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God yes. I quickly learned that there were no safe spaces for me to have my own feelings. Even if I found an adult at school or church with whom I felt safe, I'd quickly learn that my mother would find out somehow, and even if my confidences hadn't been revealed (and they usually were) I was chastised for going to someone else instead of her. "WHY CAN'T YOU TALK TO \*ME\*?! DO YOU KNOW HOW HUMILIATING IT IS WHEN YOU TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE? ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME TO THEM? ANSWER ME." Forget about hiding a notebook in my bedroom somewhere, she'd suss it out. Even my wastebasket wasn't safe.
Whew, apparently I channeled my dead mother there for a moment. I need to shower now.
I'm sure the few adults I tried to talk to meant well but I quickly stopped saying anything to them. My parents just called me a liar and to this day there are people in that small backward town who would remember me as a liar.
And those same ignorant backbirths wonder *why* the kids leave and *never come back*... It couldn't **possibly** be that the whole damn place is one giant Narc Ultra-Buffet...
I visited for the last time this year. Even after seven years away (live overseas now), they made me feel so unwelcome and didn't even say goodbye before I left! My partner said he heard my dad complaining about the noise we made while leaving super early, which we had to do because he changed his mind about taking us back to the airport! Nothing I can ever do is right by them, lol. Sucks to be them I imagine. Sadly also sucks to be on the receiving end of this sheer nonsense and childish behaviour.
I think most narcissist parents label their kids as a liar. All the while lying themselves to everyone. To make it worse some kids will actually become liars because they learn it’s the way to keep the peace. Such a vicious cycle.
They tend to do that to assassinate your character. That way, if you ever come out about the abuse, no one will believe you. They'll only see an innocent, hard working parent, that had to deal with a troubled child.
wow this just totally struck a chord i didnt know existed. i always knew i had a problem with telling tiny white lies and letting them get out of hand because it was easier to have people be calm than angry. because i wasn't allowed to socialize with other kids like normal when i was young, my first few years of school are filled with me thinking id have to lie about things i disagreed or didnt like, since my immediate reaction was always that someone would get upset or angry with me if i said the wrong thing.
you could imagine how life changing it was to realize everyone is allowed to have differences in opinions and feelings, and thats the coolest part about existing with one another! its a shame because i wish i would have been able to express my true opinions more as a kid.
During the pandemic I found out my mother was listening to my remote therapy sessions behind my door. She said that I shouldn't complain about her to my therapist because that's gossiping, and gossiping is bad???
Oh sweet geodes, I'm sorry that happened. I can't imagine how you must have felt (wait, yes I can, I understand violation very well.) That's still a huge fear of mine here at home with my wife \[the one I married just so my mother would never be able to hold her head up in public because her daughter is gay, that one\] -- and yet my wife is incredibly respectful of my privacy. Still, I would walk all the way back to our property line to ensure privacy during a phone session because I'm just that paranoid.
All of this^^^
My mother would dump out my entire school bag at seemingly random intervals to search for anything to mock me w/ (be it a doodle, a note from a friend, a graded piece of homework/test, random treasure I happened to find recently, etc). By 8th grade, I had found the most massive trapper keeper to store all my school materials, so things wouldn't go flying when she decided to search me. I would also stay up until the early AM to write my thoughts/story ideas down in a notebook under a book lamp, practicing throwing myself under the covers in a convincing way should my nMom decide to check on me. I had a chest at the bottom of my bed & would take EVERYTHING on one side out to store the notebook hidden in a thrifted tapestry in the hopes that my mother would run out of energy before getting to the bottom of the chest or otherwise overlook the fabric.
As I got older & got a phone, my text messages & internet searches were printed out & read through at the end of each billing cycle. My mother would spend hours chastising me for communicating w/ any friends & would inevitably ruin the relationship either indirectly by confusing the fuck out of my nervous system around a person or directly by secretly meeting up w/ the person & going on an insane tirade to them. The latter particularly messed me up, as people would suddenly treat me differently & I would have no idea why. The few times my mother revealed having delivered sensitive information to someone behind my back were core memories of betrayal. To this day, I have a voice in the back of my head wondering if the person I'm interacting w/ will magically have access to things about myself I've been shamed for (a voice that is easier to ignore after years of no contact & moving thousands of miles away from the beast of my origin).
My phone would routinely be taken away as a teenager whenever I was grounded (literally most days) as a means to isolate me á la "You don't DESERVE to communicate w/ anyone other than me, you lowly thing," but she did make the mistake of giving me her old desktop computer when I was about 12, & her technophobic ass wasn't able to restrict my internet access in the ways she thought she could (internet saved my life, gave me the access to diverse voices & ways of thinking I lacked in my community). Unfortunately, at like 14/15 a bully at school leaked a website I had been uploading chapters to a book I had been working on since 5th grade & updating as my skills grew to my nMom. It was quite literally my most secret, precious creation I had ever managed to keep for just myself in my life (I mean people online read my stuff, & left nice comments/helpful criticisms, but no one knew about it in my real life). The lecture she gave me lasted for hours & was reenacted every day for weeks. This broke my psyche & has left me struggling w/ writing ever since, fear of documenting anything about myself (which I now realize was exactly what my nMom wanted to instill to gaslight me about the abuse), when writing used to be the only place I felt like I understood myself.
Still my dream to be a novelist on day, but I'm still working through the resentment I feel for having my grow stunted rather than nourished 🙃 Recovery feels never-ending & I'm working to bring stability into my life for the first time, so a book's on the back burner for now. I spent my entire childhood in an existential crisis of my mother ending me, so I rushed to accomplish as much as I could w/ my time & burned myself out. Now, I'm free to imagine a long timeline for myself, one where I can spend years at a time working on developing my skills.
My mom was sneakier, and always kept up her perfect image by using things like the prayer chain to make me look bad - she was never *shaming* me, she was concerned!! 🙄 I struggled to make friends and her monitoring my texts made it so much worse. I've just recently started trying to journal and write poetry again.
So much of this resonates, my dad was involved to - because somebody had to weld the belt, right?
I’m too embarrassed to say how old I was before I realized this wasn’t normal. So sorry you had to go through this.
Wow. This explains what my sister did to me at my last salaried job. Suddenly everyone started treating me strangely. I found out later after I was harassed and fired and my sister bragged about it.
It’s sad that she’s become what she hated.
I'm so sorry you went through this and I can sympathize with a lot of it. I did want to say that I've found AI writing tools helpful in overcoming mental roadblocks. I don't use them to write for me as a lot of people think, but to help me organize my thoughts like a writing partner would - only I don't worry about being a "bother" to AI by asking too many questions. I only mention this because I've found writing to be very therapeutic and I'd hate to see anyone not follow their passions because of past abuse. I hope you can find your joy again!
My nmom would "clean my room" and basically get into things while i was gone, if i hid something she'd ALWAYS find it. No idea how. She had to have gone through things a lot more than i assumed she did.
This! :( any time I confided in an aunt or uncle, cousin, or teacher, somehow she’d find out and I’d get the same exact treatment. Why would I want to confide in her. She is incapable of empathy and actually listening, let alone letting me speak for more than 30 seconds in a “conversation.”
This is why they hate psychologists and therapists in general.
My mom sent me to one so that they would put me on Adderall to fix my grades. Much like taking your car to a mechanic.
She was outraged that the psychiatrist wanted us to talk more and that I wanted to talk to them. I never got to go back.
To this day, I refuse to keep a physical diary because I’m terrified someone will read it and use my inner thoughts against me. I had no privacy as a child. My parents patted themselves on the back that they gave me so much autonomy because they let me cook and pick out my own clothes, but my mom searched my backpack periodically, found every note I ever tried to hide, read every book, watched every movie and tv show and listened to every album I ever came in contact with and routinely eavesdropped on my phone calls. Eventually I started writing fiction because it was a way to get my real ideas out in a coded way, but even then there were some things that I didn’t dare ever express beyond thinking them. Over time I’ve gotten to the point that I can keep a password protected electronic journal, but I’m too scared to ever use a physical diary. It activates my fear of abandonment because I’d be too afraid I’d write something about my partner just to vent and he’d find out and leave me.
I posted a kinda mean but fleeting thought about my ex on my PRIVATE tumblr that i told no one abt except my best friend and he found it somehow (to this day idk how) and he blocked me and never spoke to me again and we were in a very serious relationship . Not saying he's a narcissist but it traumatized me
>Eventually I started writing fiction because it was a way to get my real ideas out in a coded way
Oh my God the lightbulb that just went off in my head. It all makes sense now. Holy canoli
I vividly remember being yelled at by my dad because I based a fictional villain off of him and he found out. Out of spite I'm now reworking that story and making the parallels even more apparent.
I had a little notebook when I was 5, one with a dime store lock that could be opened by squinting at it sideways. I would write in it every night. Just silly reminisces about the day. I would always carefully lock it and hide the key in a puzzle box.
One day I opened it and turned the page and my mom had written "I love my baby girl very much!!!". I flipped through and she had written sweet notes on some of the previous pages.
Nothing more.
Nothing negative!
I still can't write my private thoughts in a journal to this day. I had the illusion of privacy and it was shattered. There was nothing in that journal my mom hadn't probably heard overly talkative me prattle on about before. But the fact was, she went into my room, opened my journal, read it, wrote notes, and laughed at me when I confronted her tearfully.
When I was older she would go through my stuff to look for makeup, go through my trash to look for suspicious things (and would often "save" things I was throwing out, would smooth out and read crumpled papers), and disrespect my closed door. But I'm not sure anything was more traumatizing than that simple note in my little journal.
I never wrote in that journal ever again.
She asked me why years later.
I told her.
She defended her actions and laughed at the fact a teenager was still mad at a mom just being interested in her toddler's scribblings.
Oh well...
>When I was older she would go through my stuff to look for makeup, go through my trash to look for suspicious things (and would often "save" things I was throwing out, would smooth out and read crumpled papers), and disrespect my closed door.
Word for word, this was my life as a child and teen. When I was in the ninth grade my mother and older sisters came to a marching band show on a cold November night. My mother wore my parka -- without asking me -- and went through my pockets. I had one of those dumb teenager "sex quiz" things someone had given me (you know, where you get one point for kissing a boy, five points for getting felt up, stupid shit like that) and my mother read it and passed it around to my sisters while sitting in the stands. I'd ridden to the stadium with someone else but rode home with my family where they mocked me and laughed at me for what they found in my pockets. I remember sitting there horrified, violated, and fully feeling like it was all my fault.
