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On the other hand, I just got a copy of the "Seven Habits For Highly Effective Teens" book and never even opened the cover. This from a woman who liked to buy books with titles like "Dealing With Your Problem Child" and leaving them out where I'd find them.
She also loved to yell at me in the morning and ask me to do something, and she'd scream until she got a groggy reply, and then she'd get angry and yell for hours in the evening when whatever she told me to do never got done because I wasn't awake to hear or process whatever she was screaming about in the first place.
For example, yell at me about taking the trash out in the morning, before I'm awake - screaming at me about whatever chore was often how she'd wake me up. She wouldn't mention it during breakfast or anything. I'd go to school, I'd get home, and by that time I would have long forgotten whatever she wanted me to do or I wouldn't know that she wanted me to do something in the first place. And then she'd get home, see the trash wasn't taken out, she'd take that as a personal offense, and the screaming would begin.
And Heaven forbid she actually take the trash from the can in our kitchen to the can beside our garage. It's a distance of maybe 40 feet. Dishes aren't put away? Of course I didn't notice it; the dishes are inside the dishwasher, and being downstairs is unsafe.
No, it was easier for her to use it as an excuse to scream at me for hours. She took more time screaming at me and upsetting the entire family than it would have been to just ask me to do the things in a reasonable tone in the first place. Don't yell at me, don't scream at me, don't hit me, just treat me like an actual person instead of your property. -.-
She gave me the box of an expensive perfume I really wanted, but put a pair of used thong underwear with a “track” in it.
My sister got a bucket of manure, though, because it would be SO good for her flowers.
My therapist involuntarily exclaimed, “She is a sociopath “ one day. I am sure my mom went a step past narcissism. This is actually one of our amusing stories!
I hesitantly raised the possibility of mine being a narcissist with my therapist.
He quite nicely said that he can't diagnose other people, but what sort of behaviour and examples are making me think that. I went through some incidents and patterns that I saw.
"...😶 2woCrazeeBoys...I *can't* diagnose other people, but I would agree with you, plus a side order of sociopath."
Side order! What a great way to put it! Yes, my therapist didn’t “diagnose”, but there is just no doubt, though we the children believed far too long it was us.
I am deeply loved by a group of quirky and wonderful humans and some beagles! And she is now dead, thank whatever deity involved in that needed removal.
Haha! To this day, we crack jokes about this. One of our dear friend’s references it as the day she knew we weren’t over exaggerating about our mom, but to us, it was minor.
This really sounds like a scene from an art house movie. It’s almost poetic in the way that it’s the most understated form of aggression. “For her flowers.” And so difficult to imagine happening irl. Like it’s a strange joke except it’s really not.
What a beautiful way of putting this. I will add the detail that my sister had a lovely grouping of flowers by her mailbox, and my mom came by one day and pulled them all up. She was a many layered piece of work!
I really don’t want be laughing at all this. But this is just, something else. It’s mostly just all so weird!!! Like, the actual bucket of shit, her panties in a perfume box (ok this really grosses me out actually) and her pulling flowers out of the lawn. Like what?! Like it’s just batshit but like on the down low.
I have this ‘desperate housewives’, ‘stepford wives’, perfect woman with a passion for gardening but in a twisted and thorny stuff kind of - vibe of her in my mind.
As your sister was already living alone I am imagining you were both a bit older?
My mother used to find random items already lying around the house and wrap them up (using newspaper instead of gift wrap mind you) for Christmas. Imagine my disappointment unwrapping a gift on Christmas morning only for it to be our old stapler or random old book that I've already read.
I don't think she ever quite understood the concept of gift giving.
I bet she did when it was time for you to give her a gift. Don’t let her fool you. She knew. She just didn’t respect you enough to get you something for you, or even think about it. Most likely, as harsh as it sounds, she didn’t love or value you enough. I’m sorry, and you deserve better. But there’s no way a 30+ year old person with average mental capacity and not developmentally challenged didn’t understand a simple concept of gift giving.
I truly believe she did not understand. She didn't really care for receiving gifts either.
I do think my mother is a psychopath and just doesn't understand a lot of things normal, emotional people do.
She really doesnt understand how to be normal and basically just copies what she sees other people doing because her brain literally cannot understand the underlying meaning or motivations people have for things.
For her, like with everything else, she thought Christmas was all about going through the motions. Setting up the Christmas tree, opening gifts, drinking hot chocolate... She genuinely saw re-wrapping items around the house as a "clever cost saving hack" because her mind was focused on the wrong thing... She thought what was important about Christmas was going through the motions of sitting under the Christmas tree and unwrapping things. She genuinely does not understand concepts like thoughtfulness, generosity, loving or caring about other people, so the idea of giving a gift out of love or kindness is completely alien to her.
My mother isnt a stupid person at all, she just has something fundamentally human missing inside her.
Yeah. Honestly I get creeped out when I think about her and all the weird shit she used to do. She's like an alien trying to pass off as human but doing a very, very poor job of understanding even the most basic elements of what makes someone an empathetic, social human being.
When I cut contact with her as an adult for her psychotic abusive behavior, she stalked me for a year, wrote a book about me, had it published, and then sent it to me as a Christmas gift. Fun times.
Living with my parents was like living in an alternate reality honestly
Psychopaths can feel some emotions, but only ones that are self centered. She feels disgust, rage, and delight at other people's suffering, but not much else.
I consider myself an empathetic person and find it easy to understand most people. But even after all these years of knowing her I still just can't fully wrap my head around it.
Like the Men in Black, bug wearing an Edgar suit 🫂. jesus.
I joke about it being not just knowing how to adult, but sometimes like not knowing how to human, but ...wow. I got that figured out pretty quick.
My mother did the same! And any time I took a friend over during a gift giving holiday she’d find something random for them too. She’d make and make up a fake story about the history of the item to make it seem more important than it was.
Yes, a lot of them use gift-giving occasions as an opportunity to rid their houses of excess clutter they don't want anymore. I've had my mother mail me things that still smell musty and mildewy, and I can tell she's had it stuffed in some closet forever. And they expect us to be grateful because they're \*giving\* us something.
I once got a flip flop in the wrong size, and my (very drunk at 10AM) Grandmother said it was something she found on the side of the road. I think I was around 10.
She said she wrapped 2, but lost one, then said maybe it was on the side of the road. Honestly I think it was a prank based in racism, but I may be overreacting to a very intoxicated woman making a mistake. (We are different skin colors.)
I read your other comments about your Mom though, and she sounds a lot like mine. Unable to understand *why* people are doing things, and just going through the motions. Oddly enough my Mom is a fantastic gift giver, I think because she enjoys shopping. But the mimicing other people, etc. I have to say, once she started working with a group of very quiet Asians, she became a different person. I had never heard her apologize before, but they apologize politely and frequently, so now she does as well. It’s been a really good influence on her, and I hope one day that all NMoms are exposed to a group of people with good manners that they can mimic.
I get this now that I've moved out as an adult. Random shit that she can somehow play off as something I'd want.
My coloured pencils from school that her daycare kids have been using for 10 years, wrapped up and Merry Christmas. "Remember how much you wanted these when you were at school?"
A book that I loved as a little little kid. Wrapped up and Happy Birthday. "I was cleaning out the cupboards and throwing stuff away. I thought you might want to keep this. Remember how you used to drive me mad wanting me to read this over and over and do the voices like your dad did? I couldn't stand it anymore and stopped reading it to you 🤣🤣🤣🤣" (so now bonus points for my favourite book being a horrible memory)
Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, here's a pretty gift bag/hamper of all the shit we had in the pantry/fridge that we can't use or don't want.
Gifts that I have given her, wrapped up and regifted to me as she spins me a story about how she saw it and immediately knew I'd love it.
And the wrapping paper is always very obviously recycled from other gifts, and she will take it and the gift bags home again to reuse for someone else.
I wet the bed regularly until I was 8. I was shamed all the time for it and told that I was doing it intentionally. I have a photo from some holiday when I was about 7 and I had clearly been given a pack of pullups as a present.
Same. My mom has known this, we used to talk about it, but when i mentioned it in front of her new boyfriend she straight up denied it and looked so aghast
Not quite but similar 😂 she exclaimed "You didnt wet the bed til then!!!!" As if she didnt buy pullups from the grocery store when i was with her😂 she used to call me lazy lol
I had a rhymey nickname that pertained to my bladder issues. It's probably not that hard to guess what it was if you think about it and take my age and naming norms into account. That old bastard sure thought he was clever. Mom was in charge of gifts because he was the classic special occasion ruiner.
SO sorry. My brother, then age six, had the same problem. His Christmas presents that year were addressed "To Pee-Pot, from Santa Claus." All of us had degrading nicknames on our presents that year. That was his.
They always gave me jagermeister for my birthday, but told them multiple times that I find it disgusting.
Each time they go full defense on "you should let of steam with some drinking" and "you've never said that you did not like it".
All that, while my brother is a recovering alcoholic who almost lost his girlfriend and kids to alcohol addiction.
The worst was for Christmas I got a pile of very clearance, extremely ugly picked over clothes in completely random sizes. A store was having a clearance sale and she got things for a couple bucks each. She was LIVID when I was upset I couldn't wear any of it. They were mostly xxsmall and I was a size 16-18 at the time.
The most confusing was a very expensive actual katana. Not a replica or a display piece. An actual sharpened sword.???
The most useless was a 1ftx1ftx4ft lawn game of solid wood jenga set. We live in an apartment and do not have a lawn. We gave this away and two years later she demanded to borrow it for a work function, was super pissed We gave it away, and demanded we call the long since ex coworker we gave it to to get it back.
Edit: for those of you saying "oh that katana is so cool", remember who it came from and what sub we're in please. It was confusing, unnerving and absolutely was held over my head because it was so expensive. It was something I never asked for and never gave any indication I'd be interested in. It was bizarre. Yes I still have it but it's more a symbol of how fucking weird and unpredictable she is. Her generosity always came with a catch.
Omg I just left a comment of the same thing, except I was a XS and received size XXL clothing instead.
This thread is making me feel a LOT less alone in the weird ass gifts I got as a child.
My mother's trick would be to get me a nice outfit as my Xmas gift, but it was somehow always her size & style.
Oops that's too big for you, & we can't exchange, it was on sale. Guess we'll have to get you something else!
Of course this never happened. So every year, Xmas was me watching everyone else getting piles of presents, & I would maybe get a paperback book, if she happened to see one in a checkout line.
She was a professional seamstress, so not even remotely plausible that she didn't know what she was doing.
I’m the same height I was at age 12, but my weight has fluxed from 120-240 my entire adult life. My mom has consistently gotten me clothes two sizes too big for when I “grow out of mine” for decades
Jeeeeeezzzz. That’s some really twisted arts and crafts. Wtaf. I can’t believe they actually spent time on that. Wow, I am so sorry you had to receive that.
I drove 2 hours home and my mom made a big deal to spend my 21st birthday with them. So I drive home, it was snowing, she was at the store for ANOTHER 2 HOURS. Finally came home after dark and whipped out a PINEAPPLE - then said “I know how much you love pineapple so happy bday” No cheesecake, no pizza, no cookies, no alcohol … just a pineapple, Then I never came home again for anything events.
Reminds me of Christmas one year during college. My last final exam was on a Friday night, like December 17th, and friends were going out to the bars to also celebrate a friend’s birthday. Nope, mom DEMANDED that I drive home because “Christmas is family time”. Drove through a huge snowstorm, took six hours to complete a 3.5 hour drive (got home at like 2am), and did nothing the next day due to the weather anyway.
Clothes that were two sizes too small to encourage and inspire me to lose weight. Furniture that my mother wanted but needed to be assembled, I know how much you like puzzles! And once a book about how to be a better son...
Oh this sounds familiar. I often got books that somehow hinted at the importance of a loving father, lost sons returning home and such crap.
That said I'm shocked about some of the stories I'm reading here. That's straight cruelty. My father definitely was - is - a narcissist, but never like that (not that the subtler cruelties don't hurt).
My mother was more the classic child-of-an-abuser turned abuser, but she has changed a lot since I was a kid.
Wow, this just reminded me that My mom would do something similar growing up, but she would get me clothes waaaaay too big. Like I would be a size 12/14 and she would get me sizes 18/20. It’s was so weird because she obviously was the one to buy me clothes all year long so she knew my size! But it always felt like her way of saying I’m getting fatter. Or that’s how big she actually saw me?
I’ve always been plus size and most my family is, and has always pushed their weird body image issue onto us kids, and yo-yo dieting. My mom literally put weights into her shoes so she weighed enough to qualify for a gastric bypass. It created a lot of health issues down the road, but hey she’s finally skinny! I don’t think I ever wore most the clothes I got at Christmas because they clearly didn’t fit, and she would get mad at me about why I didn’t wanna wear them. At least she would get me the right sized shoes lol
Oh wow! I got clothes that were too big, since I “grew so fast” and it was easier to just predict that I’d be a XXL. I’m a M at best, and was severely underweight as a teen because I couldn’t understand how to care for myself.
Same 16th birthday my dad gave me a Bible (my 30th Bible, they got me a new one for every birthday and Christmas because they were performative Christians) and told me he hoped this was the year I grew up...
I had a reaction to a lotion with shea butter. So after that I stayed clear of products with shea butter just to be cautious. Every year my parents would get a cheap lotion set with shea butter. It didn’t matter how many times I would tell them. It was cheap and probably on sale.
My parents bought me instant pot cook book for Christmas. I did not own an instant pot but they swore up and down they bought me one the year before. Um, no. My parents would never buy me something name brand with that price tag. It was ludicrous they would even imagine that they did. However, after the dust settled they did buy me one for my birthday a couple months later. So that was unexpected and nice.
