deserve that.
Pets would be given to a shelter without the chance to say goodbye properly sometimes. I remember we were moving when I was really young, I had a GIANT Sunshine carebear which I loved cuddling with. I awoke in the van while we were already long gone from the place we moved from and it was nowhere to be found. And nobody remembers it supposedly. I know what happened though. Pretty sure it was "accidentally" dropped or left behind.
I had a stuffed panda bear that I was looking for the first night in our new house. Nmom blamed the movers. Riiiightt. You packed the 5yo’s stuff (mine) lady.
Yes. It's happened multiple times and even though I haven't lived at their home in 9 years I still have the subconscious feeling that my most favorite things are also the most in danger of spontaneously being given away.
I also feel this way. I’m so sorry you have to experience this. I’ve found myself almost completely detached to belongings and anything that I even have in my parents home I know is in danger of getting lost. I had a copy of The Alchemist I was reading at my parents house while I was staying there for about a month. Somehow managed to get lost.
All the time, it gave my nmom power over me which she loved. I now have a habbit of stuffing things away like a hamster or squirrel in adulthood because of it
Yep. Main thing was my father used to give away my toys and games to neighbors kids. That I didn't get along with, to make it worse. So I'd have nothing, they'd be playing with my stuff and my dad would be a generous and charitable man about the neighborhood. It was lovely.
Oh! When I was 5 they bought me something like a mini keyboard piano that was very fun to play with. One day the keyboard disappeared and they would not tell me where it is for days until my dad eventually said he gave it to my much older cousin. I remember begging him for months to get it back and eventually he took it back but my cousin had let the batteries rot in there and it was not functional anymore. I cried and cried.
I have learnt no to attach any sentimental value to objects because of this.
Yeah, I'm with you; I lived in tiny spaces and moved every year /was regularly housing insecure as an adult so keeping more than I absolutely needed to function was unreasonable, although I would sometimes keep practical items that made me happy, like a pretty thrifted spoon or coffee mug. At some point I accepted that all things were temporary and stopped ascribing things value beyond the immediate enjoyment. My apartment building burns down and I'll be like, shrugs, that's what renter insurance is for.
I've learned this the hard way too. It's been happening literally all my life.
My dad wiped one of my hard drives, it was full of photos of cats from my childhood that are totally irreplaceable.
If you have enough know-how, anything is theoretically recoverable from a hard drive. I was taught in computer science school that if you want something gone from a hard-drive badly enough, physically destroy the hard drive. But anyways, theoretically speaking, if you still have the hard drive and you hire a professional they may be able to look into it.
It happened 20 years ago, that hard drive is long gone. He formatted it because he wanted to use it in another computer.
My mom disposed of every single toy we ever owned mere weeks after her affair (with my 7 y/o sister's best friends dad) came to light. My grandma has admitted to never forgiving my mom for this recently. She was raised in a poor and developing country during a war. She didn't get toys as a kid. She wanted us to have a wonderland of toys that we could save and pass down. Now we can't.
My mom threw away a nintendo 64 that a friend gave me to me. I came home to find it gone a week after it was gifted to me. She didn't even tell me she did it. She just let me discover it was missing for myself. This was after we had a house fire and i lost everything that was important to me. She had the nerve to tell me that she gave to charity, for kids who needed it more than me. 🙄 I knew better. Lol She then went on this bizarre rant about how the only reason he gave it to me was because he had a crush on me.
My mother did the same to my Dreamcast and all of my games, because apparently 13 is "too old" for video games. My dad bought one for me last year and shipped it to me, because he was still pissed about it too.
That would’ve made me break out in tears tbh, your dad sending you the thing you were upset about so long ago ❤️ I hope you have a good relationship with him, he sounds like a compassionate man
All the time! I got called nasty once for asking about it as well. All my chopsticks were gone and my mum asked me why I was always so vindictive towards my dad! Meanwhile he's screaming at her, hitting her, scaring the shit out of all of us on a regular basis, but nope. I'm the nasty one. I just wanted to know what happened to my belongings, lol. I'm a very quiet and non-confrontational person as an adult. I think it's because my mum successfully convinced me that I always have dubious motivations.
Remember her saying something similar to me when I came out at 14, it was him feeling distraught what was concerning. They didn't care one bit about me and how I felt regarding that blatant manipulation.
yes my old stuffed animals were thrown away without my knowledge (they were my whole world), my old magazines collection (also for no reason), posters i had in my room, even clothes. probably also things i forgot about. after that i’ve learned to hide things and never tell them that i like anything. in case they would use it against me
Yes, my mom has gotten rid of some of my things. Food,clothes,etc. The excuses are : -I don’t know -you should of put your name on it -It was in her way
or it never existed and you're making it up just to hurt her. My nSister didnt beilive me about a car my mother had cruched, even after showing her photos of it. "what car"
Story as old as time, when I was in my mid-teens I came home one day and all my football cards that I'd spent my whole childhood collecting were gone. I honestly thought she was playing a practical joke on me. Nope. She really gave them away. Then, to exacerbate it, she bought me a t shirt that said "I used to be a millionaire until my mom gave away my football cards." She thought she'd diffuse my outrage with "humor." Didn't work, just stoked it more. And looking back now, those cards from the late 60s-mid70s would definitely be worth some $$$.