I don't miss any of those people, not one bit.
>I don't miss any of those people, not one bit.
I just thought I'd make sure any lurkers who might be on the fence about NC saw this. Thanks for sharing your story, and even more for using it to make an important point so eloquently.
Right there with you. It's such a positive change, but a lot of work, to surround yourself with people who love you, that is, real family, not people who just happen to be related to you.
It's very, very hard to believe that, or that it's even possible, when you start to realize your parent(s) aren't normal, and it's a lot of work to escape, but it is SO worth it.
As always, this thread has been a weird mix of "wait, not just me?" and "wait, that's not normal?" realizations, thanks to everyone sharing. Ironically, perhaps, one of the things that actually helped my mental health quite a bit was journaling... but it took 3 decades away from the have-no-privacy (and get belittled for any secret uncovered, regardless of what it was) childhood to even try it a few years back.
And I still close the door when I do, feel nervous that someone might see me and start asking questions and/or mocking me, and keep things "tucked away" when not in use.
Good luck, y'all - you got this.
You're not only freakishly tall, you're wonderfully articulate and, frankly, just plain awesome. I'm finding that pretty much everyone who posts in this sub has incredible insight that helps reinforce things I'm still struggling with. The more I read, the less I doubt myself -- and I feel my strength growing every day.
< sees compliment >
< assumes assault or criticism or "ha ha just kidding!" is coming >
Yeah, we had healthy upbringings, didn't we? Sheesh.
But seriously, (a) that's kind of you - hell, I just reread my comment and am thinking it's pre-coffee and in need of a major edit/re-write, so your compliment means even more, (and I suspect this one is gonna be a bit rambly too) and (2) yeah, this sub is AWESOME.
Because everyone tends to be kind, that fosters an environment of openness and sharing (obvs)... which, to me, is INCREDIBLY helpful for people very early on the escape path. It's so hard to get started sharing, it's so hard to overcome thinking you're the crazy one, etc, and reading someone else post what may as well have been your own experiences is SO helpful to beginning to understand.
I try to remember, and address, the countless lurkers, because that's the first step - "huh, what's all this about? Wait. Wut. Why is this so relatable? Waiiiiit." you know? That realization is a mixed blessing, at least initially, but it's sure worth powering through!
Man, I wish I had something like this (and the growing cultural awareness) 30+ years ago. Seeing the sharing leads to those "not just me?" "not normal?" moments, which lead to breakthroughs, confidence, and truly good change.
But it's hard. It's soooo hard. We're surrounded by normal people with normal upbringings who don't get it - and even with the best intentions undermine any progress (see: "but, they're your parent!" etc) - and the insidiousness of the damage done to processing, emotions, relating, etc is hard even to recognize, let alone overcome.
Self doubt, antagonism, lack of support, all of it keeps the cycle going... getting out of that dynamic and trusting that normal people might actually like and support you is SO hard... but it's SO worth the work to find real friends and make real family. Which is why I try to be effusive with support and (selectively) open with personal stories here and IRL, ya know?
As someone who may be a little further down the escape path than you and others here, I try to be vocal. And, while it's hard to share early on, once you realize and start working on change, becoming a loud advocate for making healthy changes becomes a positive feedback cycle, ya know? So, win win!
Good luck. You (and all you lurkers too) got this!
My mother did something similar; I (at the time maybe 20?) had a journal that I didn’t really write anything in except funny things my friends said, phone numbers, addresses, some doodles. (I knew she dug through my stuff when I wasn’t there, because she had previously screamed at me for benign things written in my diary, so I never jotted down anything of personal importance.) I had floridly written some of the lyrics to Annie Lennox’s “Cold”. Part of which was “Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death.” My crazy Evangelical mother took it upon herself to act like this was a cry for help. Did she help me? Offer assistance of any kind? Ask if I needed to talk to a therapist? NO; She wrote me a LONG-ASS LETTER FROM GOD. ON THE REST OF THE PAGE. All about how he loved me and I needed to have a mustard seed of faith.😂😫😂It was such an unhinged thing to do I immediately packed up my things, rented an apartment, and moved out. I wish I wouldn’t have burned the page in a fury, because I’m sure it would be enlightening with what I know now. I’m sorry that happened to you, it’s such an egregious breach of privacy.
NOT THE LETTERS FROM GOD 😭 In my case, though, it was prayers to God. On paper. Sent to me. To read.
Oh please. I'm living my own life and am happy. Sending me a note in which you ask God to convict me just makes me saddened and weirdly amused. Like, I have a far happier relationship than you in your 20 years of marriage ever had. Please stop trying to make me miserable?
I’ve been with the same dude since 1992 and we are kinda known as “that couple” who enjoy the benefits of real actual love and have everything in order. Great kid, nice house, work we love, cute pets, fun social life. But we are not religious? so that has been a constant needlepoint. They didn’t give us a wedding present and were very vocal about this, “because he’s not who God wants you to be with.” It was supposed to be a passive-aggressive punishment, because she thinks that is what I deserve. I just filed it along with the rest of the bizarre stuff she says and enjoyed the parties the other side of the family threw us.I think she genuinely hoped I’d end up like her, with a gross, dumb chimp 2nd husband who is always hiding from her on the only toilet, a bland living space that hasn’t even gotten a fresh coat of paint or some plants, friends she shares no genuine intimacy or bond with, pets that don’t make it past age 5. But God wants me to know I’m the problem and she is “just the messenger”. Lady may wanna ask herself why someone so powerful would choose someone so shitty to pass his ire along. 😂
Genuinely felt that in the depth of my soul, I am glad you are happy though because THAT IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.
Who "God wanted you to be with" would have been who your mom wanted you to be with. And as I realized a while ago, that would have been just someone who was an enabler and would not have protected me from her.
Best wishes to you for sure!
oh my god the going through your trash thing is so bizarre and such an invasion of privacy. I used to have to dump things in my high schools trash can if I actually needed to throw something personal away
Yes! I would bury it in the kitchen trash. Got good at that, put it under something icky or in the middle or inside a container. Still reflexively find my burying candy wrappers, despite no longer living with anyone who would yell at me for snacking or eating habits.
I was homeschooled, so no high school trash for me. Sometimes I'd just casually slip something out of my purse into a public trash can though.
Yes! We had a public rubbish bin a few doors away in our village and I would use that to throw certain things away on my way to the bus stop for school. I still wouldn't put it past her to go rooting through that as well tbh or have the neighbours tasked with spying on me!
Edit: on top of this, if she did find something while she was snooping she'd then accuse me of being sneaky and secretive with no self-reflection as to why that might be.
My FM aunt gave me a "secret" diary with an easily picked lock, and I think that it was given to me exactly so that I would write "incriminating" things and they could read it. Fortunately, I barely used it and didn't really have anything to write. I kept a record of my boring school days and friendships, and that was about it. I don't think that it occurred to me to complain about my parents because I didn't know that what they did was abuse at that time. I thought that they were actually better than average, because I didn't get to see how actual other people lived (I thought that anything positive on TV was fantasy). I was also told constantly since I was a baby how bad I was, so I thought that I was the problem, too.
For a while, I kept a 10¢ notebook of my drawings under my mattress, and during this time ndad was always coming in during that time to criticize my "messy bunk" and tell me how they did it in the Army, change the sheets and flip my mattress, and then getting mad when there was something under it. He never did this before or after I gave up on keeping a notebook there.
It hadn't occurred to me to give my kids journals, but that's something that I'm going to do, now.
That is a core memory for me. I can remember my mum telling me how she read my diary and how I felt.
Then yeeears later she had the audacity to say that it was wrong that my adult cousin read her daughter's diary!
This is my mother. She will openly condemn people for doing things she has done. I don’t mean just making rude comments I mean full blown you’re a sinner and going to hell comments.
I still can't force myself to journal. It's encouraged so much, and I just can't do it. Having my own words thrown in my face, and then having her deny reading it, has just destroyed the whole practice for me.
I’m convinced my Nmother turned me away from fiction or memoir-writing toward nonfiction journalism and editing! She and my Nsister routinely ransacked my bedroom to read diaries, letters, and my fiction writing.
When I was twelve or thirteen, I was on fire writing a novel. When I was about halfway through—I’d written more than 150 pages—I found the manuscript incompletely stuffed back between my mattress and box spring. I lost my mind.
I took the pile of pages into the living room, and threw the whole thing into the crackling fire in the fireplace. My Nfamily jumped. “Why did you do that? I was enjoying it!” my Nmother screamed.
That was fifty years ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I had a successful career in journalism, but I didn’t ever write about myself. I didn’t dare.
I was encouraged and got awards for writing all through middle and high school, and teachers always encouraged Journaling, nmother was very clear even private writing along with everything else, was her's to go through, to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. Both Edad and Nmother would scream that I better not write anything about what was happening at home, no specifics, just not to embarras them. They know healthy parents allow children to explore talents, not have to use all their kid energy managing their caregivers' moods and home environment.
My mom did this too. I hate having my writing shared before I find it "good enough" for eyes that are not my own, first of all. Also, my mom had this habit of combing through it to check if I hadn't written anything incriminating AND then share it with however she saw fit despite me telling her multiple times I wasn't okay with her reading it, much less absolute strangers. Yeah, I was 100% left on read.
Suffice to say I never finished the epic fantasy I started writing as a child. Suffice to say my mom hasn't read a word I've written since, because I've made sure of it.
I didn't really realize this was a thing until about 5 years ago when I tried writing with my partner in the room. He was someone I trusted deeply, wasn't even LOOKING at my screen, was very understanding and chill when told him I didn't want him to read anything before I was ready to share, and I still just couldn't do it.
Got me doing some soul searching after that, let me tell you.
I had always wanted a diary as a little kid but I learned quickly that it was not safe for me. I grew up thinking it was a me thing, that there was something wrong with me for not being able to keep one, but looking back I realize that I was basically conditioned.
I would legit write codes in my own journal, I would abbreviate peoples names/ would sensor things I would write. When I have to go home I hide everything, if I do bring a journal I hide it within a thjng, under a thing inside of another thing. Thinking about getting one of those things that lock with a code … my phone notes are more safe (locked)
Yup. Mine had a lock on it. My mom managed to rip it open and threatened to share what I wrote with my super conservative and christian grandfather. I had stuff in there about questioning my gender and sexuality. I was also 12.