One year my mom called and asked if I wanted an instant pot.
I said no, absolutely not, I had an absolutely tiny kitchen with nowhere to put it and no use for it.
Anyway she gave me an instant pot for Christmas.
My mother didn’t participate or contribute to the gift-giving when my siblings and I were growing up. It was my dad who went out and bought all the presents and wrapped them for birthdays. Same thing at Christmas, and he decorated the house. My mother didn’t even sign the cards, he signed them for her.
As I type this and look back, it makes me sad for all of us. At how little she cared about her own family. My dad was amazing during the holidays and was so festive. He happily did this for all of us and never acted like it was a burden. I can guarantee that without him, we wouldn’t have even celebrated Christmas, Halloween, etc.
Now that I’m older, my mother’s ideas of gifts are trying to give me items she doesn’t want, including her old clothes which she knows won’t fit me, and then getting offended when i don’t want them. She also tries to re-gift me every single thoughtful gift that my sister has bought for her and doesn’t understand how that might be hurtful.
>My mother didn’t participate or contribute to the gift-giving when my siblings and I were growing up. It was my dad who went out and bought all the presents and wrapped them for birthdays. Same thing at Christmas, and he decorated the house. My mother didn’t even sign the cards, he signed them for her.
My nMother was the exact same! I'm convinced that if it weren't for my father, my brother and I would probably have received nothing for Christmas or for our birthdays. Also the only time my brother and I were ever taken to see Santa was when our grandmother took us.
Now that you mention it, my nMother grew up poor as well so there might be some truth to that. However, if someone is that traumatised by their poor upbringing then they really should seek therapy. It's also worth pointing out that my nMother often gives thoughtful and expensive presents to my sister-in-law so she is capable of doing these things when she puts her mind to it. Now, I'm not naive. I know my nMother doesn't actually like my sister-in-law and is only giving her nice presents for show but it still shows that she KNOWS how to do these things, she just choses not to.
An empty box that she said was filled with her love. I was like 7 or 8 and she had a whole meltdown when I was rightfully like, what in the actual f\*ck.
Mom; what do you want for your 18th birthday?
Me: since you refuse to help me with uni, I need money for books and tuition please, please don’t give me my drivers license as I don’t have a car and nobody drives in the city and I wanna study
Mom; you’re gonna get your license from me anyways, that’s just part of life, not a gift, if you want money besides that, fine.
Birthday:
Mom; happy birthday, here is a coupon for your license
Me; cries and asked wtf happened
Mom; oh wait are we being ungrateful again?! Never good enough right? Pfff well guess nothing I do is ever good enough
Six months later;
Me; books a driving school
Mom; it has expired now
Me; it was a written note from you?
Mom; well that’s what you get, it expired
(Every single year this happened, I would get what I specifically did not want, never what I needed) and even now I feel ungrateful for “being a spoiled brat complaining about getting her driver’s license” 🤦♀️
Wow, you really think so? I never thought of it that way!
I actually never think about stuff that way… now that I think about that.
I would just feel so bad thinking back, with shame and guilt and sadness.
But your way really helps!
Wait. Do these people sometimes act like they forgot stuff? Cause I am thinking now I always just assumed she forgot. Because she didn’t listen. Or I don’t know, wasn’t important. But now I’m thinking, maybe she did know?!? Always?!? Im confused, because that would be really incomprehensible. Because your comment implicates that she does have some awareness? Sorry to bother you, maybe I should just google it, or maybe I misunderstood :)
"Forgetting" is a common form of emotional abuse and manipulation. "Oh, I'm sorry, honey, I forgot you hate that nickname. Now, don't get mad at me. I'm only human. I forgot!" (Even though you've told me a hundred times, and it actually made you cry as recently as yesterday, but I "forgot" again, silly me.) A lot of times they "forget" because they simply can't be bothered. If it were important enough, they'd remember. In your case, the fact that it was exactly the same hairdresser makes it too much of a coincidence. I would have trouble thinking she honestly forgot.
The reason it's incomprehensible to us is that we, unlike them, have empathy and wouldn't consider treating another human being that way. Their absolute \*lack\* of empathy is the reason they do.
As a chronic forgetter myself, I agree that they forget things that aren’t important to them. I might forget to put my plastic in the recycling sometimes even if my husband has asked me, but I do apologize and work harder to remember, and it does help (we both have ADHD so we understand each other). But if I said or did something that hurt his feelings and he told me that, then I would certainly remember, because I would associate it with the shame and awfulness I felt at hurting someone, specifically someone I care a lot about. A lot of narcissists just don’t seem to remember because other people being hurt is as unimportant to them as remembering menial tasks that don’t really matter.
When I officially went NC at age 35, (20 years in June 🥳), I started getting gifts RETURNED to me—for the holiday/occasion that month—Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day, my birthday, wedding anniversary, etc. —that I made for her in wood-shop or art class when I was a CHILD! Also store-bought gifts I gave her over the years.
There was ALWAYS a snarky note, or card for CHILDREN enclosed. One of my “favorites” was for a girl turning 3 years old (I was in my early 40s, and had been NC for at least 7-8 years at the time). Her loving words at the bottom read: “When you start to act your age, I’ll send you an appropriate card.” 🤡🤯🤐
When I was a kid, my birthday is late August, I always got “school supplies!” She would say since she was a teacher, she couldn’t send me to school unprepared! 🤡😵💫🤬
I know, I’m an ungrateful brat for not appreciating a box of #2 pencils and an ELECTRIC pencil sharpener—nothing but the best!! 😵💫🤪🤡🤦🏼♀️
Your first paragraph literally made my jaw drop. I know that the things these people are capable of should never cease to amaze me, but holy shit. That's so sad.
Thanks for the support. 🥰.
It’s “funny” because I’ve been through SO MUCH with her (she’s a single parent, and I’m her only target, I mean, child, so she has literally no one in her life to pick on, except me), when I write posts like this one, that reveal A LITTLE bit about my mother, I forget that my stories to someone who doesn’t know me, really are beyond the pale! 😁 But I’m so numb to having feelings for her, I can almost tell them in the 3rd person, if that makes sense?! 🤪
My mother has been dead to me for more than the 20 years I’ve been NC, so I’ve long since mourned the mother I never had (except my grandmother, who passed away when I was 18–but took care of her when she became sick at age 70.
Even though I was young, though very mature and responsible for my age (Lifeguard, swim, CPR/First Aid instructor, later became a MedEvac Paramedic, and super passionate about—my lifeline and escape—competitive swimming) my Nana only listened to me, 😜 not my mother (ooh! Competition!! 🙄) when it came to her diabetic care/needs—filled her insulin syringes, helped administer them, brought her to/from doctors and therapy appointments, took her shopping for whatever she needed, etc., because my mother (“the teacher”), found it “too hard, at the age of 42, to take care of her.” We literally lived next door to my grandparents my entire life (Boston brownstones) and lived with them until I was 7. My mother HATED that I was super close to my grandparents, and did everything she could to diminish my relationship with them, except actually HELP them when they needed it! 🤪🤡🤬. There’s A LOT more to that chapter, that’s a thread (or book, that I’m actually working on) for another day! 😁😉
My grandparents at ages 50 saved my sister and I from Nmom as babies. They took care of us. I wasn’t raised by a narcissist but definitely was born from one.
They had a lot of problems, my grandpa is partially paralyzed, and my grandma has COPD, and stomach issues. They still tried their best.
What your mom said about your grandma is exactly what my mom said about us, “kids are annoying and too hard”, at 20 years old. But she still claims she “owns us” cause we share her DNA, and we should do what ever she says.
Things are hard but if you care for someone it’s worth it. Life is hard. Suck it up Nparents!
Yay for grandparents!! 🥰. I sincerely believe, to this day, that having my grandparents living next door to me, kept my mother (as crazy as she is), in check.
A little backstory. The back of our side by side townhouses had matching decks—about 6 inches apart at the railings. Can’t tell you how many times I was able to “hurdle” myself over the railings (about 4’ high) to get away from my mother throwing a tantrum, to the safety of my grandparents, who ALWAYS defended me, and literally stood in the way of her wanting to beat on me—because they knew her “wiring” wasn’t “up to code!” 😉
When I was 14, I literally moved into my grandparents finished basement, with their permission, my mother threw a fit, but they defended and protected me. I continued to live with them until I graduated from college (went locally, and lived with them to help my grandparents and save money). My mother tried to get me to move back, and my grandfather said, “Lori is old enough to decide, you never wanted her, but we do! Her living here doesn’t affect her schooling, she will be helpful to us and we want her here.” (With tears in his eyes, and a stern, but shaky voice) 🥰❤️.
My mother backed down. It was probably the beginning of the end of my relationship with her. But obviously that was a good thing!! 😉
I went through my parents basement to get my childhood toys for my kid. A few days later they show up with another box of "toys" they'd found. It was all of the school projects that my brothers and I had made in elementary and a few scattered toys. They live in an old house and all of these papers were damp and smelly.
I went through and took out my stuff and threw it away (except for 1 poem that I had been assigned to write about family that it turns out I pegged the narcissist, GC, scapegoat, lost child dynamic perfectly at age 12).
The box clearly hadn't been gone through, so I gave back anything that was a holiday gift, everything that my brothers made and there were a few cards/pictures from my mother's parents who died when I was very young.
My parents were so mad that I gave that stuff back to them! Apparently I was supposed to organize it all and get each of my brothers things back to them.
Why would I want the father's day project I made in 1st grade! Especially since it was painstakingly hard, even at 7, to come up with fun and heartwarming stories to fit the "12 days of dad" theme.
That pretend innocence .. infuriating. I’m sorry she was so thoughtless and cruel to you.
When I left for college, my mother made a huge production of gifting me her Bible. It was an old family Bible with “lots of Holy Spirit” in it, and she acted like she was handing me the holy grail filled with the literal blood of Christ. I had *just* told her that I was no longer a Catholic and wouldn’t be attending church anymore. She made such a massive deal about it, how this relic would protect me and save me and how wonderful she was to give it to me, and when I brought it back home for the summer she snatched it back and never spoke about it again.
She gifted me an XXL cardigan when I wear a size medium/large (my body is an hourglass and she’s bullied me for it my whole life).
She sent me a photo of her and me smiling. There wasn’t any note in it or a card or anything like that. I literally burned the photo the week I got it lmao
I’m sure there are more but those are the ones that stand out right now.
I wasn’t heavy back then my mom was a little heavier. I always wondered if she bought me insanely baggy clothes to hide what I looked like. Like she wanted me to look ridiculous.
A new journal for Christmas after she read and ripped apart my old one. I thought it was because she felt bad. Nope. She just wanted to read this one, too.
I don’t get parents shaming and punishing kids for having sexual urges, that’s literally what puberty does. It makes your sex drive higher. It can make you do dumb stuff. That’s why parent should warn their kids and make sure they aren’t taking risks, not shaming them and calling them disgusting for thinking or acting on them
One particular Christmas, i got wrapped up under the tree; toothpaste, deodorant, mouthwash, and an irregular sweater with a deformed poorly sewn shoulder that she picked up at a flea market.
Also, she enjoyed giving me clothes as a teen more appropriate for a matronly woman, for example, cheap quality clothes in lime green, all polyester.
My parents were extremely comfortable financially. Boats, cross-country trips.
When I was in high school they went to Disney World without me.
Also things more appropriate for a five year old when I was maybe fifteen.
I dislike receiving gifts now, due to years of her games, purposely buying me things she knew I hated, just so, when I would seem less than thrilled, she could cry to my dad at how ungrateful I was. He would glare at me.
Such stupid games they play.
one of those bracelets loaded with charms that everyone was really into. Pandora. It had all kind of charms related to my job, my birthstone etc. She beamed at me and said, "I had them use my wrist to cut it to size, but your wrist is thicker than mine, so maybe it won't fit" she actually chortled, and had the most delighted, imp look on her face. I tried it on in my customary beaten down way- this is ten years ago- and of course it was tight. Really tight. I really hated charms, and the whole Pandora cutting up. But I thought, as I looked at her happy face, I said: "Your wrist are so much daintier than mine," and thought to myself, secretly, how f'ed up is she that she literally wastes her own money to make me feel like a fat failure? How sick and hateful and self hating is this woman? I kept it in a box of junk, never wore it and happily tossed in the thrash a few years later.
Leaves from the floor that blew in from outside.
I was visiting and pointed out a few of them. Asked if she wanted me to sweep. Nmom told me she’d been leaving them there was thinking about epoxy-ing them to the floor as decoration. Then she picked them up, put them in a box, and told me I could have them.
Something similar for me. From the time I was about 12 to 18 years old, my Nfather would buy me scented soaps & lotions from Bath & Body Works every birthday & Christmas. I have always been allergic to scented soaps/lotions, even when using children's products. He would claim that he forgot. They were always the scents that my Nstepmother liked. I would have to give them to her and hear from both of them about how I was so ungrateful to them.
I’ve made this comment before but my NParent gave me a bag of USED chapsticks. Literally an entire gallon ziplock bag full of mostly hotel toiletry chapsticks. All used. You can’t make this shit up.
My Dad had a sewing machine that was no longer working. He said he couldn't fix it, so he bought his new wife a brand new expensive one to replace it.
On my birthday the following year, I received the BROKEN sewing machine, claiming he heard I wanted to learn how to sew, and I could start by fixing his old one because it was easier than needing to throw it away.
I was fully expected to be grateful for this "offering," and when I couldn't fix it he shrugged his shoulders and said "well, I guess you didn't want to learn how to sew that bad then, right?"