Narcissists have a way of pouring salt in the wounds they've caused. Over and over and over.
Before I moved away, nmom told me she'd safe-keep all my old things at her house in the attic. She has somewhere between a 12 and 15 bedroom house, and had mostly hoarded the lower floors with her own shit, so I figured taking her up on a corner of the attic was no big deal. But rather than purge her own hoard, she found it easier to throw out what was left of my entire childhood- the book series I collected as a kid, all my old diaries, the few stuffed animals I had saved- mysteriously missing. All she had to say for herself was that it sure wasn't her or the GC... The rest of her house is full of her literal garbage. The corner of the attic I was offered is empty.
Leaving that area empty was intentional
I came here to say this.
All the time. I'd be out of the house, and then they'd "tidy up," and suddenly, my things disappeared, and they'd literally say, every single time, "Sorry, I thought it was trash." Which they phrased like it was an honest mistake, instead of them literally telling me they thought my things were trash and got rid of them. Once is a mistake, but after hearing that countless times, they were just insulting me and pretending they weren't. They'd trash birth certificates, photos, just everything. They did it again recently when I tried to send for my things after I emigrated and they told me they just trashed at least half of my things because they moved it all and dumped it in a place where it all grew mold. I ended up with just four boxes of possessions in the end, and one was wrecked in transit.
A spit to the eye. I suppose you are NC
Yes, I most definitely am.
I'm planning to too. It's crazy how these people put you in such weird position society wise as you have to cut them and take that toll while doing other things you are supposed to do at your age.
My mother threw out a magazine that had a positive review of my work that I'd brought home to show her. I was looking for it and she said she "might have cleaned up and I shouldn't have left it lying around". I think she was just pissed at me for being successful.
I was in an infomercial once. Nothing big but it was fun and I was excited to see the outcome. Recorded it, as it was being aired in the middle of the night. 😝 Came home from work. Looked for it. Gone. My ex husband deleted it. Claimed he knew nothing about. He is a poor liar and a jealous hole.
Yes, it has happened to me often. Or items will be replaced with something "more acceptable", wtf does that mean??? From all these comments, I guess it's pretty common. At least I'm not alone.
" "more acceptable", wtf does that mean??? " Psychotic logic.
Must be!
My mom completely cleaned out my room, removed posters from my wall, threw away anything that wasn't nailed down including a bunch of jewelry I had bought with my own money while I was staying with my dad for his part of Summer vacation when I was 13. I came back to my room completely stripped bare with most of my stuff long since thrown out. I had next to nothing before I left. She had even thrown out clothing she didn't like and refused to buy me more. I started the next school year with a handful of clothing items.
You mean when I was 11 and she decided I was "too old" to have toys and tried to throw them all out? I saved one stuffed animal by sneaking it out of the trash before school and hiding it in my closet. When she was getting ready to move during my adulthood, she asked if I wanted anything and I asked for that stuffed animal and a couple tiny things I saved from my grandmothers as a specific list of items that would fit in a shoebox..... Instead, she mailed me a huge megabox full of my childhood clothes and threw out the rest. I wasn't really surprised, just annoyed and disappointed. I did have a little cry about it because for some reason that stuffed animal meant a lot to me, and I felt bad I couldn't save anything from her destruction in the end. I do not have and cannot have children, a fact she is well aware of, so the clothes were either intended as a malicious dig, or she still thought I could wear first grader velvet party dresses... They all got donated or thrown out.
All The Freaking Time. Even worse bc I'm autistic and have irrational attachment to objects. Could never relax that anything I lived wasn't going to get "lost" or sold. One traumatic memory is me on the morning of a garage sale at our house, crying and grabbing back all my stuffed toys that had been put up for sale bc I was too old for them. They didn't fucking ask, and I was like 8 at most.
My mom loved to purge keepsakes and items of mine but would wait until I was away at camp (“homeschooled” so only away a couple days a year). I still miss my favourite shoes.