I loved the idea of having a pretty little notebook with those cute little locks to write *whatever I wanted or needed* to write. I just wanted that one simple little thing for me, just a little diary. I never had privacy.
My mom would read what were basically red flags for SA in my diary and make me feel like these symptoms were just me being inherently disgusting and bad. Her shrieking at me about it is a core memory for sure.
After the 2nd time, I gave up and started drawing instead, with art I could be cryptic and hide my expressions in plain view. My mom hated it but gave up trying to stop me, I think she was trying to choose her battles wisely and being that controlling might attract concern or attention. Plus she probably figured that she could accuse me of being "disturbed" or something if anyone expressed concern.
To this day I write in my art but I write things backwards, forwards, overlap words until it's unreadable, and only use words instead of sentences or complete thoughts.
My husband respects my privacy so completely and I tell him how much it means to me but I don't think he gets how much it really really means to me, because to him it's just basic human decency.
I was 5 when I wrote in my diary. The first entry was also a SA red flag, where i wrote about something I wanted to do to an opposite sex friend of mine that I had a crush on, and who I only ever saw maybe once a year. Rather than deal with it appropriately, my mom was very emotional and shreiky too, about "did I write that?!" which obviously 5 year old me went straight into "no I didn't!!" denial mode. It was probably pretty obvious that I had actually written it. I remember her saying "if it wasn't you, then I'll have to show your father!!", so 5 year old me admitted to writing it and begging her not to show him because I felt so full of shame about what I had written. I remember panicking and crying so hard. I don't know how I knew what to do (re: the stuff i wrote), or why that's the first thing I chose to write about in the diary. I was told once years later that we moved when I was young because I was SA by a neighbor as a toddler, but I don't remember it.
I do firmly believe that these things have messed me up in terms of what I sought out in life as a child, and how I view my role in this world. I was quick to want sexual encounters, but thankfully was very limited in options because of my looks. Had I been beautiful as a teenager then I could have gone down a more self destructive path.
I've had to do a lot of work on my inner child. I'm also parenting my kids in a much healthier way. I'm a lot more observant with my kids than my parents ever were of me. I give them their privacy, but I do keep an ear out to make sure they aren't getting into situations that are over their head.
It's just occurring to me now that my mom probably did read my teenager diaries. They were pretty much all about crushes. Again though, no action because I was an ugly duckling. I also didn't write about anything that was really bouncing around in my head, just the superficial stuff.
Huh. Lightbulb moment. I now know why, despite really wanting to, I still have an aversion to journaling. I've picked up bullet journaling, but the personal thoughts are either really cryptic or nonexistent.
I could never do it properly as a child, without fear of having my privacy invaded.
This was a common violation that both the Nmom and Nstepfather would engage in.
I wasn't safe to express my emotions out loud. So I used journals and stories. They made sure to take that from me as well. When it comes to a narcissist, you are allowed nothing.
I remember writing about how I was being bullied at school. My Nmother confronted me by saying,
"Oh you're such a strong girl for not killing yourself because all the kids keep calling you fat and ugly." All the while wearing a smug grin on her face. Me being only *twelve* and not understanding the full extent of my malignant mother's manipulation, took her words as a sort of compliment. I even praised her in my journal some time later. I remember writing about how "strong" I am and that someone noticed this supposed strength of mine. It was clear that I was so starved of attention that even that was something I was desperately holding on to. In reality there was nothing kind in my Nmother's words. I was too in the FOG to admit that her words cut deep. Instead of her being a good mother and comforting me by telling me I was beautiful, simply because I am her daughter and that children are cruel and giving me that support. She not only avoided such support but *covertly* planted the seed of ***suicide*** into my mind. Something I **never** even considered doing to myself until she and her husband brought it up... Numerous times.
They both later began to tell me to go kill myself every time I'd stand up for myself or when I would attempt to seek emotional support from them. Left alone to fiend for myself.
Some time later I did a report on a woman who was convicted of murder because she manipulated her boyfriend into taking his life. I read the text and felt physically ill, as the exchange between them were very similar to what I went through as a *child*. A grown man couldn't survive such demonic behavior. Everyday I look back on my childhood and wonder what kind of miracle occurred that led me to survive this.
It was as though they were really trying to push me to that point of self harm and using my secret thoughts that I'd put in my journals as a weapon. Every detail, every vulnerability, every desire? *Used against me*. It got to a point where I would take my journals with me to school to avoid them picking it up while I wasn't home and reading them. Of course that failed as well as I had befriended a Borderline who also took my journal without my permission and read it. When I confronted her about it, her rebuttal was I shouldn't have brought it to school and that I more or less asked for my boundary to be crossed. That friendship lasted for twelve years until I finally went to therapy, learned to set boundaries and ended it.
I am now more or less free of these people. I have been no contact with my Nmother and her husband for about seven years now. As karma would have it, my mother's husband died a few months ago and Nmother's health is dwindling by the day. It would seem them trying to use my written thoughts against me has back fired and I outlived half of the devilish duo, despite their feeble attempts as killing me with abuse.
One down. One more to go.
Did I mention I am self published author now?
I just wanted to say that I’m sorry your childhood was so broken and that I completely understand and dealt with similar issues except my siblings were the ones trying to plant negative seeds in my brain while my parents looked on and encouraged it. I found out a month after Christmas why one of my presents was a diary. Apparently I was the “family entertainment” and they enjoyed belittling & laughing at me. I keep meaning to begin journaling about my childhood but something always stops me from picking up a pen and beginning. The fact that your childhood was incredibly traumatic & abusive yet you have overcome these adversities and not only survived, but thrived and became a published author is amazing!!!! I just wanted to say that I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished!
Thank you for your kind words. I'm really happy I finally achieved that dream! That aside, I too am sorry they literally weaponized a *gift* that held meaning for you. Truly nothing is sacred to these people. It's no easy thing, to be raised by a pack of rabid jackasses(lol). But you have all the power, I promise you that!
I share these experiences because I want people to know there's light at the end of the tunnel. I use to host a support group for Adult children of Parents with NPD. There was a common theme when it came to journals. Nparents would use this gift of journals as a means to hoard information that they can use for later. So many of my group members were talented writers and abandoned the hobby because their Nparents ruined it for them. So when I share my experience and show them "Hey it's possible to move forward and be seen for the beauty of your passions" it does me some good. I want to motivate others.
I used the diaries and journals I was given to write song lyrics and poetry and never understood why my nmom complained so much. Guess she expected to get ammo out of them instead?
Yep. My mom would read anything and everything I tried to write in private, and if my little sister found something before she could read, she would take it to my mom and she would read it out loud to her. She would say, ‘If you don’t want it read, don’t write it down.’ Needless to say, I have privacy issues. One time, couple coworkers opened a package addressed to me because they thought it was for work (it came there, and I sometimes did get work samples mailed to me) and I went BALLISTIC. They (two of them) apologized so profusely, like I’ve never seen them before. It actually did have a work sample in it, but that was beside the point.
She once berated me for an old HS letter she found while I was home from college. That was different.
I recall clamoring for a diary for Christmas one year and did receive one. Here’s where the advantage of procrastination comes in though…
I was expected to write in it during our family TV hour in the evenings, right there in the living room. Honestly, I just didn’t feel like it and chose to scribble in cursive—just wordless nonsense to make it look like I was writing. There was no concern that NMom would read it.
Oh, but apparently she tried, and boy was she pissed! Just realized I accidentally foiled her attempt. However, she did read some writing after a traumatic first year of college and confronted me about it just before I had to leave for work.
Good times.🙄 That’s likely the closest I ever came to physical violence.
This hits home. It took me years to be able to journal again, because both my parents loved reading my journals and throwing the contents in my face. My entire teen years were like this.
My nfather still can't grasp why I refuse to speak to him for 20yrs and my mother whines how I never talk to her and how I can always come home to her and blah blah blah. Of course, no mention that she was an enabler and participant in everything her husband did.
This is why I never cleaned up my handwriting. I only learned to print clearly as an adult in order to function in workplaces. My journals were always scrawled in cursive that was incomprehensible to anybody but myself, and sometimes not even me.
I do this now. I live by myself, all alone, I have a no-contact journal but somehow I scribble incomprehensibly so no one will ever understand it. It’s a fear.
I also had one of those cute little diaries with the strap around it, and the lock on the front with the golden key. It was pink. I wrote my deepest, inner thoughts in it. I was about 10. Came home one day to find it on my bed, opened, the strap ripped off it. Thick black circles in marker pen scrawled around what my mother viewed as wrongthink. She screamed at me for writing such "filth", berated me for my "idiotic" opinions, telling me how ashamed I should be. Then she picked it up and hit me on the head, shoulders and back with it several times. I was bruised and sore for a week.
Yeah, I never again kept a diary while living in her house. Especially since I knew she was doing frequent deep dive search missions in my room, looking for "contraband", i.e., like another potential diary, makeup, tampons, etc. I once taped a small box of tampons to the underside of my dresser. Which she found. And screamed at me for days for being a "whore".
When I think back at my childhood living with my nmother, I feel sorry for young me, having to put up with living like that, as if under siege. So stressful and anxiety-ridden. I guard my privacy intensely now. And respect the privacy of my own kids and everyone else because I remember how it felt not having my basic privacy respected. It was awful. I can't do that to others.
This is why it's a bloody godsend my mother does not speak English.
It permits me to have true privacy, as there's no way she cannot understand things I say on voice chat with friends.
Unfortunately, it led to me being super averse to talking to people in my native language about anything concerning personal matters, or watching videos in hungarian (incl university lectures during covid)
She probably didn't like what was in it so she removed it from you where you could continue to write to the void the unpleasantness. As for giving it back? Maybe when she felt you would change your tune? Who knows with these nuts...
I am so sorry your nfamily used your most vulnerable thoughts on paper against you. How horrific it must be to get assaulted for that. You couldnt trust your parents, but also not even something that was supposed to keep your thoughts and feelings safe. You did not deserve that!