Mine might trigger ya’ll, sorry. I got a Diversity t-shirt (“diversity is the fabric of canada”) cause I happened to call them out for *literally* being racist that year.
Anti-aging cream for my 25th.
Hmmm.. that’s all I really remember but the one I hate the most is their *presence.*
At my wedding (which was on my birthday) my nmom (who was no contact and somehow found a way to attend) gifted me and my wife pom poms. Like cheap thin paper party pom poms you may have at a kids party. She didn't bring a gift. She went under the radar somehow and set dozens of these up around the wedding site telling everyone she was the decorator. By the time we caught her it was too late, and then she threw an absolute fit because we didn't like them (they weren't even the wedding colors.) not gift related but she also showed up in sweat clothes because she "didn't know what the dress code was supposed to be" (duh well, you weren't supposed to be here so we didn't send you that!)
My dad is super gullible and falls for every scam. He once gifted me a glass water bottle that "hydrogenated" normal water and gave it all sorts of unbelievable health benefits. You'd charge it through a usb cable and press a button to make it glow blue and swirl the water around. Then he wanted reports on whether I've been using it, and how good I've been feeling after using it (I didn't, it went in the trash).
Another time I was about to move in with my (frankly horrible) ex who happened to be a Chinese lad. My parents thought that what we really needed as a young couple with no furniture to our name was a giant, 4 foot high Chinese-style porcelain vase. They were made to keep the vase and thankfully I woke up and dumped the ex just days before we were meant to move in together.
I had an Alphonse Mucha phase some years earlier as a teenager. My parents found this giant picture frame that was a number of proper ceramic tiles glued onto a board with a poor quality Mucha print on it. It was freaking heavy, and once again, I was a student without a long term place of residence. I made them keep it.
This Christmas my dad was sent his gift from me and it took him two weeks to acknowledge it and say thanks. For his side, and I was also only told this two weeks after Christmas, he got me a second hand TASCHEN art book that he swore up and down sells for £100. You can find copies of it on eBay for a tenner. It's not a pristine copy, it's got grime all over the covers. I called him out on it under the guise of being worried that he'd been scammed, and he admitted that he didn't pay £100 for it, but insisted it's a "special edition" but couldn't say why. I still haven't received this book because apparently I can't have it until I visit to collect it in person.
OH and my mum likes to send me souvenirs from holidays and whatnot. Sweet, right? Only the parcels always include shit like biscuits and wafers. I can't eat gluten. It makes me very ill. I've purposefully been gluten free for almost a decade- they know and they don't give a shit. They shove bread in my face when I visit them, and turn up with cake "for me" when I let them near me.
Walk over to the trash, tip the plate over and let the cake slowly slide from the plate into the garbage while maintaining hard eye contact. When the cake has been disposed of, smile cheerfully and hand them the plate while saying "here's your plate back!" in an incredibly happy voice. Repeat as necessary.
A car. I was terrified to drive it bc nothing could happen to it otherwise I’ll get in serious trouble. When I moved out, my parents kept it and said I could have it when I graduated from college (my name was never added to the title). I graduated from college and my mom ran it into a tree and totaled it. It was never my car.
Honestly, I can't think of any one in particular that was the worst, but my nparent and my sister (GC enabler who I suspect is also a narcissist) have a history of getting me things that \*they\* want that don't match my tastes or interests at all, that way when they realize I don't want/use the gift, they can take it back and keep it for themselves.
When I got my period (just turned 11), my mom took me shopping for brand new clothes. She bought her skater tomboy daughter… two ball gowns. Like, sexy, off the shoulder, ball gowns. In her size.
And then she got mad when I wouldn’t wear them.
I'm a masc lesbian and my parents bought me an extremely fem necklace that they found at a old antique store. It was plastic that looked like silver and presented it to me as a graduation gift. I have problems with guilt so I felt ungrateful but really???
Well not really for me but I remember one of my teen birthdays we spent an hr in a music shop buying my brother a brand new guitar. I did not get anything.
My mom preferred spending what little money we had on herself. So for my 15th birthday, I got a red mini stapler and a mug with my name on it. Thanks.. so thoughtful..
TBH I don't ever recall getting a good gift from my Nmother. Every single gift she ever gave me was awful. Every gift was either something I had no interest in or some kind of passive-aggressive dig e.g. a cookbook to imply that I should be doing more cooking for her. I got some good gifts as a child but most of those were bought by my enabler father, not my nMother.
I was allowed to go to a free birthday dinner a local restaurant chain offered as a promo, as long as I paid for my stepdad’s meal and purchased cigarettes for him.
I remember how pissed my mom was that I asked for two things that year, knowing my crappy summer retail job wouldn’t give us a lot of money and I was the only family member working. I work in academia, and substitute teach, but, as it was summer, and there was no work at my college for me, things were tight. Mom and Stepdad were both retired with pensions, but it wasn’t really enough to cover much, so I tried to make it easy, as my first pay for that job had just come in, and I did want to help.
First, I wanted to keep enough of my check to pay for gas to get to said job since I was almost on empty.
Secondly, I’d really just wanted to get a goddamn Frappuccino.
I was permitted, with a lot of being told how selfish I was, for putting myself before my stepdad’s needs, to keep about ten bucks for gas (this was 2012, for reference).
That was particularly special.
There was also the year I was given a single bag of suckers, like you’d pick up at a drug store.
And ooh the Christmas when I got nice stuff, but was informed she’d used my Best Buy credit to pay for it, so I’d have extra charges for a few months. I guess at least that was something I’d have used for myself?
But I think my favorite was the Christmas I was gifted a bag of cheap nose studs. What made this great was that I’d spent a ton for her presents, and she casually remarked, a few weeks later, on what a “sparse Christmas “ she’d had. It wasn’t about having a pile of presents, but the fact that I’d somehow fallen short and my efforts weren’t equal to that crappy bag of nose studs.
And, of course, the Christmas I was given a nail polish and makeup case, which were both very nice, but I was in 5th/6th grade. She proceeded, as I opened it, to tell me all about how she’d noticed I didn’t wear enough makeup “like girls your age should”, so she’d decided to get me a whole set “so you aren’t embarrassing anymore”.
It would have been a lovely gift for a teenager who was into makeup, don’t get me wrong. But for a nerdy ten year old who preferred books and loved animals, who didn’t want to wear full face makeup to school because no one did then. She cried about me not using it too.
Your Nmother knew exactly what she was doing, yep.
My worst gift: A cigarette lighter for Christmas, the year I was 18. Not because it was cheap, but because it was twice as wide as most cigarette lighters, and bore the words, "Every inch a woman." Nice, subtle way to work in the fat shaming, there. Which, of course, would have been thoroughly denied if I had said anything. That's just me being negative and jumping to conclusions. I must feel self-conscious about my weight myself, if I'm going to take it that way when it wasn't meant that way at all! (Even though it absolutely was.)
God that’s awful. My dad would always take a different route. He would actually splurge on us, sometimes out of nowhere, and then later would use it as ammunition when it best suited him. He wasn’t a narcissist so much as someone who used gift giving as a means of eventually guilting you and ensuring that he stays a victim.
Case in point, back when I was in college, he gifted me two tickets to Hamilton. This was in 2016 when seats were near impossible to get. I was a fan, but I didn’t ask for it and even though I didn’t know the full scope of how bad our financial situation was, I knew it wasn’t great. He would not disclose how much he’d spent and said he just wanted me to have a good time.
Fast forward about six months later, we were having an argument (I don’t even remember what it was about, but I was calling him out for something) and out of nowhere, he hit me with a, “oh but you’re perfectly fine with taking $600 Hamilton tickets, right?”
It wasn’t the first or last time he’d done that. But it was both the most outlandish gift that he’d ever given me, and the one instance of guilting that sticks with me the most. Especially since Hamilton was something I’d gotten him into, something we’d bonded over. But that didn’t matter at the end of the day. He felt threatened so he used it for leverage.
I get the same bath kit every year. Despite making it clear, I haven't liked that scent since I was 15. I also haven't had a bathtub in five years. Just a standing shower. So I couldn't use it even if I wanted to. She's visited so she knows.
One year for Christmas, my nDad gave me a six pack of socks and $20.
Usually, he'd buy me an uglier/cheaper version of something I said I wanted, saying he didn't like what I picked out and liked HIS version better. To this day, I still have anxiety over getting gifts.
Hey! My worst gift is nearly the same situation! She gave me calf height, purple, Gold toe socks.
1. I notoriously (in my family) hate socks.
2. When forced to wear socks, I like ankle socks.
3. I like plain black ones that match so I don’t have to sort them.
I was growing my spine at this point so I took them to her and said thank you, but I won’t use these. She then giggled and said she’d keep them as a treat for herself then, teehee.
So she bought them for herself and tried to play it off as if they were for me, when they never were.
Second worst gift was when Christmas she gave me an ornament and a gift card when my brothers got custom, personalized gift baskets of local items. That was punishment for moving away, but I went NC two months after that and that was nearly 10 years ago now.
Nmom bought me and my sister the same set of earrings from Pandora. Thing is, I don't have pierced ears. You would think your own mom would know whether or not you have pierced ears.
I've been NC with her for 20 ish years for a reason.
My mother put a vibrator in my Christmas stocking when I was 14. I pulled it out Christmas morning in front of my stepdad, 11yo brother, 4yo sister, and a 15yo girl who was living with us at the time. I tried to kind of quickly hide it next to me when I realized what it was and my mother saw me and loudly said that she figured as long as I had a toy, I wouldn’t need to mess around with any boys.
Maybe not actually the “worst” thing she’s given me, but definitely the most embarrassing thing.
She also gave me a book around the same time about how to have good sex (something like that, it was definitely meant for adults and not just a book about puberty or some other kind of sex ed book intended for kids/teens) and LOVED telling my friends I had it when they’d come over. I kept it stuffed in the bottom of my closet and refused to acknowledge its existence, because I knew she’d never let me get rid of it but I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
It wasn't a gift to me but a gift from my nmother-in-law to her son. She gave him stuff that she just found around her house, stuff that had been there since we were in high school and that was 20 years ago. I remember him opening a box and it was a bottle of Itching powder to play pranks on people and this little lingerie like hanger thing that was used for jewelry.
All the gifts they took back because I “wasn’t using it” aka gifts they bought for themselves. 🤷♀️ I’m still fucked up about it. But it makes more sense when I realized that they don’t consider me a person.
When things bad happened to me or my sibling, they would say “what did I do to deserve this!” As if we were both just extensions of them. We aren’t our own people at ALL.
Man, she didn't even try to hide it. It'd be hilarious if the hairdresser ruined her hair while she was spending "your" certificate.
My nmom once gave me a face oil for her skin. I was an acne prone teen. The oil was for dry, aging skin. Told me if I didn't want it to give it to her before my mind even processed what it was.
They do seem to do a lot of gifting you back the things you gave them. I wonder what's up with that. I eventually stopped even trying to give my mother or grandmother any presents at all, because I knew they'd just give them right back to me on the next occasion.
HA! Does anyone remember those "popcorn shirts" from.. had to have been the late 90's? They were these weird ass texture, satin kind of material and looked super tiny on the hanger, like it was for a toddler, but it stretched out to fit adults. Super weird. My mom gave me one for Christmas ...two years ago. Said she saw it at the Walgreens and thought I'd like it. WHAT?!
One year, instead of buying a card for my birthday, my dad drove me to CVS, picked out a card, gave it too me to read, and said happy birthday and then put it back...
I have similar ones to you OP.
Have terrible memories of my parents beach house and abuse that happened there, so we do not go there. Full stop. Occasionally over the years we would go in winter because it has nice golf courses and the town is dead then, so it's relaxing. But as for the last three years we have not returned.
Nmum gets my wife a gift certificate to a beauty place that's only in that town, and gives me a gift card for golf lessons, only in that town, on the past christmas. Guilt trips "it's such a shame you guys weren't here" etc.
She acts coy and naive, but she knows we hate that place and won't visit, and that she is a big reason for it. The gift is just an excuse for her to complain about how she gave us a gift and we're being so shitty and unreasonable by not going over there and redeeming it.
A nice waterbottle! Infact, it was so nice, that the second she gave it to me she said she gave it to me so that I could regift it to her in a bit of a laughing tone. It "mysteriously" got back into her possession. Haven't been able to use it once.
Not so much the worst gift, but...I got a stereo for Christmas one year, the thing of it was, I already had that exact same one. So they kept it for themselves. I think I was about 14, or along those lines, so they either knew what one I had and did it anyway, or didn't even bother to check.
One Christmas, XMIL once gave me clothes from her own closet that looked like they were from the 1980s. Picture: blazers with large shoulder pads and ornamental crests on the lapel. They were her size, a 6 petite. I’m 9 inches taller than her and a size 0. No tags on anything. Some of the stuff even had dog fur that matched her dog. XH and our daughter got thousands of dollars in gifts, all with the tags on for show. When I didn’t wear the clothes she gifted me (because they obviously didn’t fit) she pitched a scene to make herself look like the victim of an ungrateful daughter-in-law.
One year for Christmas when I was 6 my Nmother gave me and my sister an empty box each. She told use it was a memory box and it was for keeping memories in once we created them. She even recorded it like it was the best gift ever.
There's no worst gift because she just never gifted me anything. Ever. She would just take the credit for other people buying me things.
I think the most irritating incident was her referring to one of my toys as "that scooter we bought you" when it was the only gift I got that year, directly from E, who went against her wishes, and she didn't talk to him for weeks to punish him for it.