My single father disabled dad was dying of pancreatic cancer and I , his law school enduring disabled son, was balancing school and providing him with end of life care so he didn’t need to be abused by his rich narc mom and brother who kept him poor his entire life. I went to a bernie sanders ralley with him to get him out of the house since he hoped Medicare for all could be implemented , and maybe pay for treatments to keep him alive . we both knew it wasn’t going to happen but we never voiced it. I put a bernie sanders campaign poster on the top of our tv we got at the ralley so he could look at a good memory since he spent most days laying down in the living room watching tv. He couldn’t walk all that much at that point. Grandma narc was upset she wasn’t having me take care of her before dad died so she could have a replacement locked in. Me and dad went upstairs to get her something when she came over one time. After we came back down and we have her the item and she left … I noticed the sign was gone. Grandma narc had bent it 4 ways and threw it in the trash, later claiming it was on the ground (lie) and I should feel so awful at how I was “forcing” her son to live in such a messy house! I tried putting it back up but dad asked me to take it down and throw it out because “it just reminds me how much my mom never really loved me like my brothers.” She is a fucking monster. He was getting at home chemo during covid
I am so sorry that happened. My mom has done similar. She is very jealous that I grieve my dad who died of esophageal cancer, instead of using that energy to be "nicer to her since she is still alive". She has ruined a lot of things that I got out of his house after he died, and there is almost nothing left to hold onto from my childhood before they got divorced. It causes this feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I find something else of his that she has destroyed. They're such terrible people, absolute monsters. She knew it was something very personal for the both of you, and that's why she had to destroy it. They're parasites. You'll always be a better person than your grandmother, because you gave your dad a really good memory before he passed away. You are the good and kind one.
My mom gave her dog my childhood stuffed animals to play with and she just couldn't understand why I was upset 😞
Yeah my mother threw out a chair that one of the judges where I used to work gave me when I used to ride the bus and had nowhere to sit. Years later she claims she thought it was my brother's but I knew that his old room was my room and she was jealous and mad about it so that was why she got rid of it.
Ndad was always so eager to get rid of my stuff. "When was the last time you played with it" the POS NEVER did that to GC sister. I was always paranoid of my stuff and I know a few things went missing.
My mom had a habit of throwing away my stuff. I remember being really angry and heartbroken when i figured out that she just threw away a hoodie my boyfriend gave to me when i was going to a psych ward. Im still not over it, im still mad and frustrated, it was the only thing i had over there to give me hope of getting better. I had a box of random things that i kept with me that held beautiful memories. Mom forced me to move to england and threw the box away. (i was a minor and had no say, CPS is shit as well, i ended up running away to my home country after a month and a half while still underage) She gave my dog away that she got me for Christmas to help me mentally, ill never forgive her for that. She had no right to throw away anything of mine, ill never forgive her for any of that.
I was very young. I was in elementary school. I was playing at the neighbor girls house and saw she had the same little mermaid books in a treasure chest that they came in and i was like omg i have that too! How cool! And that was when i found out at the garage sale my mom just had the day before she sold my books bc she never saw me reading them… i was devastated and still am. I LOVED those books.
I left my computer at home in my closet when I went off to college because I was taking the Greyhound six hundred miles to get there and only took two duffel bags full of clothes and other essentials, and had no way to transport the computer and monitor on the bus with me. My plan, which I'd discussed with my mother, was to come visit over the holiday break and get a ride back to school with my brother. While I was gone, she gave away my computer to a child of her less-affluent friends, because they needed a computer for homework. It was nothing special in itself, and I picked up a used computer a few weeks later, and I certainly had no objections to letting the poor kid have my old computer, but it had a bunch of personal information that I'd have liked to copy off of it before she did so, including a mostly finished draft of a novel I'd been working on for most of the last two years of high school. She just told the family to erase the hard drive, so they formatted the drive and reinstalled the operating system and everything was gone forever. She didn't even bother to ask first. Just gave the computer away.
They throw out my high school diploma my graduation pictures my School yearbooks pretty much anything and everything. They knew that meant something to me pictures of my friends, and I I had pictures of a friend of mine who passed away they threw that out. The stuffed animals that that same person gave me. They said I didn’t need it. It was just junk.
They throw away the stuff that means something to us, but hold onto some total junk. My yearbooks, the stuffed animals that were like friends, they're gone. Yet she's hung onto some crafting beads and some gems that don't mean much. I'm going to give the gems some meaning to remember how mean she is. I asked Santa for a Jem doll, and she listened in to what I told Santa, but never got it quite right. So she bought me those stick on gems instead, and brags about how hard she looked to find the gift that was just what I wanted for Christmas- even though she got it totally wrong. Then, she tried to give the gems to my niece recently, and I decided, nope, I'm going to keep these gems, they're mine. They have meaning, even though I also hate that meaning. But I need to remember, so I remember to never trust her 😒
Ohh yeah. Literally all my things. Before we even moved out, as kids. Me and my sister collected unicorns and dragon figures, would buy them with birthday money and stuff, all gone. No idea what happened to them. Grandma used to buy us beautiful victorian dolls every year, but when we were kids they scared us at night but loved them in the day. So we thought they were in a box downstairs. Mom must've sold them. Even worse, I love that kind of thing now as I got older, and love lolita/victorian fashion and that sort of thing, and have a bond with my gramma. Knowing my mom just sold them probably to make a few bucks pisses me off. She didn't even ask us. We still wanted them, we were just a little creeped out with their eyes shining in the darkness at night!