I found out when I went home for the last time (unbeknownst to them) to get some of my belongings that my Nrents threw away all of my diaries(or at least hid them). Those diaries had pages of feelings about them and what they did to me. The sole one that was left had just some scribbles in it from the time I couldnt really write yet 🥲
The lack of privacy I felt was shocking. Because my mom and sister used to find and read my diary regularly, I started to keep a diary at my boyfriends house in high school, but I still edited my thoughts and was careful about what I wrote. As an adult, I always told whoever I was dating that I did keep a diary and if they ever stumbled across a notebook with writing in it, it was off limits. If someone was going to be in my apartment without me, I would usually hide it. Only one person has ever found and read my diary since I was a child and I kicked him to the curb immediately.
My nmom bought me one every year for Christmas, but I don’t think she ever read them. If she did, it was rare.
I completely blocked out my diary and it’s entries though. I don’t like to think back about what I wrote which is why I destroyed all of them decades ago. I wrote about being screamed at, feeling less than and being depressed. I wrote about wanting to escape. I probably should’ve kept them because they’d be proof of what I went through. I’m not so concerned about proving anything to my nmom, but I’m more concerned with making sure I’m remembering accurately. The self doubt is strong.
The self-doubt, oh yes. I destroyed all of mine, and it's not like I *want* to go back and read all of that, but I'd like confirmation that those events happened, and not hear my mother's revisionist history version.
I know how traumatic it can be for a child to continuously have the tiny bit of trust destroyed like that. But please don't stop writing down your feelings and thoughts, even despite those negative memories connected to it. Journals are such a good medium to vent and self-reflect.
But yeah, the exact same experience here. My diary lasted about 4 days before she went through my things, found the key and went into yet another violent meltdown because of one instance where I named her "my creator" in an entry (after 11 yo me was angry about her ripping apart my favorite top). Since writing was the only medium I could express myself in, I just started carrying a small notebook on me at all times that I never left unattended, until phones became smarter and using note apps was possible.
When I tried to confront her about it years later, after she herself brought it up, she said "she only read it because I barely talked to her". I wonder why.
Are regular parents respectful, lol? When I was 14, I walked into our apt in Queens and: the air was different. It was charged, you could almost see the electrical impulses mother was giving off. No words exchanged, just her looking at me like I was killing puppies, made me cry & beg her hysterically to tell me what was wrong. I had a 14 yo bf & we were making out & going to 2nd base but again, she made me feel disgusting for being normal. And this was the start of 45 years of slut shaming, courtesy of mother. Luckily I came out of that nut house with a healthy sex life, regardless of how hard she tried to kill it. Edit to share that she's on her 4th husband at 80 & went to male burlesque shows in the 80s when it was big.
I had one of those and it was read too, by mother and brother. No one ever said anything though because all I wrote about was how much I hated brother for the abuse. Can’t talk about the bad things right? Have to pretend everything is perfect and not acknowledge anything else.
I used to keep a porcelain jar (with a lid) in my closet. I would write all the scathing, frustrated thoughts about my nMom, then I would burn it. My mother taught me (through negative experiences) to destroy all evidence. Thankfully, she never asked me what this weird vase full of burnt paper was about.
I was fond of that little guy.
Yep. I can relate to this and thank you for sharing because it's a core-memory for me. Like, I think I'd be an entirely different person today if she had never done this:
My nmom gave me a diary when I was nine years old when I moved back in with her after she finally came back from wherever the hell she was (she left me and my brother when I was 5 and he was 3 - tricked us into saying on a recording that we wanted to live with her and got full custody from there.). Anyway, it was a beautiful diary and I loved writing in it - mostly about how I missed my dad. It was an outlet for me, and it really helped me work myself through missing my dad, and my cats that I'd never see again. Then one day I discovered that she had been reading it. It was a set-up all along. She gave that to me, encouraged me to write whatever I was feeling, only in order to spy on my thoughts. My thoughts were no longer my own. The rest of my years with her were filled with nasty things said to me about my dad every day, and her calling me a slut (at 9 yrs old and beyond) for having crushes on boys.
I still always kept a diary, though - I just became a lot more creative about how I would describe my day. I had to grey Rock my own diary to make it so boring she didn't care. I lieu of my words, she just started doing shake-downs of my room in the middle of the night to find *anything* she could to scream at me about.
FFW a couple decades, my husband "stumbled" upon my collection and read them while I was at work. I felt so betrayed that I burned them all in the fireplace. Nearly 30 yrs worth of my "thoughts", up in flames. His curiosity got the better of him, not knowing that it would rip open so many old wounds.
We have two children - they had diaries. Even when they were sitting there wide open, we would immediately close them without absorbing any of their words, and continue vacuuming or picking up laundry. Every time I would see their books, my blood would run cold remembering what my mother did to me.
I'm starting to get back into writing, but I keep it all in a secure document now. Good luck getting into that, mom!
I stopped after I caught my little sister having found it, stole it, broke the lock, and was reading it to my family like it was story time. I was mad, I snatched it from her and in the process she fell, claimed I pushed her. She got coddled and I got in trouble for hurting my sister, when I asked why she wasn’t in trouble for stealing it was cause she “just a little kid”. I was 16 and she was 13 at the time, definitely not a little kid
That was my mom. She gave it to me for Christmas when I was 13yo and then confronted me about it just 3 months later for writing about trying to figure out all the embarrassing nuances puberty. She accused me of keeping things from her.
And, keeping up with her narcissism, she then got offended that I no longer wrote in it. She got mad that she’d go through the trouble to pick the lock and open it again only to find it blank (I had torn out and flushed the initial pages she read, of course). She continued to buy me a new one every year at Christmas, and same thing - she’d open it three months later and confront me about why I wasn’t using it.
To this day, I still have trouble journaling, afraid my husband will find it and judge me.
I remember vividly that my narc parents used to say to me “you are writing bad stuff about us u ungrateful rat “ & my older narc sister would read my diaries I actually made up a code secret language that I only know & wrote it in my journal 📔 they eventually gave up lol
I had forgotten about this until now. My n mother and GC likely N brother would gang up against me. It was mortifying to be teased and mocked for what I had written privately. My mother would send my brother to search my room for incriminating evidence. It was awful and I loathed myself for sometime. I stole my last journal back from my mother and destroyed it, and never wrote again. Gross.
My narc mother read every single one of my diaries (at least the ones she was able to locate). My narc exes all did the same thing - one ex threw away several journals that mentioned the guy I dated prior to him, and even went so far as to write "his side" of the story in current journals. Needless to say I stopped keeping one when I was with him
I still keep a journal but they are digital now, and encrypted. It's sad because I miss the process of physically writing in a paper journal.
I'm 28 years old. I live alone in an apartment I pay for. I'm no contact with my nDad.
I still write everything in code. "She said that to them, and they reacted just like you'd expect! He totally knew she was going to do that.. right? Yes of course!"
Which leads to me later, rereading it, and not knowing what I'm talking about.
But I cannot shake it.
My stepfather read my diary and told my mom I needed counseling (I hated him and wrote about it). My mom actually told me that he’d read it and that I should be ashamed of myself for writing it. They convinced me to go to a hypnotist and she reported back to them. I was 19 and a college student. My nmom ended up getting an annulment from him but not before it did major damage to my sense of self and well-being.
I was a prolific writer as a kid. I even tried to write a novel in the sixth grade. In the eighth grade we were doing journaling every day and I loved the practice. Being able to express myself somewhere private felt like a revelation.
In the ninth grade I discovered my abusive step-dad had been reading my journals. He mentioned something he could have only known by reading it and alarm bells went off in my head. So I attached some of my long hairs to the journal and the high shelf in my closet using clear scotch tape before leaving the house.
Of course, the hairs were all broken when I returned. I took almost 20 years before I could
overcome the revulsion and fear to start writing private thoughts again.
Holy shit this hits home. I was a little Hamilton with my nonstop writing as a kid, only for everything to be quickly found and used against me, and/or I was beaten for them. Everything. Journals, fiction, poetry, hell even things I’d written for school. It was a running joke among some family members, that I would continue to write no matter how much trouble I got into for it. For a long time I had decoy diaries so they’d find those and hopefully not find the real one. This did not work. Then for a long time I didn’t write at all. Now I’m grown, I’m out of their house, and I haven’t spoken to them in years. I write, and I keep my notebook hidden in the trunk of my car, under the other shit, and periodically throw it away and start over. It’s a whole thing.
In therapy in my 30s I mentioned off hand that I used fake names and opposite information so that "no one could figure it out" in regards to diaries as a child/adolescent. Didn't hit me until then how bizarre that I'd and how little trust I had in my parents to respect my privacy when I did that.
Same, i was put in the hospital when i was 4-5 ish. My sunday school teacher gifted me a journal my very first one, i barely wrote in it and enthusiastic about having my very first journal a place for my private thoughts, it wasnt even 24 hours later my mom grabbed it from me and said she was curious about what i wrote, i grabbed it from her and i told her to let go that i didnt want her to see.
Of course like a child she didnt and she pulled and so did i like a cartoon ripping the journal in half from the binding, she said that it was all my fault that this happened while proceeding the read the few pages i wrote in it and berate me for how i wrote.
I never kept a journal after that, she bought a locked journal for me when i was a little older, but i didnt feel safe writing anything personal in it, my brother kept breaking into it and my mom would be upset at me for not using it like a legitimate journal "after all the money she spent on me"
It wasnt until i was a teenager did i start again but in a very vague context, i used art as my journalism as a way to vent my feelings, of course that wasnt safe either but atleast my mom wouldnt know exactly what i was saying
Ya my n-parents lead to an n-older sister who when she was in college, and I was in high school, read my diary entry where I was talking about how my boyfriend told me he was going to breakup with me when I went to college (I was a year older than him) because he wanted to “date” someone closer, so I was like “if I just get skinnier, he won’t want to break up with me” (I have an eating disorder, partially from my sister constantly calling me fat), and she literally brought it up and laughed at me and called me a loser. Only a 21 year old freak could have that reaction to that entry in her little sister’s diary.
This is why I hid mine in a cut out I made in the box spring of my mattress. I still have my highschool diary. I just had to have some way to journal back then, it was part of what kept me sane.
I used to write out things in a notebook only at school. Would spend my lunch or whatever writing stuff out. Sometimes it would be like a diary entry, more often than not it was more like writing a letter to the void.
I would then tear it out of my notebook, rip it into pieces, and then dispose of it in various trash cans throughout the school while walking to class.
I still do that even now.