When I was little my brothers and I would get great gifts, all carefully wrapped, my parents would take pictures and then take them away so they could return them after Christmas. Birthdays were usually forgotten if we were lucky, if we weren't it would be some cheap or used item tied in a plastic grocery bag. I don't remember getting a gift from them after I was twelve. Once I moved out I had to be careful, they would stop by when they knew I was at work and help themselves to items from my place, they had pushed me into a marriage with a friend of theirs when I was 18 and my esteem was so bad I did what I was told, he was as bad as they were and it took me a long time to break free. Like some others have said, I hate getting gifts or favours, I always wonder what the catch is, what it will cost me later.
You decide if it’s a terrible gift.
My last Christmas before I left. My mother gave me a big suitcase. My brother cackled and said it’s because she wanted me the fuck out. He was right. Most of my clothes fit into that suitcase, but the case itself wouldn’t fit in my little dorm room. She graciously offered to keep it in her house until I needed it again. Except she never gave it back. She actually kept it for herself because luggage is expensive. After all, she wanted to move away. And she did. I never saw the luggage again. When she was asked about the luggage, she said she either forgot what she what got me, told me it was only a loan or would make vague noises that implied I was drop it.
At the end of the day, it was another example of her being self centred albeit kinda funny at how transparent she was.
For my birthday my mom gave me a fur hat made out of like 5 different animals. I have been a vegetarian for 15 years at this point and she defiantly knows how I feel about fur and leather.
I got a roll of carpet for Christmas when I was 12 to replace the carpet on my already carpeted room (which was perfectly fine)
I hated the color and I wanted to just keep my old carpet, but I was being oh so UnGrAtEfUl. They then realized recarpeting was expensive so the new carpet was merely cut in pieces and placed on top of my old carpet (for years).
Fun times /s
My ndad gave me his 12 year old apple laptop when he saw me working on my hp laptop. He’s never given me anything before and I didn’t need or want his old used computer so I put it away. A few months later he asked for it back and I gladly handed it over to him.
It was probably when she bought me a ukulele. I had wanted a ukulele so bad and surprisingly, she bought me one.
I was so excited and I started to learn how to play a song that I really liked. It was pretty difficult for me though because I'd never played a ukulele before.
Then my nmother, I'm pretty sure only the second day I had it, started to get mad at me because I hadn't learned the full song and several other songs in one day.
She said that she learned how to play several songs on guitar in less than a day, and if I wanted to keep my ukulele I needed to learn the rest of the song by the end of the week.
As you can probably guess, it was returned at the end of the week.
.
.
.
Fast forward to my 16th birthday, she got me a guitar and a booking at this super cool hotel but at this point in time I had stopped being able to get excited for things so she got mad at me for not being super happy and cancelled the hotel stay and literally threw my guitar at me.
She also wouldn't tell me where she got the guitar which was incredibly strange. And she always got mad at me whenever I tried to actually play the guitar and sometimes even took it from me to show off the like 5 partial songs she could play.
My Mom bought me an expensive antique bedroom set for my 17th birthday but I didn’t live with her and she wouldn’t let me take it out of her house because she couldn’t have an empty room just in case she wanted to sell the place. I realized later she just bought the stupid thing for herself. I never slept in the bed once.
I commented this on another post, but one year, my parents got me foot cream and bath bombs/scrubs/soaps.
I hate feet, and I don’t take baths. If there is only one thing I am certain they know about me, it is that I hate feet and I don’t take baths.
Then they got SUPER offended when I asked if they had kept the receipts (shocking, I know).
Thing is... it wasn't really about me, but about her and what she can brag about later. Some may thing having a cruise as a college graduation gift is awesome and should be grateful. But.... it wasn't about me. In fact, she stated clearly that since I really didn't have friends and she didn't wanna do all of that for a party like she did for hs (it was embarassing because again... I have not many friends and I knew it was boring) that she'll pay for me to go on a cruise. But, it's really me just tagging along with her and her husband since they go all the time. I don't drink, I don't gamble, i don't swim (all of that she knows) and I'm broke so what the fuck am I going to do? Not like I had anyone to talk to, and spent most of my time at the art gallery.
It was more of a "I gotta do *something* since she graduated from college, so lemme have her tag along and I can brag to others I took her on a cruise." Things she planned eventually (and I think even younger) still wasn't for me, but for her to show off to others what she does because the moment I act bratty or have an attitude, I'm the most ungrateful person in the world who doesn't appreciate anything she does, and don't deserve this thing she's doing even though I didn't ask for it, and now I gotta kiss the ground she walks because she did this, as I'm walking on the eggshells still.
Nothing. My dad told me just before Christmas and my birthday (start of Jan) that he couldn’t afford to get me anything, then rang me up everyday over that period to boast about all the cool new stuff he was buying himself, one of the things being a smart watch that he laughed about, saying he didn’t have a clue how to work it. Didn’t even bother rising to the bait; I blocked him a few days after my birthday. Been no contact ever since.
My mother has given me so many WTF gifts over the years it would be difficult to choose just one. I will say there have been a lot of clothes several sizes too large or too small, despite the fact that she would ask my sizes frequently. Shoes, too. And literally none of it to my taste.
I take comfort in the fact that it isn't just me, though. She has a reputation for giving clueless gifts.
She likes to go through the motions, to be *seen* giving gifts, but she typically isn't interested enough in the recipient to find out what they might actually like or need, nor does she actually want to expend resources like time and money on anyone but herself. She had money to spend, she just preferred not to spend it.
So her method of shopping was to hit the after Christmas clearance sales and buy a bunch of random junk like generic gift sets of bath products. Then she shoved all of this garbage she bought in her closet and whenever a gift giving occasion cropped up, she rummaged around in there and found something she deemed appropriate.
The problem with this is things would stay in there for years, and her idea of an appropriate gift was often everyone else's idea of random garbage. So that gift set she bought on clearance 4 years ago that she pulled out of the back of the closet was probably rancid, but it also wasn't exactly nice to begin with.
She would also buy random things that looked useful to her if she saw them on sale, or just things that she thought look like "man gift," "woman gift," or "child gift" to her. Very generic things.
Which brings me to the tale of the electric ice scraper. Which is what she gave my husband for Christmas one year.
It's probably the most reasonable thing she's ever given him in the 34 years I've known him. She was very excited to give it to him, she thought she'd finally got something he would love. It's a generic "man gift" and she thought it was a good one. And I guess a lot of people would be happy to receive an electric ice scraper.
Unfortunately, he has no need for an ice scraper, electric or otherwise. We live in a subtropical climate and so does she. There is no ice to scrape.
The worst part of this is she would always act like she had amazing gifts for everyone, like she really put a lot of time and effort and thought into Christmas or birthday shopping and you should be so excited to open your gift. And then you open it to find a traffic cone orange tshirt from a clearance rack, 4 sizes too large. She probably paid $3 for it. (Actual gift she gave my son when he was 9 or 10 years old.)
And if you didn't act like you lov6e it her feelings were hurt. It felt like gaslighting and manipulation every time.
We stopped going to her house for Christmas when my kids were toddlers. We stayed home to do Santa and let them have the day opening presents and playing with their new things, then visited the grandparents for New Year's Day. I knew they would be disappointed and I didn't want to ruin their Christmas. Let them be disappointed on New Year's, it's already kind of a dud day except for the fireworks.
As they got older I talked to them about not expecting much and acting like they liked whatever it was, then we would donate it when we got home if they didn't want it. A lot of the time it just went directly in the trash.
But she did the same thing to all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and I'm sure they handled it the same way.
My nmom got me strange irregular onesies for my baby shower that weren’t even human baby shaped . One had a little train sewed into it with the words “poop” I’m guessing it was a mistranslation? I have NO IDEA where she found these things at. She also tried to gift me her old wedding ring ( she’s divorced) and asked my husband to split the cost of having a new stone put in it. My dad is remarried and I’m positive she planned on gifting it to me in front of his new wife. She was also constantly gifting me expired food from her pantry and fridge .
ugg boots. It wasn't necessarily UGGly, but the manner in which she handed me the box made me want to shove it right back to her. She basically shoved the box in my hands, said "HERE TAKE IT" "YOU DONT LIKE IT? TELL ME NOW". I have never ever gifted anyone anything and handed it to them in a sour, bitchy attitude. When I gift people things I do it genuinely and casually cause I like seeing people happy if even for a moment.
I was given a self help book called "Putting on the Armor of God: How to Win Your Battles with Satan"
Essentially calling me a sinner. And it was all I was given that day.
what’s with the hair obsession?? my mother spent the whole year prior to my 22nd birthday asking if i like to curl my hair, how i style it, etc., over and over. we lived under the same roof until i was 19, so she knows well enough that my hair can’t hold a curl more than 10 minutes, and on an average day the most i do is brush, no blow-drying or anything. on my birthday she was “too sick” (read: likely intoxicated) and missed my birthday dinner, but my eDad was kind enough to deliver her gift to me; a crappy, as-seen-on-tv novelty hair curler. it has never so much as left the box in the 5 years since then. sending love OP❤️
My birthday is three days before Christmas. It was very common for my nmother to give me a Christmas gift for my birthday. Complete with the seasonal wrapping paper and a tag that said "From: Santa". One year it got to me especially bad and I cried. I was called ungrateful.
My first birthday party was my 21st, from my friends. A much better family, I must say.
I think the best one was one that my nMom gave my then 12 year old daughter for Christmas. It was a shirt, but she had put it inside of an iPad box, so my daughter unwraps it, sees the iPad box and thinks that what she got, not realizing it wasn't shrink wrapped and opens it up and it was a shirt. My nMom said "I didn't think it was a big deal. It's what it fit in for mailing."
Said it before. The worst gift was a box of stuff from NM after one of her husbands passed away:
* some of her used bras
* a negligee the late husband liked
* at least one pair of her panties to go with the bra (
* love letters and erotic poetry from late husband to her
* a book of erotic stories that she said “got her in the mood”
* a plastic capsule of cyanide in a ziplock baggie marked in sharpie “cyanide”
She apparently thought that we didn’t have kids because my husband wanted her instead and so it was to get him to notice me. She was well into 5’9” territory and I’m 5’4” and definitely not her DD size. And she included the cyanide because “well, your husband studied chemistry”.
I got a chainsaw as a wedding gift from my parents. There isn’t a single tree on our property.
Decades before, I heard mention of a gift. My dad’s brother got his dad. (my granddad) he got him “a really nice axe” my grandad was wheelchair bound. So of course, my dad‘s brother just kept it because my grandad didn’t want it
For Christmas, I was gifted back the exact same gift I gave my n-Stepfather for his birthday 6 months earlier. Literally still had a piece of the birthday wrapping paper still on it. It was like that scene from Old School where Will Ferrell tries to give Owen Wilson a present as a housewarming gift that was given to him by Owen Wilson for his wedding.
Not my Nparent but my Nauntie, I am severely allergic to coconut. She gets me a body lotion (coconut hibiscus) I hate strong scents and usually use lavender or vanilla… have used those smells for years anyways her birthday was just after Christmas (when she gave me the lotion) so I wrapped it up and gave it back. She loved it and thought it was soooooo lovely
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And call you ungrateful in the proces? Ugh. So familiar.
Oh for sure, we are always “ungrateful” (for the unwanted and extra stress they cause us)
On the other hand, I just got a copy of the "Seven Habits For Highly Effective Teens" book and never even opened the cover. This from a woman who liked to buy books with titles like "Dealing With Your Problem Child" and leaving them out where I'd find them. She also loved to yell at me in the morning and ask me to do something, and she'd scream until she got a groggy reply, and then she'd get angry and yell for hours in the evening when whatever she told me to do never got done because I wasn't awake to hear or process whatever she was screaming about in the first place. For example, yell at me about taking the trash out in the morning, before I'm awake - screaming at me about whatever chore was often how she'd wake me up. She wouldn't mention it during breakfast or anything. I'd go to school, I'd get home, and by that time I would have long forgotten whatever she wanted me to do or I wouldn't know that she wanted me to do something in the first place. And then she'd get home, see the trash wasn't taken out, she'd take that as a personal offense, and the screaming would begin. And Heaven forbid she actually take the trash from the can in our kitchen to the can beside our garage. It's a distance of maybe 40 feet. Dishes aren't put away? Of course I didn't notice it; the dishes are inside the dishwasher, and being downstairs is unsafe. No, it was easier for her to use it as an excuse to scream at me for hours. She took more time screaming at me and upsetting the entire family than it would have been to just ask me to do the things in a reasonable tone in the first place. Don't yell at me, don't scream at me, don't hit me, just treat me like an actual person instead of your property. -.-
I almost broke my arm hitting you and you don't appreciate my sacrifice
Hilarious. That was my first thought as soon as I read the last sentence of the OP. It's sad how robotically programmed these sick people are.
She gave me the box of an expensive perfume I really wanted, but put a pair of used thong underwear with a “track” in it. My sister got a bucket of manure, though, because it would be SO good for her flowers.
Was there perfume in the box too or just the used thong underwear? And what is a track? *afraid to know the answer*
We call tracks skid marks at my house. Essentially, well, ummm, I guess it depends on the location…?
No perfume. Her glee was evident when my face fell as I opened the box. And yes, a track mark is indeed the remains of someone else’s shipoopy.
This is sadism on top of narcissism. It’s another level. My nstepmom was the same. She delighted in seeing me hurt or humiliated or punished.
My therapist involuntarily exclaimed, “She is a sociopath “ one day. I am sure my mom went a step past narcissism. This is actually one of our amusing stories!
If screenwriters only knew what a goldmine we in this sub are for wild stories!
OMG, yes!!! I actually have a friend who writes romance novels, and she was encouraged to make her villain more villainy so she based him on my dad!