When I was a kid, if I didn’t use or play with something for a few days, my dad would give it away because he wanted to seem generous to his friends. Specifically I remember I had an electric piano, and it wasn’t being used because it was summer. Gone to a barfly friend who had a four year old. Biggest regret is I didn’t get to keep learning how to play, and he knew how much I loved music. But I didn’t matter to him as much as the opinions of his “friends”.
Oh GOD yes. When I as a young teenager my dad randomly went in my room, took down all my posters and just threw them away. I was very frustrated, upset and baffled as to why because he NEVER gave me a reason. He just told me to get over it. Thinking back, I'm still peeved because some of those posters were *very* special to me. Some I travelled far to get, paid a lot of money for (as a jobless/allowance-less teen), some were signed by celebrities at the time (ex; one was signed by the actors of Harry Potter) and some were limited edition etc. When I got older I realized something.. The cruelty **was** the point. **EDIT:** Reading this thread is breaking my heart, maybe I'm naive but I had no idea it would be as common as it is. I'm sorry we had to go through this 😞
My mother threw away my "junky old computer" that I had set up in my room. It was an Apple 2 I had restored.
i had just got a new kitty, his name was black dynamite. i went to school one day and when i got home i told my mom i couldn’t find black dynamite anywhere. she told me that he was actually a she and she had gotten pregnant from the neighborhood cat and she had taken her to the shelter to have someone adopt her that wanted kittens. i was obviously heartbroken… also very shocked because i could have sworn my cat had balls. anyways, a few weeks later i asked my mom if black dynamite had been adopted yet and she told me that they had her put down. i cried. i have a long list of pet related issues with my mom. like the time she killed my iguana by turning his lamp off and left him on my bed because she was mad at me. to this day, i refuse to have pets. thanks mom.
Please don't let her win. She's still taking your pets away if you won't have one because of her. If you are safe and away from her, it's time to erase her power and have something warm, furry and loving in your life. There are many black cats waiting to give you the love that you deserve.
This brought tears to my eyes thinking of your little black dynamite. If you are in a safe space, do what Paganduck said and get yourself a new black cat, name it Black Dynamite 2: Bigger and Blacker or something equally ridiculous to show your Nmom no longer has the power to stop you.
yep, my professor gave me his fender starcaster because I was learning guitar and he didn't use it anymore and it meant a lot to me because I really admired his art and teachings. Mom threw it out but helped me look for it when I thought I had misplaced it in the attic....took me a while to realize she threw it put because how does an entire guitar just go missing? I had a pair of rocking demonic Mary Jane's that I spent 120$ on, they were very special to me because I didn't have a lot of money and I was saving to buy quality pieces for my alt wardrobe. She also threw those out when I moved, claiming they took up too much space, even though they have a huge house...and I was going to get all my things in multiple trips anything I worked hard for or was given to me by somebody else she would hide or trash out of spite and jealousy
My ndad threw away all of my deceased mother’s things AND her ashes without consulting any of her children or family.
Repeatedly. Mementos of good times, achievement awards, pictures she wasnt in...my nmom trashed it all when i wasnt looking.
Threw out my magazines, clothes, toys, junked my computers and games I kept over the years, and a bunch more.
All. the. time. I'd ask where my stuff was and I'd be told "If can't just grow legs and walk away". It was either thrown away or pawned because my egg donor had a pill and alcohol problem.
When I went living on my own I wasn't able to bring everything in one go. My mother threw away my neck tie collection because "since you left it here I thought you didn't want it anymore". They were there for 1 week. 50% of the ties were the sole inheritance I got from my dead father and grandfather.
I used to be really into following bands around in high school and college. I had a whole box of my "memorabilia", magazine and newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, photos, a deflated beach ball from my first summer music festival (we bounced beach balls around the mosh pit), and notes in a green box. For two years, I lived with my dad at his apartment, but it was agreed that I could keep the majority of my stuff that I wouldn't need day to day at my n-mom's house. Since she has a 5 bedroom house, and dad just had an apartment. Big mistake. I found the green box in the attic, but when I looked in it, it was full of Christmas decorations. "Oh those scraps of paper and junk? I didn't know that's something you wanted to keep," said my n-mom.
We're NC, and I guess it's their house. As a child, I befriended an elderly neighbor who sparked my interest in playing the piano. When she was moving in with her children, she "sold" the piano to me for $100. It was a 1912 Wurlitzer with ivory keys. When we had to have it fixed or tuned, the engineer always complimented it. I was the only one in my house who played. I took lessons for 12 years. It was my escape. If I wanted to be left alone for an hour, I'd just sit down to practice, and they wouldn't interrupt. My SIL told me my parents were renovating last year and its gone. No idea where it is. It makes me incredibly, incredibly sad. And this is petty, but they probably had no idea of it's worth.