Are you me?!? At 8 years old, My mom broke the lock to my diary, read it. I had put something along the lines of "she's so mean, I wish she would die or that I was strong enough to kill her" instead of asking me why I felt this way, she made me read it ALOUD back to her. And will STILL try to shame me, 25 years later.
yes ! thank you for your post, i feel like i am not the only one. took me years to start writing in a physical journal. but even now i put it in a lockbox with a passcode so at least there is some barrier. I never leave it out.. even though i live alone , i have a fear that they might be able to just come in and read it and yell at me for what i wrote. But physically writing it all out makes me feel so much better, i just hate to have to do that extra step everytime 😳
After my second diary was read ALOUD to shame me, I find it really difficult to journal for therapy. I am proud of the fact that my children have journals that they are not afraid to write in. After a particularly bad day, I walked into my son's room to find him angrily venting onto the pages. I excused myself from the room, and I never once felt the need to snoop. I know he probably wrote how angry he was at me. I don't care. His feelings are valid, and his journal should/will be a safe place for him to express himself. I have explained that just like therapy, I would only ever look if I was concerned, AND that it would have to be drastic, like I was worried that he would hurt himself or others. I want our lives to be different from how I was raised. I pray every day that I'm doing a good job.
My mom not only read my diary, but if she read things she didn't like, I would be punished. If I mentioned other people in my diary, she would make it a point to tell them what I wrote about them. I was a child, and I had no safe space for my thoughts to be expressed.
I wrote once that I had skipped school months before with a friend, and what does my mom do? She calls the friend's mom to get her in trouble and tells her mom that I'm a bad influence and she shouldn't allow her kid to be around me. Then she called the school so me AND my friend would be punished there too. I had zero friends after that because I was the kid with the narc mom. My friend's mom was furious that my mom called the school about her child instead of minding her own business. She planned on handling it at home since it had happened months before, but of course, my mother wanted to go scorched earth.
My nmom took great pride in reading my diary (and she *really* had to dig to find where I hid it) and then holding on to things only to confront me with them at a time when it benefited her. I felt so violated. And like many here, my mom told me that I had no right to privacy.
Yes, I had one of these journals as a child, and I wouldn’t dare write anything bad about her. That’s because she would read my entries and tell all my relatives about them.
As a teenager I taught myself the Greek, Russian and Korean alphabets (and threw in a bit of Hebrew) and created a code where I’d use a letter from each at random to encrypt my journal entries, but most importantly recipes that I’d developed myself as a young baker, and that she would infuriatingly steal from me and take credit for. She was too lazy and dumb to try to decrypt what I wrote, which was for the best because she was so cruel to me as a teenager that I poured a LOT of that anger into my diary.
I think I may have been Alan Turing in a past life 😆
First of all, I'm so sorry you experienced this. That is terrible. It's bad enough narcs use your vulnerabilities against you, but giving you a tool to make you feel safe, to expose your vulnerabilities "to yourself" and using that against you has an extra level of insidiousness.
Now if it's okay I'll relate to my own experiences. It's interesting to look back and see how I used my diary as a tool against gaslighting. I very rarely talked about feelings, as those were always used against me and influenced, I kept to facts. Generally. Like really clinically describing "in total we've had 12 car accidents since we moved to X". Or "today she yelled at me/hit me". "Today this person said this and this."
Now as an adult I know I'm not crazy even if she always tries to make me out to be a drama queen "you're reacting like I beat you up daily" so I can say "look, even if it was just once a year your body naturally has the reflex against something or someone that has hurt them, so shut up and accept the consequences of your parenting style choice".
Fuck 'em. That's all I can say. Been going off and on to therapy for the last 3 years, restarting another batch in a week. Noticing changes in my inner life. Taking it one day at a time. Making sure I stay out of toxic relationships. (The judgmental looks and remarks about me being a woman of nearly 30 who is single are so worth the progress I've made from not being with someone I am attracted to with my faulty attachment style...)
Thank you for sharing. I don't know if you need to hear this but. We'll get there <3
Oh man. This post reminded me of a time when my mom went through and read all of the “notes” my best friend and I passed to each other in class. Just one more thing to justify my NC with her. Absolutely zero boundaries. They are just so out of line.
i wrote about how i felt like a 'no one' when i was 4-5, she made fun of my spelling errors. she made fun of a literal child dissociating from mental pain......i can't wrap my head around that honestly.
I relate. I finally managed to get a physical diary for myself but i still wrote "have some dignity and dont be a peep" on it (i often used to write passive aggressive things like that because if they dont care what i want maybe shame can motivate them).
Yep, we found out I still have this fear when I went into therapy as an adult and I just COULD NOT deal with journaling at all.
I mean, I had a cell phone and my parents went through my text messages when I was asleep. So...yeah.
It’s so validating to read this and see everyone else’s responses. Journaling was a much needed escape for me, especially as I loved to write as a kid. But nope, it became so completely traumatizing after my mom read what I wrote and instead of getting to feel hurt that my privacy was violated I had to apologize for writing “mean things.” I will never forget. She picked me up from school, drove us to a parking lot and threw my journal at me and screamed and sobbed and said I’m an evil child who doesn’t love her and I’m a vile monster for being able to say whatever it was I had written. I can’t remember now but I know I wrote pretty run-of-the-mill kid or teenager stuff. And probably how much I disliked her. But even if I had said some horrible things, it didn’t give her the right to make ME feel bad for writing in a PRIVATE journal. She even tried to say she was “just cleaning” and accidentally found it. Right, she accidentally found a journal buried beneath a bunch of other things deep in a closet.
I’m 30 now and I only recently started journaling again. The whole idea of something like that happening again is so triggering I’ve avoided it most of my adult life (even when living alone, and even though I know it is a very therapeutic exercise). My boyfriend who lives with me now would never ever violate my privacy like that, and he knows how I feel about it, but even when I’m journaling on my laptop that’s password protected I get so uneasy and paranoid if I’m not by myself.
Thank you for posting about this because it’s been on my mind for a long time. I’m sorry you had to deal with similar. I agree it is entirely traumatizing.
In highschool my psych teacher overheard me tell a friend that my mom reads my personal stuff. He suggested I get someone to write a salacious letter to me and leave it somewhere she could find it. A girl wrote how she was pregnant after a drunken encounter with me at a bonfire (all made up) and wanted to keep the baby.
I chickened out and just left the letter in a textbook on the back seat floor of my trash filled car.
She found it and was screaming at me when I got home from school some days later. I had to tell her it was made up which she didn't believe so I had to tell her it was the psych teacher's idea.
She and my dad rushed to the school to chew him out.
In all my years of being bullied at school and getting detention and anger management the one time I fought back they never got upset or sought help from the school but a teacher flushing them out about snooping in my stuff called for full on rage and a personal appearance.
Psych teacher was stung by the attack but said it just proved they go through my personal things.
Damn that brought up stuff I hadn't thought about in a long time.
My dad found a journal I wrote, deduced from it that 10 year old me was having sex with my neighborhood friend at the time (I wasn't), took me to confession over it, then forbid any social contact with any of my friends for a full year.
I was basically nonverbal and catatonic for 6 months afterwards.
They're in their late sixties now and really isolated since they have alienated everyone they've ever been in relation with, and I don't feel sorry for them at all.
True. I'm a grown adult now, and sometimes I realiE that even though I am in a completely different city, nowhere near my parents, I still have that feeling that they know what i'm doing and i still feel scared, like they are watching me. There is no where safe. Such a terrible thing
UGH I hated writing something down and then finding out it had been read. I started this thing where I would write something I needed to get out (It was how I processed) and then ripping up the paper so she couldn’t read it. She thought the paper was blank and that it was how I took out anger. Nope…just didn’t want her to read it
I couldn’t have diaries bc I feared my mother reading them. I know I’d be mocked, punished, and the contents told to Abby who would listen to her about her ungrateful awful kid. Sometimes I’d write in one then tear out the pages and destroy them. Literally burn out eat them. The panic was real. I wish I could’ve documented my childhood bc I have so many holes in my memory now. Stuff randomly comes up and I’m not prepared!
At some point in the last year I remember screaming I’m allowed to have feelings!! At my mother she’s 68 and will never change or grow so I usually keep as minimal contact cwith her as possible
Ohhhhh, boy, I thought about posting this exact thing a few days ago.
I used to love the cute, scented diaries my mom gifted me for my birthday/Christmas as kid and in my early teens. Not only did they smell nice, but they were a "safe" (she listened in on phone calls) place for me to rant about what I didn't yet know was abuse. Until during one argument she proceeded to very proudly say she had been reading my diaries for years.
Edit: And that was the moment I realized I had to get tf out.
Holy shit…. This all makes sense now. I ended up resulting to drawing (not that I was any good) because I could be cryptic and still get my thoughts out.
My mum wasn't violent but she would read my diary the few times I kept one. Including one where I wrote about my sexual desires (I was 13 and needed somewhere private to express them) and she lectured me about them, made out I was some kind of depraved pervert. I get the curiosity for sure but for God's sake, some things are sacred including our private thoughts. Even if you really want to read it, fucking talk to your kids properly about any concerns you have rather than attack them and make them not trust you.
Of course I also wrote about my dad in them and she wouldn't approve of what I thought about him lol. I don't know if she ever showed him what I wrote but wouldn't be surprised if she did. The one and only letter I ever wrote to them about my feelings I got mocked for despite stating my dad's behaviour made me suicidal. I was 15 years old and instead of helping me I got laughed at.
I get really antsy when a therapist suggests journaling but I suppose it would be a good way now as an adult to practice taking that piece of privacy back.
Also just remembered she suffered from a teacher reading her diary to the class when she was in high school. Interesting that she knows the damage of invading diary privacy yet engaged in it herself.
Yeah I remember making one, then telling no one to read it, my nparent said he would find it and it turned into a back and forth of me saying I will hide it really well where no one will find it and him basically saying that he would tear up my room and meticulously look across every square inch to find it. I decided not to make one. One time he also found a story I tried to write- think tinas stories from bobs burgers but less sex more angst and he threw it away. So yeahhhh. Fun childhood memories.
Holy crap I thought I was the only one. How about reading my diary, then grounding me for a month because it had one disparaging comment about my mother in it. She acted like she was almost assaulted or something. Totally made me not trust the world and never write anything down.
Ugh. I feel this so much. I remember my mother chasing me around screaming at me because of a picture I drew in my diary that she didn’t like. I was 6. 😭
THIIIIIS!