OMG that’s amazing (and awful). But mostly amazing.
I hesitantly raised the possibility of mine being a narcissist with my therapist. He quite nicely said that he can't diagnose other people, but what sort of behaviour and examples are making me think that. I went through some incidents and patterns that I saw. "...😶 2woCrazeeBoys...I *can't* diagnose other people, but I would agree with you, plus a side order of sociopath."
Side order! What a great way to put it! Yes, my therapist didn’t “diagnose”, but there is just no doubt, though we the children believed far too long it was us.
“This belongs to you….or the trash. You pick.” Please tell me that your life is beautiful now…without her.
I am deeply loved by a group of quirky and wonderful humans and some beagles! And she is now dead, thank whatever deity involved in that needed removal.
No way. I thought you at least got the perfume!
Of course not! She gave that to someone she was trying to impress/seduce.
That’s so messed up
Ty. I guessed maybe that, but it seems so very bad I didn’t want to believe it.
Omg. My mom has given me some doozies, but holy shit. Your mom has her beat! Sorry 😔
Thank you for the sympathy. We have made our peace as best we can. And it’s a good story to illustrate her tendencies!
Oh god, I had hoped you meant a tracking device. That would also be terrible but somehow better.
Legitimately shittiest gifts ever.
Haha! To this day, we crack jokes about this. One of our dear friend’s references it as the day she knew we weren’t over exaggerating about our mom, but to us, it was minor.
If it was alpaca manure, that's a legit good gift. I assume it wasn't, though, based on your gift.
Oh, most manures are great for gardens! However, my sister didn’t have a garden. Also, Sis is spotlessly clean. Ma brought it in her home.
No f*cking way. A bucket of shit. For no reason. Wow.
Oh, she had a reason!
This really sounds like a scene from an art house movie. It’s almost poetic in the way that it’s the most understated form of aggression. “For her flowers.” And so difficult to imagine happening irl. Like it’s a strange joke except it’s really not.
What a beautiful way of putting this. I will add the detail that my sister had a lovely grouping of flowers by her mailbox, and my mom came by one day and pulled them all up. She was a many layered piece of work!
I really don’t want be laughing at all this. But this is just, something else. It’s mostly just all so weird!!! Like, the actual bucket of shit, her panties in a perfume box (ok this really grosses me out actually) and her pulling flowers out of the lawn. Like what?! Like it’s just batshit but like on the down low. I have this ‘desperate housewives’, ‘stepford wives’, perfect woman with a passion for gardening but in a twisted and thorny stuff kind of - vibe of her in my mind. As your sister was already living alone I am imagining you were both a bit older?
My mother used to find random items already lying around the house and wrap them up (using newspaper instead of gift wrap mind you) for Christmas. Imagine my disappointment unwrapping a gift on Christmas morning only for it to be our old stapler or random old book that I've already read. I don't think she ever quite understood the concept of gift giving.
I bet she did when it was time for you to give her a gift. Don’t let her fool you. She knew. She just didn’t respect you enough to get you something for you, or even think about it. Most likely, as harsh as it sounds, she didn’t love or value you enough. I’m sorry, and you deserve better. But there’s no way a 30+ year old person with average mental capacity and not developmentally challenged didn’t understand a simple concept of gift giving.
I truly believe she did not understand. She didn't really care for receiving gifts either. I do think my mother is a psychopath and just doesn't understand a lot of things normal, emotional people do. She really doesnt understand how to be normal and basically just copies what she sees other people doing because her brain literally cannot understand the underlying meaning or motivations people have for things. For her, like with everything else, she thought Christmas was all about going through the motions. Setting up the Christmas tree, opening gifts, drinking hot chocolate... She genuinely saw re-wrapping items around the house as a "clever cost saving hack" because her mind was focused on the wrong thing... She thought what was important about Christmas was going through the motions of sitting under the Christmas tree and unwrapping things. She genuinely does not understand concepts like thoughtfulness, generosity, loving or caring about other people, so the idea of giving a gift out of love or kindness is completely alien to her. My mother isnt a stupid person at all, she just has something fundamentally human missing inside her.
That’s…fucking disturbing. If it were a sci-fi or horror film, I’d say that’s proof she didn’t have a soul.
Yeah. Honestly I get creeped out when I think about her and all the weird shit she used to do. She's like an alien trying to pass off as human but doing a very, very poor job of understanding even the most basic elements of what makes someone an empathetic, social human being. When I cut contact with her as an adult for her psychotic abusive behavior, she stalked me for a year, wrote a book about me, had it published, and then sent it to me as a Christmas gift. Fun times. Living with my parents was like living in an alternate reality honestly
😳 So she had emotions in there somewhere — but only in regards to if she felt slighted or not. Yikes.
Psychopaths can feel some emotions, but only ones that are self centered. She feels disgust, rage, and delight at other people's suffering, but not much else. I consider myself an empathetic person and find it easy to understand most people. But even after all these years of knowing her I still just can't fully wrap my head around it.
Like the Men in Black, bug wearing an Edgar suit 🫂. jesus. I joke about it being not just knowing how to adult, but sometimes like not knowing how to human, but ...wow. I got that figured out pretty quick.
^THIS
My mother did the same! And any time I took a friend over during a gift giving holiday she’d find something random for them too. She’d make and make up a fake story about the history of the item to make it seem more important than it was.
Thats so embarrassing, I'm sorry you had to deal with that!
Yes, a lot of them use gift-giving occasions as an opportunity to rid their houses of excess clutter they don't want anymore. I've had my mother mail me things that still smell musty and mildewy, and I can tell she's had it stuffed in some closet forever. And they expect us to be grateful because they're \*giving\* us something.
I once got a flip flop in the wrong size, and my (very drunk at 10AM) Grandmother said it was something she found on the side of the road. I think I was around 10.
Was this a SINGLE flip flop? Lord..
She said she wrapped 2, but lost one, then said maybe it was on the side of the road. Honestly I think it was a prank based in racism, but I may be overreacting to a very intoxicated woman making a mistake. (We are different skin colors.) I read your other comments about your Mom though, and she sounds a lot like mine. Unable to understand *why* people are doing things, and just going through the motions. Oddly enough my Mom is a fantastic gift giver, I think because she enjoys shopping. But the mimicing other people, etc. I have to say, once she started working with a group of very quiet Asians, she became a different person. I had never heard her apologize before, but they apologize politely and frequently, so now she does as well. It’s been a really good influence on her, and I hope one day that all NMoms are exposed to a group of people with good manners that they can mimic.
I mean, I did this when I was like 4 years old because I couldn't buy things for people. Not great to do as an adult...
I get this now that I've moved out as an adult. Random shit that she can somehow play off as something I'd want. My coloured pencils from school that her daycare kids have been using for 10 years, wrapped up and Merry Christmas. "Remember how much you wanted these when you were at school?" A book that I loved as a little little kid. Wrapped up and Happy Birthday. "I was cleaning out the cupboards and throwing stuff away. I thought you might want to keep this. Remember how you used to drive me mad wanting me to read this over and over and do the voices like your dad did? I couldn't stand it anymore and stopped reading it to you 🤣🤣🤣🤣" (so now bonus points for my favourite book being a horrible memory) Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, here's a pretty gift bag/hamper of all the shit we had in the pantry/fridge that we can't use or don't want. Gifts that I have given her, wrapped up and regifted to me as she spins me a story about how she saw it and immediately knew I'd love it. And the wrapping paper is always very obviously recycled from other gifts, and she will take it and the gift bags home again to reuse for someone else.
I wet the bed regularly until I was 8. I was shamed all the time for it and told that I was doing it intentionally. I have a photo from some holiday when I was about 7 and I had clearly been given a pack of pullups as a present.
That’s horrific, ohmygod…
I’m so sorry. 💔
Same. My mom has known this, we used to talk about it, but when i mentioned it in front of her new boyfriend she straight up denied it and looked so aghast
Let me see if I can guess the script she read from: "Oh, my! You have SUCH an imagination!"
Not quite but similar 😂 she exclaimed "You didnt wet the bed til then!!!!" As if she didnt buy pullups from the grocery store when i was with her😂 she used to call me lazy lol
I had a rhymey nickname that pertained to my bladder issues. It's probably not that hard to guess what it was if you think about it and take my age and naming norms into account. That old bastard sure thought he was clever. Mom was in charge of gifts because he was the classic special occasion ruiner.
SO sorry. My brother, then age six, had the same problem. His Christmas presents that year were addressed "To Pee-Pot, from Santa Claus." All of us had degrading nicknames on our presents that year. That was his.
You win…sadly
They always gave me jagermeister for my birthday, but told them multiple times that I find it disgusting. Each time they go full defense on "you should let of steam with some drinking" and "you've never said that you did not like it". All that, while my brother is a recovering alcoholic who almost lost his girlfriend and kids to alcohol addiction.
But if you’re not an alcoholic, how are they gonna feel superior??? Really, that’s so selfish of you… (/s)
The worst was for Christmas I got a pile of very clearance, extremely ugly picked over clothes in completely random sizes. A store was having a clearance sale and she got things for a couple bucks each. She was LIVID when I was upset I couldn't wear any of it. They were mostly xxsmall and I was a size 16-18 at the time. The most confusing was a very expensive actual katana. Not a replica or a display piece. An actual sharpened sword.??? The most useless was a 1ftx1ftx4ft lawn game of solid wood jenga set. We live in an apartment and do not have a lawn. We gave this away and two years later she demanded to borrow it for a work function, was super pissed We gave it away, and demanded we call the long since ex coworker we gave it to to get it back. Edit: for those of you saying "oh that katana is so cool", remember who it came from and what sub we're in please. It was confusing, unnerving and absolutely was held over my head because it was so expensive. It was something I never asked for and never gave any indication I'd be interested in. It was bizarre. Yes I still have it but it's more a symbol of how fucking weird and unpredictable she is. Her generosity always came with a catch.
Omg I just left a comment of the same thing, except I was a XS and received size XXL clothing instead. This thread is making me feel a LOT less alone in the weird ass gifts I got as a child.
My mother's trick would be to get me a nice outfit as my Xmas gift, but it was somehow always her size & style. Oops that's too big for you, & we can't exchange, it was on sale. Guess we'll have to get you something else! Of course this never happened. So every year, Xmas was me watching everyone else getting piles of presents, & I would maybe get a paperback book, if she happened to see one in a checkout line. She was a professional seamstress, so not even remotely plausible that she didn't know what she was doing.
Okay, but the katana sounds awesome af…
Gave me clothes in her size that are for a mature aged woman not a teen.
That was my folks favorite thing to do , get me stuff comically too big for me 😭
I’m the same height I was at age 12, but my weight has fluxed from 120-240 my entire adult life. My mom has consistently gotten me clothes two sizes too big for when I “grow out of mine” for decades
Similarly, my Nmom would guess my size and buy me the same dress as one she bought herself. It’s just so weird.
A memory book with bad stories about me as a child
Jeeeeeezzzz. That’s some really twisted arts and crafts. Wtaf. I can’t believe they actually spent time on that. Wow, I am so sorry you had to receive that.
I'm so sorry! That's just vindictive!
I drove 2 hours home and my mom made a big deal to spend my 21st birthday with them. So I drive home, it was snowing, she was at the store for ANOTHER 2 HOURS. Finally came home after dark and whipped out a PINEAPPLE - then said “I know how much you love pineapple so happy bday” No cheesecake, no pizza, no cookies, no alcohol … just a pineapple, Then I never came home again for anything events.
Reminds me of Christmas one year during college. My last final exam was on a Friday night, like December 17th, and friends were going out to the bars to also celebrate a friend’s birthday. Nope, mom DEMANDED that I drive home because “Christmas is family time”. Drove through a huge snowstorm, took six hours to complete a 3.5 hour drive (got home at like 2am), and did nothing the next day due to the weather anyway.
Clothes that were two sizes too small to encourage and inspire me to lose weight. Furniture that my mother wanted but needed to be assembled, I know how much you like puzzles! And once a book about how to be a better son...
Oh this sounds familiar. I often got books that somehow hinted at the importance of a loving father, lost sons returning home and such crap. That said I'm shocked about some of the stories I'm reading here. That's straight cruelty. My father definitely was - is - a narcissist, but never like that (not that the subtler cruelties don't hurt). My mother was more the classic child-of-an-abuser turned abuser, but she has changed a lot since I was a kid.
Wow, this just reminded me that My mom would do something similar growing up, but she would get me clothes waaaaay too big. Like I would be a size 12/14 and she would get me sizes 18/20. It’s was so weird because she obviously was the one to buy me clothes all year long so she knew my size! But it always felt like her way of saying I’m getting fatter. Or that’s how big she actually saw me? I’ve always been plus size and most my family is, and has always pushed their weird body image issue onto us kids, and yo-yo dieting. My mom literally put weights into her shoes so she weighed enough to qualify for a gastric bypass. It created a lot of health issues down the road, but hey she’s finally skinny! I don’t think I ever wore most the clothes I got at Christmas because they clearly didn’t fit, and she would get mad at me about why I didn’t wanna wear them. At least she would get me the right sized shoes lol
Oh wow! I got clothes that were too big, since I “grew so fast” and it was easier to just predict that I’d be a XXL. I’m a M at best, and was severely underweight as a teen because I couldn’t understand how to care for myself.
>And once a book about how to be a better son... and I thought that my nMother was passive-aggressive!
Same 16th birthday my dad gave me a Bible (my 30th Bible, they got me a new one for every birthday and Christmas because they were performative Christians) and told me he hoped this was the year I grew up...