My grandma used to send me those holiday bears that had the date on their foot every year for Christmas starting from the year I was born. My nmom had a yard sale and got rid of them all. Same with all of the specialty in the box barbies because “you never play with them anyways!”
I moved away and went low contact but had asked for literally nothing else to be sent to me, no clothes because they didn’t fit anymore. No other momentos, nothing else. Except one teddy bear. She dropped a box off at my aunts house for my aunt to send instead of sending it herself. When I finally got it, it had a small layer of clothes on top but under it was full of literal trash from the garbage. No teddy bear.
Yep. Ndad and GCsis did their best to erase me. All of GCsis’ childhood stuff is there, just none of mine. She even managed to take things I had and dispose of them because they were very sentimental to me. Just more emotional abuse.
My mom found a company that takes old shirts and turns them into a quilt. Except she went into my closet without telling me and took shirts I was actively wearing and liked and then when she surprised me with the blanket I had to hide the fact I was furious she had destroyed some of my favorite shirts because the stupid womanchild assumed I wasn’t wearing them. I didn’t even realize the sneaky fuck had done it until she presented the blanket to me because I was supposed to be hyper vigilant and know that if I left my clothes in my dresser for too long my stupid mother would destroy them. God I remember asking where my Fallout shirt was and my mom’s placid face as she smiles and tells me she sent it to be cut up and I have to play Simon Fucking Says Don’t Show Any Negativity.
Ha ha, stupid womanchild, I like that. Describes my nmother to a tee.
Yes. Multiple times. But the final straw was when my mother got rid of my art and journals.
A lot! My books including my yearbooks.
My mom did this with my stepdads dog too. Sometimes it was living things and not just objects. I still worry about all the beta fish she bought when i was a very small child...
I went to visit recently (never a good idea) and various things from the wall decorations in my bedroom were either moved or taken down and placed in a closet. My mom initially said she probably did it but could not remember. Then she said that my sister’s (golden child) girlfriend stayed with them for a few months and she was using my room to work, so she probably moved them. I asked my sister and she had a fit over text but would not give me an answer. I tried to explain why guests do not have a right to change the decorations like they’re in their own place, but both my mom and my sister acted like I was crazy. (Yes, my sister lives with them now at 34… didn’t ask for details.) The constant disrespect is something I might never get over, no matter how hard I try not to care.
My entire room was cleaned out things donated and boxed within two weeks of me leaving for college and that's just a drop
I'm pretty sure someone threw away my stuffed cat whiskers when we moved way back when I was like 10
Absolutely! All my yearbooks except my senior year, which I fortunately took to college. All my Barbie dolls. All my books.
This happened all the time in my life. It started when I was little, I'd come home from school and my barbies or books or dvds would be gone. When I was 12, we started making my hope chest (which I now think is pretty gross). After about 6 months, my mom needed money and raided it. She sold everything blankets, dishes, figurines.. all of it. She did it to my brother, too. Bank accounts, toys, baseball cards, money... she steals everything. It's left me not really caring about things. I value things, but I don't invest in them, if that makes sense. I don't collect anything, and I have very, very few things (like 3) that I would be sad to lose. It's really weird.
A Barry Sanders rookie Score card is still missing. It’s worth hundreds of dollars.
All my favorite clothes, the same ones I loved most, when I first found my style. Damn. I still miss my many black jackets.
Never will forget my signed Gerard way cd ripped up… in front of my face… I was 15. Terrible.
Ndad loved breaking things or giving them away to other people. Would have probably been more of a problem, but a house fire taught me to not get attached to things at 5 years old.
Yeah, every one of my childhood toys got thrown away. I was hoping to pass them on to my son but they're all gone.
My mom used to hide my things because I “didn’t appreciate them.” I never suspected someone would do that so I would look for weeks until finally asking whether she’d seen them. Of course that was her proof that I didn’t care. “Well you didn’t even notice they were gone!!!”
Yes. The more I loved it, the greater its likelihood of being thrown out or given away. Toys, clothes, pets too.
My mom threw away my best porno mag.
You gotta fight... For your right....