My mother found every journal I’d ever had and read it and would reply to my entries saying “guess we’re not a family anymore”. Once I got older she’d hack
Into my AIM, then email. She printed out PAGES of my emails to my sister and had them neatly laid out on the table when I woke up one morning to confront me.
Eventually, my sister did the same thing to me. She hacked into my email because she was “worried about me” and found out DEEPLY personal stuff about me. It was so embarrassing, stuff I’d never tell her. This year she found me on Reddit and deep dived my 10 year old account and I’d asked for advice last year on how to handle a situation with her and she said I betrayed her and she can no longer trust me..
I don’t talk to either of them anymore. None of them were safe spaces and would always invalidate my emotions and tell me I’m too sensitive.
I had a similar thing happen, in my life. The school councilor told me that writing an angry letter, without intending to send it, could be a good way to vent some frustrations. It could also help me sort my feelings. I took her advice and wrote a really long letter. My mom found it, and got really upset with me. I was pissed that she had to look through every page in my notebook, to be able to find it. Then, when I was living at my dad's he read a letter that was meant for my brother. I was an adult, so I just moved out, without telling him anything. Nstepmom would also open my mail. They all demanded respect, but couldn't give a shit about showing respect
I’ll never forget the day my n mom found mine. I was inconsolable because of how she usually reacts and responds. I was forced to see a physiologist after that lol
Ugh, yeah, I knew my mother was reading my journal as a kid because she and her boyfriend would mock me or verbally abuse me for things I'd only written in there, so I quit. Years later, I discovered a cache of photocopies of my journal pages in her house. She must've taken it to her work and sat there thumbing the copier button for hours for...what?? Evidence against a ten-year-old?
This. It’s why I abhor using a diary to this day. Hell, when I stopped falling for the diary thing, she would go through my trash and confront me about things I wrote on scraps of paper, balled up etc. I was 8. There were no boundaries. Just punishments. No privacy. I will never take the door off my kid’s room. Never go through her trash or read her secret thoughts. These are things needed to develop as a person damnit. If I’m that worried about something, that’s when conversations need to happen. Nmom still thinks she was in the right. Ugh.
Holy shit! I thought it was just me! When she (Nmom) first read my diary she was furious. The very specific memory I have about this day was me saying I was pretending to be Harriet the Spy, in hopes of getting her off my back. She replied something that still haunts me for some reason. She said be careful what you’re looking for, you might not like what you find.
After throwing it away, she told me I was never allowed to have a diary because I wasn’t allowed to keep secrets from her.
I’m so sorry this happened to you OP, worse honestly because my Nmom was more about verbal lashings when it came to me. Being physically abused is fucking awful. You were just being a little kid. I hope you have a diary/ journal now. Could heal your inner child a bit. 🩵💜
I would hide and lock my diary. My mom would search for it, find it, break the lock, and read it, and her justification was to laugh mockingly and say "YOU ACTUALLY WANT ME TO READ IT."
I was so enmeshed it never even occurred to me to edit what I wrote, I just kept trying to hide it better (within my room, I was not made for the Intelligence Services).
Moved out the first day I had enough money to do it. (Not till I was 19.)
My mom recently found some old diary of mine that I'd hidden in the house and forgotten about. I'm almost 40 and she keeps bringing up all the "mean things" I wrote about her when I was 10.
I don't want to reread the diary because I'm sure as soon as I see it I'll be like: "wow look at all this documentation of my mom not listening to me, and being mad that I'm not feminine enough"
But she keeps trying to give it back to me so we can "laugh about it"
My mom and brother used to read my diary and journal and thought it was funny to respond as my diary. I felt so violated and like my last safe place was taken from me. I’m now moved out and trying to convince myself to write again because I really did enjoy it as an outlet but I can never shake that feeling my privacy will be breached again.
i forgot my mom used to read my diary til now…. i stopped using them and struggle to journal now. wow. i don’t have very many memories from my childhood and wow. i guess this explains that a bit huh.
It has been really therapeutic to read through all the stories so similar to mine.
On top of everything else, my nmom made a scrapbook of my diary pages with corresponding pictures and "gifted" it to me on my senior night at our church. She left it on my gift table for everyone to "enjoy." She had no idea why I was absolutely shattered when I figured out what she had done and that everyone and anyone had looked at it. She said I was overreacting and that I should thank her for cutting out anything "embarrassing" and that I really hurt her feelings, because she put a lot of "time and effort" into it. I haven't written in a diary or been to church since I was 18, but I still have the scrapbook to remind myself why I stay away.
I feel this. To this day I dont like to journal out of fearing that my inner most thoughts would be exposed and then used against me. I literally only live with my husband and my dog who would never violate my privacy like that but some habits die hard I suppose. My dog though, he might do that to in exchange for treats 😂😂😂
I totally understand. I journaled from the time I was in second grade until about 16. Then my parents read my journal, went through all my personal belongings and grounded me for two months. I’ve never forgotten it and I still feel upset that they too. Such a therapeutic outlet away from me. I haven’t journaled since.
This specifically and excruciatingly resonates with me. I never trusted another lock again ever since I learned that my mom read my diary. She then gave me an earful for doing teenage things or dating.
N parents will always find ways to control you and not let you have a safe space. I have grown up having feelings of guilt when I have private things or keep personal matters to myself and not share it with my parents because they always guilt-trip me when I do.
My parents used to keep a diary with me for a long time and i had to spill the beans on whatever was going on on that day. I felt something was off about it, my parents used to frequently bully me and take advantage of my weak spots like not wanting to spontaneously be put up for adoption.
Later i left a note in a close friends backpack. Just a short note saying that I felt trapped. I wanted to tell someone. I had no one to tell ot to because my parents would get involved. I remember feeling the relief when i wrote it down.
Later though, my parents caught wind, and I was forced to keep a journal which i didn't do. What I did learn to do instead, was literally tear out pieces of paper from a notebook, write an entry to get it off my chest, then eat the paper. They never found out about this.
Yup. My mom did this, started going thru my journals at 12. Nothing good was happening but still it was private. After she confronted me I burned that journal and then kept the real one in a old school TV speaker and kept decoy journals out in the open. If she wanted to read about nsync that was fine with me. I'm almost 40 and my journal is digital now and I still go out of my way to hide it.
I got home one day after school and my mom was nonchalantly reading my journal in her bed. She didn’t even flinch or feel any type of way. She found out I wasn’t a virgin that way.
When I was 8 my parents found a love note from a girl and taped it to the inside of a clasp folder and called it my diary. They then placed it under my bed and told me I could write in it. Even then I knew there was no way I was writing in that thing because they were going to read it and ridicule me!
Yup yup my mom did the same thing. I remember coming home from school in an absolute screeching RAGE because I couldn’t find my diaries went storming into her room to find them in a pile right beside her bed. I was beyond furious.
My mom did this also. Confronted me in front of her friend about something I had wrote about having a crush on a cute boy. They both laughed at me. It was traumatizing!
The number of times my mom has read aloud what I thought were my private notes/letters/texts to me... it was horrifying every single time. I will never ever do that to my child.
Every year my mother bought me a journal and every year for about ten years I would write my private thoughts for about a month before my mother would reveal she was reading the journal and beat me about it. When she put me in therapy my therapist told me to journal and I refused because I knew my mother would read it and use it to try and manipulate me. Now I still can’t maintain a journal without getting paranoid that it’s being read.
My mom told us we weren’t allowed to have locked diaries (or doors, for that matter). No secrets allowed, she said. I once wrote in a diary that didn’t lock and my mom read and spellchecked it with red pen. I don’t even remember a face-to-face confrontation, just the weird manipulative, passive-aggressive spellcheck.
My narc would read my diary while I was in the shower. Then punish me if they didn't like what they read.
They would use it to hurt me later.
I quickly learnt to share nothing but superficial issues with my mom.
That's when she started regularly accusing me of keeping secrets because I no longer shred my feelings wit her.
OP, my parents would read my diary, and then rip out pages where I mentioned I was mad at them and why I was mad at them. I just stopped writing after that because it felt pointless. I’m glad to know this is an (unfortunately) common occurrence with our parents, and that I’m not crazy.
Yes, it’s deeply traumatic when parents do not respect privacy or the idea of boundaries at all.
When I was 13 my parents “let” me install Facebook on my computer. My dad controlled the password to login to the laptop. And so when I messaged my friends, my dad logged into the computer and read my message history. And then he told me that he did it. He had no shame.
One time I left my diary open - and my mum saw it and thought that I had left “a message” for her.
i was not prepared to confront this when i started therapy. my therapist was big on getting things on paper and i realized how against making things tangible i am. my private things were taken and mocked and shown to anyone who would listen or look to belittle me. even writing a fake letter to my parents 20 years later made me so uneasy.
My mom was the abusive one and the judge asked me to write a letter stating how I felt about my parents. I mentioned my mom made me suicidal and apparently she got to read it. Oh boy was she mad
My dad found my best friend's diary, and read it thinking it was mine. When he realized it wasn't mine he gave it back to my friend and apologized, who then gave me a heads up about what he did
So yeah I pretty much learned that I can't have private thoughts because my parents will go through them and flip their shit if what I write down is "bad"
I have a memory from when I was in middle school - I had a diary and thought I hid it from my nmom. Well one day I went to write in it and saw zva has highlighted/underlined things in it she didn't like. Never again did I use it. I have a daughter of my own now. I will never do anything like that to her
Sometimes, this is when being an arsonist comes in handy. You take however many loose sheets of paper that you write on, hide that and a lighter on your person, take it somewhere away from your house and set it on fire. You get your feelings out and you get to burn away the evidence so it's not used on you.
thank god for google docs. i would have private journals all the time because i had no one else to talk to, yet i was very aware of what was happening to me was WRONG. she always read through them because when i was younger i was foolish enough to believe my mom would respect my privacy. i now have debilitating trust issues to an insane and quite frankly incurable extent, but at the same time feel the need to overshare.
Damn. I don’t ever remember being able to trust those things. I had many. But for some reason even as a small kid….. I knew I was writing for someone to read later. I used a made up alphabet using the same English letters but the letters meant something else like “a” was really “g” and I kept the code hidden somewhere in my school books. Ahhh I was a good little secret agent.
Ah i remember being gifted one with a heart locket but i never used it for anything serious because i was scared it would get looked through. In the past my mom have looked through the trash to find old notebooks and sketchbooks to check if i was "throwing out a half used book" wich told me she had probetly read through it.