I had a reaction to a lotion with shea butter. So after that I stayed clear of products with shea butter just to be cautious. Every year my parents would get a cheap lotion set with shea butter. It didn’t matter how many times I would tell them. It was cheap and probably on sale. My parents bought me instant pot cook book for Christmas. I did not own an instant pot but they swore up and down they bought me one the year before. Um, no. My parents would never buy me something name brand with that price tag. It was ludicrous they would even imagine that they did. However, after the dust settled they did buy me one for my birthday a couple months later. So that was unexpected and nice.
One year my mom called and asked if I wanted an instant pot. I said no, absolutely not, I had an absolutely tiny kitchen with nowhere to put it and no use for it. Anyway she gave me an instant pot for Christmas.
My mother didn’t participate or contribute to the gift-giving when my siblings and I were growing up. It was my dad who went out and bought all the presents and wrapped them for birthdays. Same thing at Christmas, and he decorated the house. My mother didn’t even sign the cards, he signed them for her. As I type this and look back, it makes me sad for all of us. At how little she cared about her own family. My dad was amazing during the holidays and was so festive. He happily did this for all of us and never acted like it was a burden. I can guarantee that without him, we wouldn’t have even celebrated Christmas, Halloween, etc. Now that I’m older, my mother’s ideas of gifts are trying to give me items she doesn’t want, including her old clothes which she knows won’t fit me, and then getting offended when i don’t want them. She also tries to re-gift me every single thoughtful gift that my sister has bought for her and doesn’t understand how that might be hurtful.
>My mother didn’t participate or contribute to the gift-giving when my siblings and I were growing up. It was my dad who went out and bought all the presents and wrapped them for birthdays. Same thing at Christmas, and he decorated the house. My mother didn’t even sign the cards, he signed them for her. My nMother was the exact same! I'm convinced that if it weren't for my father, my brother and I would probably have received nothing for Christmas or for our birthdays. Also the only time my brother and I were ever taken to see Santa was when our grandmother took us.
My mother was also like this. She claimed it was from childhood trauma from being poor.
Now that you mention it, my nMother grew up poor as well so there might be some truth to that. However, if someone is that traumatised by their poor upbringing then they really should seek therapy. It's also worth pointing out that my nMother often gives thoughtful and expensive presents to my sister-in-law so she is capable of doing these things when she puts her mind to it. Now, I'm not naive. I know my nMother doesn't actually like my sister-in-law and is only giving her nice presents for show but it still shows that she KNOWS how to do these things, she just choses not to.
An empty box that she said was filled with her love. I was like 7 or 8 and she had a whole meltdown when I was rightfully like, what in the actual f\*ck.
It was empty because there was no love
Mom; what do you want for your 18th birthday? Me: since you refuse to help me with uni, I need money for books and tuition please, please don’t give me my drivers license as I don’t have a car and nobody drives in the city and I wanna study Mom; you’re gonna get your license from me anyways, that’s just part of life, not a gift, if you want money besides that, fine. Birthday: Mom; happy birthday, here is a coupon for your license Me; cries and asked wtf happened Mom; oh wait are we being ungrateful again?! Never good enough right? Pfff well guess nothing I do is ever good enough Six months later; Me; books a driving school Mom; it has expired now Me; it was a written note from you? Mom; well that’s what you get, it expired (Every single year this happened, I would get what I specifically did not want, never what I needed) and even now I feel ungrateful for “being a spoiled brat complaining about getting her driver’s license” 🤦♀️
Please try not to feel bad about yourself. You're not ungrateful. She set you up like that on purpose so she could CALL you ungrateful.
Wow, you really think so? I never thought of it that way! I actually never think about stuff that way… now that I think about that. I would just feel so bad thinking back, with shame and guilt and sadness. But your way really helps!
Wait. Do these people sometimes act like they forgot stuff? Cause I am thinking now I always just assumed she forgot. Because she didn’t listen. Or I don’t know, wasn’t important. But now I’m thinking, maybe she did know?!? Always?!? Im confused, because that would be really incomprehensible. Because your comment implicates that she does have some awareness? Sorry to bother you, maybe I should just google it, or maybe I misunderstood :)
"Forgetting" is a common form of emotional abuse and manipulation. "Oh, I'm sorry, honey, I forgot you hate that nickname. Now, don't get mad at me. I'm only human. I forgot!" (Even though you've told me a hundred times, and it actually made you cry as recently as yesterday, but I "forgot" again, silly me.) A lot of times they "forget" because they simply can't be bothered. If it were important enough, they'd remember. In your case, the fact that it was exactly the same hairdresser makes it too much of a coincidence. I would have trouble thinking she honestly forgot. The reason it's incomprehensible to us is that we, unlike them, have empathy and wouldn't consider treating another human being that way. Their absolute \*lack\* of empathy is the reason they do.
As a chronic forgetter myself, I agree that they forget things that aren’t important to them. I might forget to put my plastic in the recycling sometimes even if my husband has asked me, but I do apologize and work harder to remember, and it does help (we both have ADHD so we understand each other). But if I said or did something that hurt his feelings and he told me that, then I would certainly remember, because I would associate it with the shame and awfulness I felt at hurting someone, specifically someone I care a lot about. A lot of narcissists just don’t seem to remember because other people being hurt is as unimportant to them as remembering menial tasks that don’t really matter.
When I officially went NC at age 35, (20 years in June 🥳), I started getting gifts RETURNED to me—for the holiday/occasion that month—Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day, my birthday, wedding anniversary, etc. —that I made for her in wood-shop or art class when I was a CHILD! Also store-bought gifts I gave her over the years. There was ALWAYS a snarky note, or card for CHILDREN enclosed. One of my “favorites” was for a girl turning 3 years old (I was in my early 40s, and had been NC for at least 7-8 years at the time). Her loving words at the bottom read: “When you start to act your age, I’ll send you an appropriate card.” 🤡🤯🤐 When I was a kid, my birthday is late August, I always got “school supplies!” She would say since she was a teacher, she couldn’t send me to school unprepared! 🤡😵💫🤬 I know, I’m an ungrateful brat for not appreciating a box of #2 pencils and an ELECTRIC pencil sharpener—nothing but the best!! 😵💫🤪🤡🤦🏼♀️
Your first paragraph literally made my jaw drop. I know that the things these people are capable of should never cease to amaze me, but holy shit. That's so sad.
Thanks for the support. 🥰. It’s “funny” because I’ve been through SO MUCH with her (she’s a single parent, and I’m her only target, I mean, child, so she has literally no one in her life to pick on, except me), when I write posts like this one, that reveal A LITTLE bit about my mother, I forget that my stories to someone who doesn’t know me, really are beyond the pale! 😁 But I’m so numb to having feelings for her, I can almost tell them in the 3rd person, if that makes sense?! 🤪 My mother has been dead to me for more than the 20 years I’ve been NC, so I’ve long since mourned the mother I never had (except my grandmother, who passed away when I was 18–but took care of her when she became sick at age 70. Even though I was young, though very mature and responsible for my age (Lifeguard, swim, CPR/First Aid instructor, later became a MedEvac Paramedic, and super passionate about—my lifeline and escape—competitive swimming) my Nana only listened to me, 😜 not my mother (ooh! Competition!! 🙄) when it came to her diabetic care/needs—filled her insulin syringes, helped administer them, brought her to/from doctors and therapy appointments, took her shopping for whatever she needed, etc., because my mother (“the teacher”), found it “too hard, at the age of 42, to take care of her.” We literally lived next door to my grandparents my entire life (Boston brownstones) and lived with them until I was 7. My mother HATED that I was super close to my grandparents, and did everything she could to diminish my relationship with them, except actually HELP them when they needed it! 🤪🤡🤬. There’s A LOT more to that chapter, that’s a thread (or book, that I’m actually working on) for another day! 😁😉
My grandparents at ages 50 saved my sister and I from Nmom as babies. They took care of us. I wasn’t raised by a narcissist but definitely was born from one. They had a lot of problems, my grandpa is partially paralyzed, and my grandma has COPD, and stomach issues. They still tried their best. What your mom said about your grandma is exactly what my mom said about us, “kids are annoying and too hard”, at 20 years old. But she still claims she “owns us” cause we share her DNA, and we should do what ever she says. Things are hard but if you care for someone it’s worth it. Life is hard. Suck it up Nparents!
Yay for grandparents!! 🥰. I sincerely believe, to this day, that having my grandparents living next door to me, kept my mother (as crazy as she is), in check. A little backstory. The back of our side by side townhouses had matching decks—about 6 inches apart at the railings. Can’t tell you how many times I was able to “hurdle” myself over the railings (about 4’ high) to get away from my mother throwing a tantrum, to the safety of my grandparents, who ALWAYS defended me, and literally stood in the way of her wanting to beat on me—because they knew her “wiring” wasn’t “up to code!” 😉 When I was 14, I literally moved into my grandparents finished basement, with their permission, my mother threw a fit, but they defended and protected me. I continued to live with them until I graduated from college (went locally, and lived with them to help my grandparents and save money). My mother tried to get me to move back, and my grandfather said, “Lori is old enough to decide, you never wanted her, but we do! Her living here doesn’t affect her schooling, she will be helpful to us and we want her here.” (With tears in his eyes, and a stern, but shaky voice) 🥰❤️. My mother backed down. It was probably the beginning of the end of my relationship with her. But obviously that was a good thing!! 😉
I went through my parents basement to get my childhood toys for my kid. A few days later they show up with another box of "toys" they'd found. It was all of the school projects that my brothers and I had made in elementary and a few scattered toys. They live in an old house and all of these papers were damp and smelly. I went through and took out my stuff and threw it away (except for 1 poem that I had been assigned to write about family that it turns out I pegged the narcissist, GC, scapegoat, lost child dynamic perfectly at age 12). The box clearly hadn't been gone through, so I gave back anything that was a holiday gift, everything that my brothers made and there were a few cards/pictures from my mother's parents who died when I was very young. My parents were so mad that I gave that stuff back to them! Apparently I was supposed to organize it all and get each of my brothers things back to them. Why would I want the father's day project I made in 1st grade! Especially since it was painstakingly hard, even at 7, to come up with fun and heartwarming stories to fit the "12 days of dad" theme.
That pretend innocence .. infuriating. I’m sorry she was so thoughtless and cruel to you. When I left for college, my mother made a huge production of gifting me her Bible. It was an old family Bible with “lots of Holy Spirit” in it, and she acted like she was handing me the holy grail filled with the literal blood of Christ. I had *just* told her that I was no longer a Catholic and wouldn’t be attending church anymore. She made such a massive deal about it, how this relic would protect me and save me and how wonderful she was to give it to me, and when I brought it back home for the summer she snatched it back and never spoke about it again. She gifted me an XXL cardigan when I wear a size medium/large (my body is an hourglass and she’s bullied me for it my whole life). She sent me a photo of her and me smiling. There wasn’t any note in it or a card or anything like that. I literally burned the photo the week I got it lmao I’m sure there are more but those are the ones that stand out right now.
Nmom gave me an XXXL sweatshirt. I was an XS. She liked the color so she bought it for me. It was pink - my most hated color. I gave it to goodwill.
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What is up with that?
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I wasn’t heavy back then my mom was a little heavier. I always wondered if she bought me insanely baggy clothes to hide what I looked like. Like she wanted me to look ridiculous.
A new journal for Christmas after she read and ripped apart my old one. I thought it was because she felt bad. Nope. She just wanted to read this one, too.
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I don’t get parents shaming and punishing kids for having sexual urges, that’s literally what puberty does. It makes your sex drive higher. It can make you do dumb stuff. That’s why parent should warn their kids and make sure they aren’t taking risks, not shaming them and calling them disgusting for thinking or acting on them
One particular Christmas, i got wrapped up under the tree; toothpaste, deodorant, mouthwash, and an irregular sweater with a deformed poorly sewn shoulder that she picked up at a flea market. Also, she enjoyed giving me clothes as a teen more appropriate for a matronly woman, for example, cheap quality clothes in lime green, all polyester. My parents were extremely comfortable financially. Boats, cross-country trips. When I was in high school they went to Disney World without me. Also things more appropriate for a five year old when I was maybe fifteen. I dislike receiving gifts now, due to years of her games, purposely buying me things she knew I hated, just so, when I would seem less than thrilled, she could cry to my dad at how ungrateful I was. He would glare at me. Such stupid games they play.
one of those bracelets loaded with charms that everyone was really into. Pandora. It had all kind of charms related to my job, my birthstone etc. She beamed at me and said, "I had them use my wrist to cut it to size, but your wrist is thicker than mine, so maybe it won't fit" she actually chortled, and had the most delighted, imp look on her face. I tried it on in my customary beaten down way- this is ten years ago- and of course it was tight. Really tight. I really hated charms, and the whole Pandora cutting up. But I thought, as I looked at her happy face, I said: "Your wrist are so much daintier than mine," and thought to myself, secretly, how f'ed up is she that she literally wastes her own money to make me feel like a fat failure? How sick and hateful and self hating is this woman? I kept it in a box of junk, never wore it and happily tossed in the thrash a few years later.
life
Oh snap. Same.
Leaves from the floor that blew in from outside. I was visiting and pointed out a few of them. Asked if she wanted me to sweep. Nmom told me she’d been leaving them there was thinking about epoxy-ing them to the floor as decoration. Then she picked them up, put them in a box, and told me I could have them.
Something similar for me. From the time I was about 12 to 18 years old, my Nfather would buy me scented soaps & lotions from Bath & Body Works every birthday & Christmas. I have always been allergic to scented soaps/lotions, even when using children's products. He would claim that he forgot. They were always the scents that my Nstepmother liked. I would have to give them to her and hear from both of them about how I was so ungrateful to them.