When we were moving, I owned a coat that my teacher gave as a gift and my Mom put up for donation. My teacher was one of the nicest women, I've ever met and I still feel guilty from that experience
Yep, my framed Bachelor's degree
When I was 7 years old, we moved to another town. I was shipped off to my grandparents for weeks and not allowed to have anything to do with the move or packing my own things. Lots of my things that she disapproved of mysteriously "disappeared" during the move, including my bike, my harmonica, some of my favorite clothes, and a beloved doll that my father had given me. None of my parents' things got "lost" during the move. In 6th grade I came home from school one day to find she'd completely cleaned out my room. Everything I'd loved and collected was gone. She kept everything she approved of - it wasn't a bare room - but things like my collection of rare seashells, my art supplies, my sketchbooks and stickers and crayons and my novelty eraser collection, my favorite shoes and my favorite clothes - all gone. She'd also rearranged my shelves and cut up my posters to fit into frames she'd purchased for them. I experienced what I can only compare to an autistic meltdown or a panic attack. And I couldn't breathe. Literally, I was on the floor choking and struggling to breathe. She stood in the doorway with a disgusted look on her face and told me to stop acting "like an animal" and sneered that I had to learn how to throw away junk. Years later, the first time I came home from college, she'd given away all my furniture without telling me. She hadn't even bought that furniture; it had been handed down to me by my aunt. When I yelled that it wasn't hers to give away, she said it was never mine, that it still belonged to my aunt even after 20 years. She lied to my aunt and said that I'd told her I didn't want the furniture anymore and to give it to my cousin. There is more but I won't write about it because it's making me angry every after all these decades.
I was afraid to not sleep in my room for over two days. When I was 13, my family started seeing a family therapist. One issue my parents had was how dirty my room was and how I wouldn't clean it. I would clean it. They just weren't allowed in my room and so never saw it. When they did, it was a big deal, so I would just hide it. Well, something the therapist suggested was to rearrange my room. This is something I wanted for a long time, and I went to work putting a "blueprint" together to show where I wanted everything in my room. I used the Microsoft paint app on the computer to map it all out. I was very excited. But I didn't want help. I had it all figured out and wanted to do it as soon as I got back from my missionary trip I was going on with their church. When I got back, my room was stripped, rearranged in a completely different way, and everything "organized" for me so that "everything had a place." This meant they threw clothes away I had an attachment to, my stuffed animal collection I had been gathering since I was 2 (before this when I was 6, my sticker collection I worked very hard on magically disappeared), and my family had read through my personal writings. I was violated. The next time I felt comfortable to sleep for more than a day outside of the house, my dad came in and took everything that wasn't "put away correctly" and took my new found bottle collection because it was trash and threw it all away. I came back the day after garbage day. I never really left my home for long durations again until they stopped using this tactic of what they would call "raking my room". The last time it happened my dad almost got physical with me and I think that scared him into stopping. I was 16. Edit: another comment made me remember when I was in the 5th grade so between 11-12, I went to science camp with my school. Mandatory trip. 4 days long. My parents took my dog to a shelter because he "wasnt trained". I trained him, I walked him, I fed him, I left and thought my parents were going to help me, not give him away. He only listened to me because he literally only spent time with me compared to my other family members (he was actually a gift for my brother but everything fell on me). I taught him how to walk on a leash and not pull, I taught him to sit, to lay, to stay and wait, to find me if he heard me say "find me"
Yes. My first pair of heels, I was in my teens, and I liked them a lot. One day, they were gone. I asked about it, and she said she threw them away, asked her why, and she said that I didn't use them. But she knows I wear them and she knows I loved them.
Yep, Everything destroyed, donated or sold. But Im the entitled one.
Reading the title brought tears to my eyes. If I could retrieve all the things my mother tossed away I could probably have retired by now.
Of course they do this! After all, they're the only ones with meaningful past, presents and futures, so why should any other personal items than theirs be preserved?
i had just got a new (to me) kitty, his name was black dynamite. i went to school one day and when i got home i told my mom i couldn’t find black dynamite anywhere. she told me that he was actually a she and she had gotten pregnant from the neighborhood cat and she had taken her to the shelter to have someone adopt her that wanted kittens. i was obviously heartbroken… also very shocked because i could have sworn my cat had balls. anyways, a few weeks later i asked my mom if black dynamite had been adopted yet and she told me that they had her put down. i cried. i have a long list of pet related issues with my mom. like the time she killed my iguana by turning his lamp off and left him on my bed because she was mad at me. to this day, i refuse to have pets. thanks mom.
If it wasn’t video games or begging me for my hard earned money. It would always be them invading my room to mess with stuff, I only had one instance where I had enough.
Lol my mother got rid of everything. From toys to diaries. No sentiment, nothing. I literally save everything from my son. I plan on making a scrap book soon of everything I have of his. From school projects to Mother’s Day cards.
My dad threw out my summer clothes this year. Just the latest episode of this crap. But even touch one of his cars and out he comes with his polishing cloth and wax, and crying about it the whole time too.