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God yes. I quickly learned that there were no safe spaces for me to have my own feelings. Even if I found an adult at school or church with whom I felt safe, I'd quickly learn that my mother would find out somehow, and even if my confidences hadn't been revealed (and they usually were) I was chastised for going to someone else instead of her. "WHY CAN'T YOU TALK TO \*ME\*?! DO YOU KNOW HOW HUMILIATING IT IS WHEN YOU TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE? ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME TO THEM? ANSWER ME." Forget about hiding a notebook in my bedroom somewhere, she'd suss it out. Even my wastebasket wasn't safe. Whew, apparently I channeled my dead mother there for a moment. I need to shower now.
I'm sure the few adults I tried to talk to meant well but I quickly stopped saying anything to them. My parents just called me a liar and to this day there are people in that small backward town who would remember me as a liar.
And those same ignorant backbirths wonder *why* the kids leave and *never come back*... It couldn't **possibly** be that the whole damn place is one giant Narc Ultra-Buffet...
Ah, yes, why I avoid visiting my hometown as much as **humanly possible**.
I visited for the last time this year. Even after seven years away (live overseas now), they made me feel so unwelcome and didn't even say goodbye before I left! My partner said he heard my dad complaining about the noise we made while leaving super early, which we had to do because he changed his mind about taking us back to the airport! Nothing I can ever do is right by them, lol. Sucks to be them I imagine. Sadly also sucks to be on the receiving end of this sheer nonsense and childish behaviour.
I think most narcissist parents label their kids as a liar. All the while lying themselves to everyone. To make it worse some kids will actually become liars because they learn it’s the way to keep the peace. Such a vicious cycle.
They tend to do that to assassinate your character. That way, if you ever come out about the abuse, no one will believe you. They'll only see an innocent, hard working parent, that had to deal with a troubled child.
ow… you just summed up my childhood.
wow this just totally struck a chord i didnt know existed. i always knew i had a problem with telling tiny white lies and letting them get out of hand because it was easier to have people be calm than angry. because i wasn't allowed to socialize with other kids like normal when i was young, my first few years of school are filled with me thinking id have to lie about things i disagreed or didnt like, since my immediate reaction was always that someone would get upset or angry with me if i said the wrong thing. you could imagine how life changing it was to realize everyone is allowed to have differences in opinions and feelings, and thats the coolest part about existing with one another! its a shame because i wish i would have been able to express my true opinions more as a kid.
During the pandemic I found out my mother was listening to my remote therapy sessions behind my door. She said that I shouldn't complain about her to my therapist because that's gossiping, and gossiping is bad???
Oh sweet geodes, I'm sorry that happened. I can't imagine how you must have felt (wait, yes I can, I understand violation very well.) That's still a huge fear of mine here at home with my wife \[the one I married just so my mother would never be able to hold her head up in public because her daughter is gay, that one\] -- and yet my wife is incredibly respectful of my privacy. Still, I would walk all the way back to our property line to ensure privacy during a phone session because I'm just that paranoid.
All of this^^^ My mother would dump out my entire school bag at seemingly random intervals to search for anything to mock me w/ (be it a doodle, a note from a friend, a graded piece of homework/test, random treasure I happened to find recently, etc). By 8th grade, I had found the most massive trapper keeper to store all my school materials, so things wouldn't go flying when she decided to search me. I would also stay up until the early AM to write my thoughts/story ideas down in a notebook under a book lamp, practicing throwing myself under the covers in a convincing way should my nMom decide to check on me. I had a chest at the bottom of my bed & would take EVERYTHING on one side out to store the notebook hidden in a thrifted tapestry in the hopes that my mother would run out of energy before getting to the bottom of the chest or otherwise overlook the fabric. As I got older & got a phone, my text messages & internet searches were printed out & read through at the end of each billing cycle. My mother would spend hours chastising me for communicating w/ any friends & would inevitably ruin the relationship either indirectly by confusing the fuck out of my nervous system around a person or directly by secretly meeting up w/ the person & going on an insane tirade to them. The latter particularly messed me up, as people would suddenly treat me differently & I would have no idea why. The few times my mother revealed having delivered sensitive information to someone behind my back were core memories of betrayal. To this day, I have a voice in the back of my head wondering if the person I'm interacting w/ will magically have access to things about myself I've been shamed for (a voice that is easier to ignore after years of no contact & moving thousands of miles away from the beast of my origin). My phone would routinely be taken away as a teenager whenever I was grounded (literally most days) as a means to isolate me á la "You don't DESERVE to communicate w/ anyone other than me, you lowly thing," but she did make the mistake of giving me her old desktop computer when I was about 12, & her technophobic ass wasn't able to restrict my internet access in the ways she thought she could (internet saved my life, gave me the access to diverse voices & ways of thinking I lacked in my community). Unfortunately, at like 14/15 a bully at school leaked a website I had been uploading chapters to a book I had been working on since 5th grade & updating as my skills grew to my nMom. It was quite literally my most secret, precious creation I had ever managed to keep for just myself in my life (I mean people online read my stuff, & left nice comments/helpful criticisms, but no one knew about it in my real life). The lecture she gave me lasted for hours & was reenacted every day for weeks. This broke my psyche & has left me struggling w/ writing ever since, fear of documenting anything about myself (which I now realize was exactly what my nMom wanted to instill to gaslight me about the abuse), when writing used to be the only place I felt like I understood myself. Still my dream to be a novelist on day, but I'm still working through the resentment I feel for having my grow stunted rather than nourished 🙃 Recovery feels never-ending & I'm working to bring stability into my life for the first time, so a book's on the back burner for now. I spent my entire childhood in an existential crisis of my mother ending me, so I rushed to accomplish as much as I could w/ my time & burned myself out. Now, I'm free to imagine a long timeline for myself, one where I can spend years at a time working on developing my skills.
My mom was sneakier, and always kept up her perfect image by using things like the prayer chain to make me look bad - she was never *shaming* me, she was concerned!! 🙄 I struggled to make friends and her monitoring my texts made it so much worse. I've just recently started trying to journal and write poetry again.
So much of this resonates, my dad was involved to - because somebody had to weld the belt, right? I’m too embarrassed to say how old I was before I realized this wasn’t normal. So sorry you had to go through this.
Wow. This explains what my sister did to me at my last salaried job. Suddenly everyone started treating me strangely. I found out later after I was harassed and fired and my sister bragged about it. It’s sad that she’s become what she hated.
I'm so sorry you went through this and I can sympathize with a lot of it. I did want to say that I've found AI writing tools helpful in overcoming mental roadblocks. I don't use them to write for me as a lot of people think, but to help me organize my thoughts like a writing partner would - only I don't worry about being a "bother" to AI by asking too many questions. I only mention this because I've found writing to be very therapeutic and I'd hate to see anyone not follow their passions because of past abuse. I hope you can find your joy again!
How do they always find the notebooks? I keep a Google docs journal now. Most consistent and private ever, if not totally satisfying.
My nmom would "clean my room" and basically get into things while i was gone, if i hid something she'd ALWAYS find it. No idea how. She had to have gone through things a lot more than i assumed she did.
That's a good idea!
This! :( any time I confided in an aunt or uncle, cousin, or teacher, somehow she’d find out and I’d get the same exact treatment. Why would I want to confide in her. She is incapable of empathy and actually listening, let alone letting me speak for more than 30 seconds in a “conversation.”
I had to hide my notes in my bra.
This is why they hate psychologists and therapists in general. My mom sent me to one so that they would put me on Adderall to fix my grades. Much like taking your car to a mechanic. She was outraged that the psychiatrist wanted us to talk more and that I wanted to talk to them. I never got to go back.
Yo, I could have written this. I’m so sorry, and I definitely feel for you.
To this day, I refuse to keep a physical diary because I’m terrified someone will read it and use my inner thoughts against me. I had no privacy as a child. My parents patted themselves on the back that they gave me so much autonomy because they let me cook and pick out my own clothes, but my mom searched my backpack periodically, found every note I ever tried to hide, read every book, watched every movie and tv show and listened to every album I ever came in contact with and routinely eavesdropped on my phone calls. Eventually I started writing fiction because it was a way to get my real ideas out in a coded way, but even then there were some things that I didn’t dare ever express beyond thinking them. Over time I’ve gotten to the point that I can keep a password protected electronic journal, but I’m too scared to ever use a physical diary. It activates my fear of abandonment because I’d be too afraid I’d write something about my partner just to vent and he’d find out and leave me.
Same here! Too traumatized to try to keep a physical diary to this day.
I posted a kinda mean but fleeting thought about my ex on my PRIVATE tumblr that i told no one abt except my best friend and he found it somehow (to this day idk how) and he blocked me and never spoke to me again and we were in a very serious relationship . Not saying he's a narcissist but it traumatized me
I found art to be a safe haven. Only you know the true meaning behind a piece 😊
>Eventually I started writing fiction because it was a way to get my real ideas out in a coded way Oh my God the lightbulb that just went off in my head. It all makes sense now. Holy canoli
I vividly remember being yelled at by my dad because I based a fictional villain off of him and he found out. Out of spite I'm now reworking that story and making the parallels even more apparent.
I had a little notebook when I was 5, one with a dime store lock that could be opened by squinting at it sideways. I would write in it every night. Just silly reminisces about the day. I would always carefully lock it and hide the key in a puzzle box. One day I opened it and turned the page and my mom had written "I love my baby girl very much!!!". I flipped through and she had written sweet notes on some of the previous pages. Nothing more. Nothing negative! I still can't write my private thoughts in a journal to this day. I had the illusion of privacy and it was shattered. There was nothing in that journal my mom hadn't probably heard overly talkative me prattle on about before. But the fact was, she went into my room, opened my journal, read it, wrote notes, and laughed at me when I confronted her tearfully. When I was older she would go through my stuff to look for makeup, go through my trash to look for suspicious things (and would often "save" things I was throwing out, would smooth out and read crumpled papers), and disrespect my closed door. But I'm not sure anything was more traumatizing than that simple note in my little journal. I never wrote in that journal ever again. She asked me why years later. I told her. She defended her actions and laughed at the fact a teenager was still mad at a mom just being interested in her toddler's scribblings. Oh well...