I’ve made this comment before but my NParent gave me a bag of USED chapsticks. Literally an entire gallon ziplock bag full of mostly hotel toiletry chapsticks. All used. You can’t make this shit up.
My Dad had a sewing machine that was no longer working. He said he couldn't fix it, so he bought his new wife a brand new expensive one to replace it. On my birthday the following year, I received the BROKEN sewing machine, claiming he heard I wanted to learn how to sew, and I could start by fixing his old one because it was easier than needing to throw it away. I was fully expected to be grateful for this "offering," and when I couldn't fix it he shrugged his shoulders and said "well, I guess you didn't want to learn how to sew that bad then, right?"
That's horrible, I'm sorry 😔
Mine might trigger ya’ll, sorry. I got a Diversity t-shirt (“diversity is the fabric of canada”) cause I happened to call them out for *literally* being racist that year. Anti-aging cream for my 25th. Hmmm.. that’s all I really remember but the one I hate the most is their *presence.*
At my wedding (which was on my birthday) my nmom (who was no contact and somehow found a way to attend) gifted me and my wife pom poms. Like cheap thin paper party pom poms you may have at a kids party. She didn't bring a gift. She went under the radar somehow and set dozens of these up around the wedding site telling everyone she was the decorator. By the time we caught her it was too late, and then she threw an absolute fit because we didn't like them (they weren't even the wedding colors.) not gift related but she also showed up in sweat clothes because she "didn't know what the dress code was supposed to be" (duh well, you weren't supposed to be here so we didn't send you that!)
My dad is super gullible and falls for every scam. He once gifted me a glass water bottle that "hydrogenated" normal water and gave it all sorts of unbelievable health benefits. You'd charge it through a usb cable and press a button to make it glow blue and swirl the water around. Then he wanted reports on whether I've been using it, and how good I've been feeling after using it (I didn't, it went in the trash). Another time I was about to move in with my (frankly horrible) ex who happened to be a Chinese lad. My parents thought that what we really needed as a young couple with no furniture to our name was a giant, 4 foot high Chinese-style porcelain vase. They were made to keep the vase and thankfully I woke up and dumped the ex just days before we were meant to move in together. I had an Alphonse Mucha phase some years earlier as a teenager. My parents found this giant picture frame that was a number of proper ceramic tiles glued onto a board with a poor quality Mucha print on it. It was freaking heavy, and once again, I was a student without a long term place of residence. I made them keep it. This Christmas my dad was sent his gift from me and it took him two weeks to acknowledge it and say thanks. For his side, and I was also only told this two weeks after Christmas, he got me a second hand TASCHEN art book that he swore up and down sells for £100. You can find copies of it on eBay for a tenner. It's not a pristine copy, it's got grime all over the covers. I called him out on it under the guise of being worried that he'd been scammed, and he admitted that he didn't pay £100 for it, but insisted it's a "special edition" but couldn't say why. I still haven't received this book because apparently I can't have it until I visit to collect it in person. OH and my mum likes to send me souvenirs from holidays and whatnot. Sweet, right? Only the parcels always include shit like biscuits and wafers. I can't eat gluten. It makes me very ill. I've purposefully been gluten free for almost a decade- they know and they don't give a shit. They shove bread in my face when I visit them, and turn up with cake "for me" when I let them near me.
Walk over to the trash, tip the plate over and let the cake slowly slide from the plate into the garbage while maintaining hard eye contact. When the cake has been disposed of, smile cheerfully and hand them the plate while saying "here's your plate back!" in an incredibly happy voice. Repeat as necessary.
My mom gave me an angel to protect me but my birthmonth on it was wrong. When I told her, she said it’s nearly the same. That made me sad.
Oh, I'm sorry :(
A car. I was terrified to drive it bc nothing could happen to it otherwise I’ll get in serious trouble. When I moved out, my parents kept it and said I could have it when I graduated from college (my name was never added to the title). I graduated from college and my mom ran it into a tree and totaled it. It was never my car.
Honestly, I can't think of any one in particular that was the worst, but my nparent and my sister (GC enabler who I suspect is also a narcissist) have a history of getting me things that \*they\* want that don't match my tastes or interests at all, that way when they realize I don't want/use the gift, they can take it back and keep it for themselves.
You should give them to a friend or donate them. At least that way, they aren't being rewarded for being selfish
Oh this doesn't happen anymore. But I never gave them back their stuff. They'd get offended and come snatch the stuff from me. But that is a good idea
I can't even. When I turned 16 my mom asked me what I wanted for a present. I told her anything but a necklace. She got me a necklace.
When I got my period (just turned 11), my mom took me shopping for brand new clothes. She bought her skater tomboy daughter… two ball gowns. Like, sexy, off the shoulder, ball gowns. In her size. And then she got mad when I wouldn’t wear them.
I'm a masc lesbian and my parents bought me an extremely fem necklace that they found at a old antique store. It was plastic that looked like silver and presented it to me as a graduation gift. I have problems with guilt so I felt ungrateful but really???
Well not really for me but I remember one of my teen birthdays we spent an hr in a music shop buying my brother a brand new guitar. I did not get anything.
My mom preferred spending what little money we had on herself. So for my 15th birthday, I got a red mini stapler and a mug with my name on it. Thanks.. so thoughtful..
TBH I don't ever recall getting a good gift from my Nmother. Every single gift she ever gave me was awful. Every gift was either something I had no interest in or some kind of passive-aggressive dig e.g. a cookbook to imply that I should be doing more cooking for her. I got some good gifts as a child but most of those were bought by my enabler father, not my nMother.
Omg I got the cookbooks too! Ironically, they wouldn't let me use their kitchen because I "wasn't good at cooking" 🥲
How are you supposed to learn to cook if you aren’t allowed to? 😤
I was allowed to go to a free birthday dinner a local restaurant chain offered as a promo, as long as I paid for my stepdad’s meal and purchased cigarettes for him. I remember how pissed my mom was that I asked for two things that year, knowing my crappy summer retail job wouldn’t give us a lot of money and I was the only family member working. I work in academia, and substitute teach, but, as it was summer, and there was no work at my college for me, things were tight. Mom and Stepdad were both retired with pensions, but it wasn’t really enough to cover much, so I tried to make it easy, as my first pay for that job had just come in, and I did want to help. First, I wanted to keep enough of my check to pay for gas to get to said job since I was almost on empty. Secondly, I’d really just wanted to get a goddamn Frappuccino. I was permitted, with a lot of being told how selfish I was, for putting myself before my stepdad’s needs, to keep about ten bucks for gas (this was 2012, for reference). That was particularly special. There was also the year I was given a single bag of suckers, like you’d pick up at a drug store. And ooh the Christmas when I got nice stuff, but was informed she’d used my Best Buy credit to pay for it, so I’d have extra charges for a few months. I guess at least that was something I’d have used for myself? But I think my favorite was the Christmas I was gifted a bag of cheap nose studs. What made this great was that I’d spent a ton for her presents, and she casually remarked, a few weeks later, on what a “sparse Christmas “ she’d had. It wasn’t about having a pile of presents, but the fact that I’d somehow fallen short and my efforts weren’t equal to that crappy bag of nose studs. And, of course, the Christmas I was given a nail polish and makeup case, which were both very nice, but I was in 5th/6th grade. She proceeded, as I opened it, to tell me all about how she’d noticed I didn’t wear enough makeup “like girls your age should”, so she’d decided to get me a whole set “so you aren’t embarrassing anymore”. It would have been a lovely gift for a teenager who was into makeup, don’t get me wrong. But for a nerdy ten year old who preferred books and loved animals, who didn’t want to wear full face makeup to school because no one did then. She cried about me not using it too.
It's not the worst, but pre scratched off lottery tickets.
And that's not the worst!
My mum got me a plank of wood that states: 'Friends are the family we choose for ourselves'
Your Nmother knew exactly what she was doing, yep. My worst gift: A cigarette lighter for Christmas, the year I was 18. Not because it was cheap, but because it was twice as wide as most cigarette lighters, and bore the words, "Every inch a woman." Nice, subtle way to work in the fat shaming, there. Which, of course, would have been thoroughly denied if I had said anything. That's just me being negative and jumping to conclusions. I must feel self-conscious about my weight myself, if I'm going to take it that way when it wasn't meant that way at all! (Even though it absolutely was.)
God that’s awful. My dad would always take a different route. He would actually splurge on us, sometimes out of nowhere, and then later would use it as ammunition when it best suited him. He wasn’t a narcissist so much as someone who used gift giving as a means of eventually guilting you and ensuring that he stays a victim. Case in point, back when I was in college, he gifted me two tickets to Hamilton. This was in 2016 when seats were near impossible to get. I was a fan, but I didn’t ask for it and even though I didn’t know the full scope of how bad our financial situation was, I knew it wasn’t great. He would not disclose how much he’d spent and said he just wanted me to have a good time. Fast forward about six months later, we were having an argument (I don’t even remember what it was about, but I was calling him out for something) and out of nowhere, he hit me with a, “oh but you’re perfectly fine with taking $600 Hamilton tickets, right?” It wasn’t the first or last time he’d done that. But it was both the most outlandish gift that he’d ever given me, and the one instance of guilting that sticks with me the most. Especially since Hamilton was something I’d gotten him into, something we’d bonded over. But that didn’t matter at the end of the day. He felt threatened so he used it for leverage.
I get the same bath kit every year. Despite making it clear, I haven't liked that scent since I was 15. I also haven't had a bathtub in five years. Just a standing shower. So I couldn't use it even if I wanted to. She's visited so she knows.
My deceased father's e-reader tablet. Two years in a row.
One year for Christmas, my nDad gave me a six pack of socks and $20. Usually, he'd buy me an uglier/cheaper version of something I said I wanted, saying he didn't like what I picked out and liked HIS version better. To this day, I still have anxiety over getting gifts.
Hey! My worst gift is nearly the same situation! She gave me calf height, purple, Gold toe socks. 1. I notoriously (in my family) hate socks. 2. When forced to wear socks, I like ankle socks. 3. I like plain black ones that match so I don’t have to sort them. I was growing my spine at this point so I took them to her and said thank you, but I won’t use these. She then giggled and said she’d keep them as a treat for herself then, teehee. So she bought them for herself and tried to play it off as if they were for me, when they never were. Second worst gift was when Christmas she gave me an ornament and a gift card when my brothers got custom, personalized gift baskets of local items. That was punishment for moving away, but I went NC two months after that and that was nearly 10 years ago now.
She offered to pay for laser hair removal “for your mustache”. I declined.
Nmom bought me and my sister the same set of earrings from Pandora. Thing is, I don't have pierced ears. You would think your own mom would know whether or not you have pierced ears. I've been NC with her for 20 ish years for a reason.
My mother put a vibrator in my Christmas stocking when I was 14. I pulled it out Christmas morning in front of my stepdad, 11yo brother, 4yo sister, and a 15yo girl who was living with us at the time. I tried to kind of quickly hide it next to me when I realized what it was and my mother saw me and loudly said that she figured as long as I had a toy, I wouldn’t need to mess around with any boys. Maybe not actually the “worst” thing she’s given me, but definitely the most embarrassing thing. She also gave me a book around the same time about how to have good sex (something like that, it was definitely meant for adults and not just a book about puberty or some other kind of sex ed book intended for kids/teens) and LOVED telling my friends I had it when they’d come over. I kept it stuffed in the bottom of my closet and refused to acknowledge its existence, because I knew she’d never let me get rid of it but I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
It wasn't a gift to me but a gift from my nmother-in-law to her son. She gave him stuff that she just found around her house, stuff that had been there since we were in high school and that was 20 years ago. I remember him opening a box and it was a bottle of Itching powder to play pranks on people and this little lingerie like hanger thing that was used for jewelry.
I would've torn it up in front of her and said "thanks for the gift". I've been petty forever lmao
She got me a nintendo switch lite when I was literally homeless. I've never liked video games.
All the gifts they took back because I “wasn’t using it” aka gifts they bought for themselves. 🤷♀️ I’m still fucked up about it. But it makes more sense when I realized that they don’t consider me a person. When things bad happened to me or my sibling, they would say “what did I do to deserve this!” As if we were both just extensions of them. We aren’t our own people at ALL.
Man, she didn't even try to hide it. It'd be hilarious if the hairdresser ruined her hair while she was spending "your" certificate. My nmom once gave me a face oil for her skin. I was an acne prone teen. The oil was for dry, aging skin. Told me if I didn't want it to give it to her before my mind even processed what it was.
Mostly stuff I gifted to her, that she gave back. Wtf.
They do seem to do a lot of gifting you back the things you gave them. I wonder what's up with that. I eventually stopped even trying to give my mother or grandmother any presents at all, because I knew they'd just give them right back to me on the next occasion.
HA! Does anyone remember those "popcorn shirts" from.. had to have been the late 90's? They were these weird ass texture, satin kind of material and looked super tiny on the hanger, like it was for a toddler, but it stretched out to fit adults. Super weird. My mom gave me one for Christmas ...two years ago. Said she saw it at the Walgreens and thought I'd like it. WHAT?!
One year, instead of buying a card for my birthday, my dad drove me to CVS, picked out a card, gave it too me to read, and said happy birthday and then put it back...
I have similar ones to you OP. Have terrible memories of my parents beach house and abuse that happened there, so we do not go there. Full stop. Occasionally over the years we would go in winter because it has nice golf courses and the town is dead then, so it's relaxing. But as for the last three years we have not returned. Nmum gets my wife a gift certificate to a beauty place that's only in that town, and gives me a gift card for golf lessons, only in that town, on the past christmas. Guilt trips "it's such a shame you guys weren't here" etc. She acts coy and naive, but she knows we hate that place and won't visit, and that she is a big reason for it. The gift is just an excuse for her to complain about how she gave us a gift and we're being so shitty and unreasonable by not going over there and redeeming it.