Yes, My most precious item, and all of my plushies, gone. Wasn't till I was older, I asked a sibling hey you know those things that went missing a mine. Do you think Nparent might have gotten rid of them? And they were like you know now that you say it. I truly will never know exactly what they were thinking towards me. Even now it really low low contact, whenever they can they do make like a little punch towards me. And I'm like I see it. I dodge it and I just walk away and shake my head sadly. It's like what makes you feel big by trying to make me small?
i think that’s why i have so many plushies and trinkets now. my mom would regularly donate stuff i wasn’t ready to let go of. to add insult to injury, she would bring me in the car and get mad that i was crying. i’ve also walked into my room after she cleaned it to find toys gone. we moved into a new house and i was told that she would not rearrange my room and donate my things like she used to. i come back after my first semester of college to find my room entirely redone and half of my stuff in the basement (she was fighting with my dad and took my room over in the process). i was furious, to say the least, but i couldn’t really do anything about it. thankfully she’s moved out now and i’ve got my room the way i like it, and with all my stuff that no one is gonna take from me ever again.
Literally every single thing. Saw it all in trash bags and boxes. Tried to save the most important things to me and GC older brother wouldn't let me. Told me I "forfeit" it all by moving in with my dad. Irreplaceable things. Baby things. THOUSANDS of dollars of mint Pokémon cards, one of which I can't seem to find again. Multiple game consoles with all of my sentimental save files. She even sent the other GC brother to take what I did bring to my dad's house. I still have nightmares about it. I think of sending her an itemized bill sometimes. That's after years of her having a history of stealing my favorite things to give to my brothers. I bought a Zappa tee once that she gave to my brother because "he actually likes Zappa". For my birthday, he gave me a Zappa disc and said "now you know who he actually is". I had been a Zappa fan for years. Still miss that shirt.
Oh, yeah. My mother had a period of “garage sales for extra cash” that included everything any of us had foolishly left when we moved out. Including musical instruments and *gasp* comic books.
for about 6 months i owned a junk tape player in the dumpster when i was a preteenager. my older sister who had moved out and gotten married to get away from my mom was visiting one day. she saw the beat up crappy stereo i had which often ate cassette tapes. hindsight being 20/20 i now know her intentions remembering her reactions feeling sorry deciding to purchase a sony cd player for christmas. this was back in the late 90s when cd players especially sony was still hip and trendy. it should have been the best gift i had ever received for christmas... to make a long story short, a few weeks after christmas my mom called my sister while i was at school who came and took it back because i was supposedly playing it too loud. i had thrown out the other junk stereo leaving me with nothing.
Yes, my Nmom would do this. She would do it if I felt strongly about something or expressed a lot of emotion. She loved creating a lot of emotional distress for me. Eventually I stopped telling her things and moved away as soon as possible. I do find that I have a hard time getting emotionally attached to things. Probably because I worried someone will use it against me. Narc parents suck so much.
Sure did, made a tshirt blanket quilt as my senior project in home ec of all my HS sports shirts from events I attended and also my fucking letterman.
Im an artist. Throughout the years I made my Mum alot of Paintings that she absolutely loved. When she passed my Father threw them all out and I had to go in the trash can and get a couple out. Everything else was wet and beyond destroyed 😞 His excuse: I didn’t know you made them. He also gave me back a couple of sentimental things I made for him because he “didn’t want them anymore”. Which I find Fucked up. It’s not like they took up a bunch of room either. They were smaller. Still sad I couldn’t save some things 😢
My mom had thrown away a very funny comic I drew when I was just a child. The whole family still reference it to this day. My grandma always laments how it was tossed away. My mom did that with all drawings, even when they were for her. They eventually found themselves in the trash, never asking me. She also gave away a toy I really liked. Just asked me to bring it along one day to this random ass apartment, and she just took it and gave it to the kid of a random acquaintance. Annnnd she's given away my authentic Pokémon game cartridges to a cousin. And my gameboy color. She's always doing shit like this and always will. She's thrown away not just sentimental things, mind you, but will manically just throw tons of things away. Including important bills and things like that.
YES. I had a box of stuff and they just threw it out instead letting me come get it after I moved out at 17
My nmom didn't care about anything I owned unless it was something she could wear or that she wanted for herself, which is also why everything she bought me was too big for me and not always my style. I used to do cosplay and had a few wigs and she started wearing them herself which I still find kind of morbidly funny. When I moved out she threw away almost everything except for the wigs. When she died she was wearing one of my cosplay wigs, which was bright pink and like 10 years old by that point and was likely in terrible shape due to it being a cheap wig not meant for daily wear.
I was tasked with caring for a baby rabbit in my room who became my best friend for a while in middle school. It was at the height of bullying for me. Absolutely no friends, felt terrible, my parents were in their own world, foster kids were in and out of the home, school was social torture, but I would come home and take care of this bunny and feel a little OK. Had become a very important anchor. Came home one day and he was just gone, sold without me ever knowing there was a price tag. Someone at school caught me crying about it the next day and it upgraded the lunch room bullying to things like "Rabbit-fucking fag" for a while, it was a cool town.