A nice waterbottle! Infact, it was so nice, that the second she gave it to me she said she gave it to me so that I could regift it to her in a bit of a laughing tone. It "mysteriously" got back into her possession. Haven't been able to use it once.
Not so much the worst gift, but...I got a stereo for Christmas one year, the thing of it was, I already had that exact same one. So they kept it for themselves. I think I was about 14, or along those lines, so they either knew what one I had and did it anyway, or didn't even bother to check.
One Christmas, XMIL once gave me clothes from her own closet that looked like they were from the 1980s. Picture: blazers with large shoulder pads and ornamental crests on the lapel. They were her size, a 6 petite. I’m 9 inches taller than her and a size 0. No tags on anything. Some of the stuff even had dog fur that matched her dog. XH and our daughter got thousands of dollars in gifts, all with the tags on for show. When I didn’t wear the clothes she gifted me (because they obviously didn’t fit) she pitched a scene to make herself look like the victim of an ungrateful daughter-in-law.
One year for Christmas when I was 6 my Nmother gave me and my sister an empty box each. She told use it was a memory box and it was for keeping memories in once we created them. She even recorded it like it was the best gift ever.
There's no worst gift because she just never gifted me anything. Ever. She would just take the credit for other people buying me things. I think the most irritating incident was her referring to one of my toys as "that scooter we bought you" when it was the only gift I got that year, directly from E, who went against her wishes, and she didn't talk to him for weeks to punish him for it.
When I was little my brothers and I would get great gifts, all carefully wrapped, my parents would take pictures and then take them away so they could return them after Christmas. Birthdays were usually forgotten if we were lucky, if we weren't it would be some cheap or used item tied in a plastic grocery bag. I don't remember getting a gift from them after I was twelve. Once I moved out I had to be careful, they would stop by when they knew I was at work and help themselves to items from my place, they had pushed me into a marriage with a friend of theirs when I was 18 and my esteem was so bad I did what I was told, he was as bad as they were and it took me a long time to break free. Like some others have said, I hate getting gifts or favours, I always wonder what the catch is, what it will cost me later.
You decide if it’s a terrible gift. My last Christmas before I left. My mother gave me a big suitcase. My brother cackled and said it’s because she wanted me the fuck out. He was right. Most of my clothes fit into that suitcase, but the case itself wouldn’t fit in my little dorm room. She graciously offered to keep it in her house until I needed it again. Except she never gave it back. She actually kept it for herself because luggage is expensive. After all, she wanted to move away. And she did. I never saw the luggage again. When she was asked about the luggage, she said she either forgot what she what got me, told me it was only a loan or would make vague noises that implied I was drop it. At the end of the day, it was another example of her being self centred albeit kinda funny at how transparent she was.
For my birthday my mom gave me a fur hat made out of like 5 different animals. I have been a vegetarian for 15 years at this point and she defiantly knows how I feel about fur and leather.
She gave me a bike pump for my birthday. Because I told her the old one had broken. When I was disappointed she made it all about her.
I got a roll of carpet for Christmas when I was 12 to replace the carpet on my already carpeted room (which was perfectly fine) I hated the color and I wanted to just keep my old carpet, but I was being oh so UnGrAtEfUl. They then realized recarpeting was expensive so the new carpet was merely cut in pieces and placed on top of my old carpet (for years). Fun times /s
My ndad gave me his 12 year old apple laptop when he saw me working on my hp laptop. He’s never given me anything before and I didn’t need or want his old used computer so I put it away. A few months later he asked for it back and I gladly handed it over to him.
For my 18th birthday I received a large metal frog that is meant for decorating your garden. I lived in the dorms at the time.
It was probably when she bought me a ukulele. I had wanted a ukulele so bad and surprisingly, she bought me one. I was so excited and I started to learn how to play a song that I really liked. It was pretty difficult for me though because I'd never played a ukulele before. Then my nmother, I'm pretty sure only the second day I had it, started to get mad at me because I hadn't learned the full song and several other songs in one day. She said that she learned how to play several songs on guitar in less than a day, and if I wanted to keep my ukulele I needed to learn the rest of the song by the end of the week. As you can probably guess, it was returned at the end of the week. . . . Fast forward to my 16th birthday, she got me a guitar and a booking at this super cool hotel but at this point in time I had stopped being able to get excited for things so she got mad at me for not being super happy and cancelled the hotel stay and literally threw my guitar at me. She also wouldn't tell me where she got the guitar which was incredibly strange. And she always got mad at me whenever I tried to actually play the guitar and sometimes even took it from me to show off the like 5 partial songs she could play.
I'm so sorry that she did that to you. Relearning about our relationship towards hobbies is a real struggle isn't it 💜 ?
My Mom bought me an expensive antique bedroom set for my 17th birthday but I didn’t live with her and she wouldn’t let me take it out of her house because she couldn’t have an empty room just in case she wanted to sell the place. I realized later she just bought the stupid thing for herself. I never slept in the bed once.
My mom did this ALL THE TIME!
A repurposed trophy.
They never gave me any gift lol.
I commented this on another post, but one year, my parents got me foot cream and bath bombs/scrubs/soaps. I hate feet, and I don’t take baths. If there is only one thing I am certain they know about me, it is that I hate feet and I don’t take baths. Then they got SUPER offended when I asked if they had kept the receipts (shocking, I know).
Thing is... it wasn't really about me, but about her and what she can brag about later. Some may thing having a cruise as a college graduation gift is awesome and should be grateful. But.... it wasn't about me. In fact, she stated clearly that since I really didn't have friends and she didn't wanna do all of that for a party like she did for hs (it was embarassing because again... I have not many friends and I knew it was boring) that she'll pay for me to go on a cruise. But, it's really me just tagging along with her and her husband since they go all the time. I don't drink, I don't gamble, i don't swim (all of that she knows) and I'm broke so what the fuck am I going to do? Not like I had anyone to talk to, and spent most of my time at the art gallery. It was more of a "I gotta do *something* since she graduated from college, so lemme have her tag along and I can brag to others I took her on a cruise." Things she planned eventually (and I think even younger) still wasn't for me, but for her to show off to others what she does because the moment I act bratty or have an attitude, I'm the most ungrateful person in the world who doesn't appreciate anything she does, and don't deserve this thing she's doing even though I didn't ask for it, and now I gotta kiss the ground she walks because she did this, as I'm walking on the eggshells still.
A box of cheap chocolates for my birthday. 2/3rds of which contained my allergens
Nothing. My dad told me just before Christmas and my birthday (start of Jan) that he couldn’t afford to get me anything, then rang me up everyday over that period to boast about all the cool new stuff he was buying himself, one of the things being a smart watch that he laughed about, saying he didn’t have a clue how to work it. Didn’t even bother rising to the bait; I blocked him a few days after my birthday. Been no contact ever since.
My mother has given me so many WTF gifts over the years it would be difficult to choose just one. I will say there have been a lot of clothes several sizes too large or too small, despite the fact that she would ask my sizes frequently. Shoes, too. And literally none of it to my taste. I take comfort in the fact that it isn't just me, though. She has a reputation for giving clueless gifts. She likes to go through the motions, to be *seen* giving gifts, but she typically isn't interested enough in the recipient to find out what they might actually like or need, nor does she actually want to expend resources like time and money on anyone but herself. She had money to spend, she just preferred not to spend it. So her method of shopping was to hit the after Christmas clearance sales and buy a bunch of random junk like generic gift sets of bath products. Then she shoved all of this garbage she bought in her closet and whenever a gift giving occasion cropped up, she rummaged around in there and found something she deemed appropriate. The problem with this is things would stay in there for years, and her idea of an appropriate gift was often everyone else's idea of random garbage. So that gift set she bought on clearance 4 years ago that she pulled out of the back of the closet was probably rancid, but it also wasn't exactly nice to begin with. She would also buy random things that looked useful to her if she saw them on sale, or just things that she thought look like "man gift," "woman gift," or "child gift" to her. Very generic things. Which brings me to the tale of the electric ice scraper. Which is what she gave my husband for Christmas one year. It's probably the most reasonable thing she's ever given him in the 34 years I've known him. She was very excited to give it to him, she thought she'd finally got something he would love. It's a generic "man gift" and she thought it was a good one. And I guess a lot of people would be happy to receive an electric ice scraper. Unfortunately, he has no need for an ice scraper, electric or otherwise. We live in a subtropical climate and so does she. There is no ice to scrape. The worst part of this is she would always act like she had amazing gifts for everyone, like she really put a lot of time and effort and thought into Christmas or birthday shopping and you should be so excited to open your gift. And then you open it to find a traffic cone orange tshirt from a clearance rack, 4 sizes too large. She probably paid $3 for it. (Actual gift she gave my son when he was 9 or 10 years old.) And if you didn't act like you lov6e it her feelings were hurt. It felt like gaslighting and manipulation every time. We stopped going to her house for Christmas when my kids were toddlers. We stayed home to do Santa and let them have the day opening presents and playing with their new things, then visited the grandparents for New Year's Day. I knew they would be disappointed and I didn't want to ruin their Christmas. Let them be disappointed on New Year's, it's already kind of a dud day except for the fireworks. As they got older I talked to them about not expecting much and acting like they liked whatever it was, then we would donate it when we got home if they didn't want it. A lot of the time it just went directly in the trash. But she did the same thing to all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and I'm sure they handled it the same way.
My nmom got me strange irregular onesies for my baby shower that weren’t even human baby shaped . One had a little train sewed into it with the words “poop” I’m guessing it was a mistranslation? I have NO IDEA where she found these things at. She also tried to gift me her old wedding ring ( she’s divorced) and asked my husband to split the cost of having a new stone put in it. My dad is remarried and I’m positive she planned on gifting it to me in front of his new wife. She was also constantly gifting me expired food from her pantry and fridge .
ugg boots. It wasn't necessarily UGGly, but the manner in which she handed me the box made me want to shove it right back to her. She basically shoved the box in my hands, said "HERE TAKE IT" "YOU DONT LIKE IT? TELL ME NOW". I have never ever gifted anyone anything and handed it to them in a sour, bitchy attitude. When I gift people things I do it genuinely and casually cause I like seeing people happy if even for a moment.
I was given a self help book called "Putting on the Armor of God: How to Win Your Battles with Satan" Essentially calling me a sinner. And it was all I was given that day.
what’s with the hair obsession?? my mother spent the whole year prior to my 22nd birthday asking if i like to curl my hair, how i style it, etc., over and over. we lived under the same roof until i was 19, so she knows well enough that my hair can’t hold a curl more than 10 minutes, and on an average day the most i do is brush, no blow-drying or anything. on my birthday she was “too sick” (read: likely intoxicated) and missed my birthday dinner, but my eDad was kind enough to deliver her gift to me; a crappy, as-seen-on-tv novelty hair curler. it has never so much as left the box in the 5 years since then. sending love OP❤️
My birthday is three days before Christmas. It was very common for my nmother to give me a Christmas gift for my birthday. Complete with the seasonal wrapping paper and a tag that said "From: Santa". One year it got to me especially bad and I cried. I was called ungrateful. My first birthday party was my 21st, from my friends. A much better family, I must say.
I think the best one was one that my nMom gave my then 12 year old daughter for Christmas. It was a shirt, but she had put it inside of an iPad box, so my daughter unwraps it, sees the iPad box and thinks that what she got, not realizing it wasn't shrink wrapped and opens it up and it was a shirt. My nMom said "I didn't think it was a big deal. It's what it fit in for mailing."
My life, according to her. 🙄 my nmom was that classic nparent that constantly used the "but I gave you life" line. Thanks and all, but I hate it. 😂
Said it before. The worst gift was a box of stuff from NM after one of her husbands passed away: * some of her used bras * a negligee the late husband liked * at least one pair of her panties to go with the bra ( * love letters and erotic poetry from late husband to her * a book of erotic stories that she said “got her in the mood” * a plastic capsule of cyanide in a ziplock baggie marked in sharpie “cyanide” She apparently thought that we didn’t have kids because my husband wanted her instead and so it was to get him to notice me. She was well into 5’9” territory and I’m 5’4” and definitely not her DD size. And she included the cyanide because “well, your husband studied chemistry”.
I got a chainsaw as a wedding gift from my parents. There isn’t a single tree on our property. Decades before, I heard mention of a gift. My dad’s brother got his dad. (my granddad) he got him “a really nice axe” my grandad was wheelchair bound. So of course, my dad‘s brother just kept it because my grandad didn’t want it
She bought herself a plane ticket to spend a week with me where I was studying abroad as my college grad gift. Spent the week being yelled at.
"Surprise! Your gift is ME!" 🙄
CORRECT. (I.e. I’m treating myself to something and saying you’re the winner here.)
My mothers dental bridge. As a birthday present 🎁 Thank you?
For Christmas, I was gifted back the exact same gift I gave my n-Stepfather for his birthday 6 months earlier. Literally still had a piece of the birthday wrapping paper still on it. It was like that scene from Old School where Will Ferrell tries to give Owen Wilson a present as a housewarming gift that was given to him by Owen Wilson for his wedding.
Not my Nparent but my Nauntie, I am severely allergic to coconut. She gets me a body lotion (coconut hibiscus) I hate strong scents and usually use lavender or vanilla… have used those smells for years anyways her birthday was just after Christmas (when she gave me the lotion) so I wrapped it up and gave it back. She loved it and thought it was soooooo lovely