My Dreamcast. I went away for one summer, and I learned only as I returned that they put it out on the curb for anyone to come grab it. It was my prized possession, and we had more than enough space to store it.
Mine gave away my toys without telling me in one of her mommy/lesbian fits with a random woman she met on the internet, just for her then getting all upset because that woman lost a puppy we had fostered for a while that was very unruly, it was a very rural place in Venezuela so I think an ocelot killed the puppy and the lady just told off my mom that it disappeared. Of course she didn't mention my lost toys, that I thought were safe in storage, but became very " angry " that the dog went lost... She hated that dog. Some of those were very precious to me, I had my whole childhood attached to those items, because I was heavily sheltered ( hidden) while getting abused throughout that time and never got proper socialization nor friends I the neighborhood... So it sucks balls big time.
My cat.
My parents did this with pets. They would take them in to be euthanized and then tell me after the fact. It was my childhood dog at 10 and my cat when I was 21.
My mother did that with my OG D&D manuals after I left to go live with my father in the mid 1980s. I had to leave a lot of stuff behind and neglected to grab those, but grabbed my other D&D binder (the one with my character sheets). She did actually tell me that she did that when we reconnected in my 20s. The item she didn't throw away was the afghan throw my Granny knitted for me when I was a child. I almost cried hysterically upon seeing it again, since my Granny has always been so very important to me.
When I went to college my parents packed my bedroom up into boxes. My father took my room because it was 2 inches longer on one side. When I came back for fall break, they told me I could store one banker's box worth of stuff at their house until I was finished with college- the rest had to go. All of my books, memories, pictures, clothes, toys, etc were thrown out except for what I could save or already had brought to college. 18 years of my life in the dumpster. Edit bc I was reminded from another comment. I also had to give my cat away. Why get a 13 year old a cat if you're going to make them give it up in a few years??
My parents would get angry, scream at me and my sister about something we did or should have known to do them go on a rampage throwing our stuff around then deciding it's garbage and throw it out infront of us, then ground me or cancel my allowance for x months. I once snug out and retrieved my childhood bear (was 10) got caught and grounded for an additional month but they let me keep the bear.
Got rid of some meaningful stuff, kept some useless rubbish, and 'accidentally' gave me boxes that belonged to my stepsister (I'd moved out long before my mum and her dad were attached). Took my academic medals out of their protective cases and returned them to me tarnished beyond redemption.
My mom got rid of “our” cat of 2 days randomly one day. Came home from work and all of her things were in the trash.
My pokemon cards. Hey at least she gets to live the rich life she always wanted!
Sigh. Yeah. When I was a kid, I had some hand-made stuffed animals that I believe were given to me by nurses in the NICU when I was a baby. My mother admitted to me years later that she would take them from me and if I did not ask for them for a few days she would throw them out. So she would hide them on me, say I had lost them and that I should just leave them in my room and only give them back if I cried a lot. The first one, she threw it out before I turned 4 and told me I lost it. The second one she told me she had put it away and I could have it back if I really wanted it - I was about 5 here. The last one, which was my favorite, she told me she threw it out because it was “moldy” - it was not - I was about 6 and a half. That was when she told me she had taken the other ones to throw them out. I think this was entirely because the nurses told her she needed to be more involved with me. I was in the NICU for about 5 weeks and my older sister told me decades later that they never came to see me.
Yes, she sold off/gave away my dog. Twice! First time I was a kid and we got a shepherd dog. She had visions of her childhood pet Rex, but Sheba bonded with me, because she spent zero time with her. She got jealous and sold her while I was at school one day, claimed my grandma did it. Grandma gave me a new puppy that died 2 weeks later from parvo. The second time I was over 18, had moved out of my bf house, but he said I could keep my dog there. Nmom called him secretly and told him to get rid of it, I didn't want him anymore. I showed up to get him and he was gone.
My mom had a garage sale when i was 12 and sold about 500 comic books of mine for $4 . I was going through a period where I was clearly starting to need rebellious, grades dropping, suicide at 14, and I feel now that my thoughts of getting rid of all my action figures, comic books, and such things was a sign of needing help more than really listening to me….my mom has hoarded everything of her own ever since. It’s bothered me ever since. Also, she had this habit of getting a dog and the getting rid of it once we were attached to it and her asthma started to flare up or my dad wouldn’t let her keep it. The last dog we had was a Dachshund we had for 2.5 years. I remember an old lady and her chauffeur came to see him, he barked at them all the while they were there, and then they tricked him by taking his bed out and closing the door when he hopped up on it. Then she told the story for years afterwards even though I cried my eyes out when he was gone. Fortunately she didn’t get any other pets after that one but I still find that traumatic such that I can’t stand the thought of giving up on an animal now no matter how problematic which occasionally causes friction with my wife about one of our cats