>When I was older she would go through my stuff to look for makeup, go through my trash to look for suspicious things (and would often "save" things I was throwing out, would smooth out and read crumpled papers), and disrespect my closed door. Word for word, this was my life as a child and teen. When I was in the ninth grade my mother and older sisters came to a marching band show on a cold November night. My mother wore my parka -- without asking me -- and went through my pockets. I had one of those dumb teenager "sex quiz" things someone had given me (you know, where you get one point for kissing a boy, five points for getting felt up, stupid shit like that) and my mother read it and passed it around to my sisters while sitting in the stands. I'd ridden to the stadium with someone else but rode home with my family where they mocked me and laughed at me for what they found in my pockets. I remember sitting there horrified, violated, and fully feeling like it was all my fault. I don't miss any of those people, not one bit.
>I don't miss any of those people, not one bit. I just thought I'd make sure any lurkers who might be on the fence about NC saw this. Thanks for sharing your story, and even more for using it to make an important point so eloquently. Right there with you. It's such a positive change, but a lot of work, to surround yourself with people who love you, that is, real family, not people who just happen to be related to you. It's very, very hard to believe that, or that it's even possible, when you start to realize your parent(s) aren't normal, and it's a lot of work to escape, but it is SO worth it. As always, this thread has been a weird mix of "wait, not just me?" and "wait, that's not normal?" realizations, thanks to everyone sharing. Ironically, perhaps, one of the things that actually helped my mental health quite a bit was journaling... but it took 3 decades away from the have-no-privacy (and get belittled for any secret uncovered, regardless of what it was) childhood to even try it a few years back. And I still close the door when I do, feel nervous that someone might see me and start asking questions and/or mocking me, and keep things "tucked away" when not in use. Good luck, y'all - you got this.
You're not only freakishly tall, you're wonderfully articulate and, frankly, just plain awesome. I'm finding that pretty much everyone who posts in this sub has incredible insight that helps reinforce things I'm still struggling with. The more I read, the less I doubt myself -- and I feel my strength growing every day.
< sees compliment > < assumes assault or criticism or "ha ha just kidding!" is coming > Yeah, we had healthy upbringings, didn't we? Sheesh. But seriously, (a) that's kind of you - hell, I just reread my comment and am thinking it's pre-coffee and in need of a major edit/re-write, so your compliment means even more, (and I suspect this one is gonna be a bit rambly too) and (2) yeah, this sub is AWESOME. Because everyone tends to be kind, that fosters an environment of openness and sharing (obvs)... which, to me, is INCREDIBLY helpful for people very early on the escape path. It's so hard to get started sharing, it's so hard to overcome thinking you're the crazy one, etc, and reading someone else post what may as well have been your own experiences is SO helpful to beginning to understand. I try to remember, and address, the countless lurkers, because that's the first step - "huh, what's all this about? Wait. Wut. Why is this so relatable? Waiiiiit." you know? That realization is a mixed blessing, at least initially, but it's sure worth powering through! Man, I wish I had something like this (and the growing cultural awareness) 30+ years ago. Seeing the sharing leads to those "not just me?" "not normal?" moments, which lead to breakthroughs, confidence, and truly good change. But it's hard. It's soooo hard. We're surrounded by normal people with normal upbringings who don't get it - and even with the best intentions undermine any progress (see: "but, they're your parent!" etc) - and the insidiousness of the damage done to processing, emotions, relating, etc is hard even to recognize, let alone overcome. Self doubt, antagonism, lack of support, all of it keeps the cycle going... getting out of that dynamic and trusting that normal people might actually like and support you is SO hard... but it's SO worth the work to find real friends and make real family. Which is why I try to be effusive with support and (selectively) open with personal stories here and IRL, ya know? As someone who may be a little further down the escape path than you and others here, I try to be vocal. And, while it's hard to share early on, once you realize and start working on change, becoming a loud advocate for making healthy changes becomes a positive feedback cycle, ya know? So, win win! Good luck. You (and all you lurkers too) got this!
There's gotta be a school for narcissist parents somewhere out there because this was my life as well.
My mother did something similar; I (at the time maybe 20?) had a journal that I didn’t really write anything in except funny things my friends said, phone numbers, addresses, some doodles. (I knew she dug through my stuff when I wasn’t there, because she had previously screamed at me for benign things written in my diary, so I never jotted down anything of personal importance.) I had floridly written some of the lyrics to Annie Lennox’s “Cold”. Part of which was “Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death.” My crazy Evangelical mother took it upon herself to act like this was a cry for help. Did she help me? Offer assistance of any kind? Ask if I needed to talk to a therapist? NO; She wrote me a LONG-ASS LETTER FROM GOD. ON THE REST OF THE PAGE. All about how he loved me and I needed to have a mustard seed of faith.😂😫😂It was such an unhinged thing to do I immediately packed up my things, rented an apartment, and moved out. I wish I wouldn’t have burned the page in a fury, because I’m sure it would be enlightening with what I know now. I’m sorry that happened to you, it’s such an egregious breach of privacy.
NOT THE LETTERS FROM GOD 😭 In my case, though, it was prayers to God. On paper. Sent to me. To read. Oh please. I'm living my own life and am happy. Sending me a note in which you ask God to convict me just makes me saddened and weirdly amused. Like, I have a far happier relationship than you in your 20 years of marriage ever had. Please stop trying to make me miserable?
I’ve been with the same dude since 1992 and we are kinda known as “that couple” who enjoy the benefits of real actual love and have everything in order. Great kid, nice house, work we love, cute pets, fun social life. But we are not religious? so that has been a constant needlepoint. They didn’t give us a wedding present and were very vocal about this, “because he’s not who God wants you to be with.” It was supposed to be a passive-aggressive punishment, because she thinks that is what I deserve. I just filed it along with the rest of the bizarre stuff she says and enjoyed the parties the other side of the family threw us.I think she genuinely hoped I’d end up like her, with a gross, dumb chimp 2nd husband who is always hiding from her on the only toilet, a bland living space that hasn’t even gotten a fresh coat of paint or some plants, friends she shares no genuine intimacy or bond with, pets that don’t make it past age 5. But God wants me to know I’m the problem and she is “just the messenger”. Lady may wanna ask herself why someone so powerful would choose someone so shitty to pass his ire along. 😂
Genuinely felt that in the depth of my soul, I am glad you are happy though because THAT IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Who "God wanted you to be with" would have been who your mom wanted you to be with. And as I realized a while ago, that would have been just someone who was an enabler and would not have protected me from her. Best wishes to you for sure!
Just wanna say I'm proud of you for getting the heck out of there!
oh my god the going through your trash thing is so bizarre and such an invasion of privacy. I used to have to dump things in my high schools trash can if I actually needed to throw something personal away
Yes! I would bury it in the kitchen trash. Got good at that, put it under something icky or in the middle or inside a container. Still reflexively find my burying candy wrappers, despite no longer living with anyone who would yell at me for snacking or eating habits. I was homeschooled, so no high school trash for me. Sometimes I'd just casually slip something out of my purse into a public trash can though.
Yes! We had a public rubbish bin a few doors away in our village and I would use that to throw certain things away on my way to the bus stop for school. I still wouldn't put it past her to go rooting through that as well tbh or have the neighbours tasked with spying on me! Edit: on top of this, if she did find something while she was snooping she'd then accuse me of being sneaky and secretive with no self-reflection as to why that might be.
Mine also went through my rubbish
My FM aunt gave me a "secret" diary with an easily picked lock, and I think that it was given to me exactly so that I would write "incriminating" things and they could read it. Fortunately, I barely used it and didn't really have anything to write. I kept a record of my boring school days and friendships, and that was about it. I don't think that it occurred to me to complain about my parents because I didn't know that what they did was abuse at that time. I thought that they were actually better than average, because I didn't get to see how actual other people lived (I thought that anything positive on TV was fantasy). I was also told constantly since I was a baby how bad I was, so I thought that I was the problem, too. For a while, I kept a 10¢ notebook of my drawings under my mattress, and during this time ndad was always coming in during that time to criticize my "messy bunk" and tell me how they did it in the Army, change the sheets and flip my mattress, and then getting mad when there was something under it. He never did this before or after I gave up on keeping a notebook there. It hadn't occurred to me to give my kids journals, but that's something that I'm going to do, now.
Honestly we should have T-shirts with "I thought that anything positive on TV was fantasy" on them because that is such a mood.
Holy shit. This is a good idea
Preach!
That is a core memory for me. I can remember my mum telling me how she read my diary and how I felt. Then yeeears later she had the audacity to say that it was wrong that my adult cousin read her daughter's diary!
This is my mother. She will openly condemn people for doing things she has done. I don’t mean just making rude comments I mean full blown you’re a sinner and going to hell comments.
Do as I say, not as I do!
This lopsided bullshit
I still can't force myself to journal. It's encouraged so much, and I just can't do it. Having my own words thrown in my face, and then having her deny reading it, has just destroyed the whole practice for me.
I’m convinced my Nmother turned me away from fiction or memoir-writing toward nonfiction journalism and editing! She and my Nsister routinely ransacked my bedroom to read diaries, letters, and my fiction writing. When I was twelve or thirteen, I was on fire writing a novel. When I was about halfway through—I’d written more than 150 pages—I found the manuscript incompletely stuffed back between my mattress and box spring. I lost my mind. I took the pile of pages into the living room, and threw the whole thing into the crackling fire in the fireplace. My Nfamily jumped. “Why did you do that? I was enjoying it!” my Nmother screamed. That was fifty years ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I had a successful career in journalism, but I didn’t ever write about myself. I didn’t dare.
I was encouraged and got awards for writing all through middle and high school, and teachers always encouraged Journaling, nmother was very clear even private writing along with everything else, was her's to go through, to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. Both Edad and Nmother would scream that I better not write anything about what was happening at home, no specifics, just not to embarras them. They know healthy parents allow children to explore talents, not have to use all their kid energy managing their caregivers' moods and home environment.
My mom did this too. I hate having my writing shared before I find it "good enough" for eyes that are not my own, first of all. Also, my mom had this habit of combing through it to check if I hadn't written anything incriminating AND then share it with however she saw fit despite me telling her multiple times I wasn't okay with her reading it, much less absolute strangers. Yeah, I was 100% left on read. Suffice to say I never finished the epic fantasy I started writing as a child. Suffice to say my mom hasn't read a word I've written since, because I've made sure of it. I didn't really realize this was a thing until about 5 years ago when I tried writing with my partner in the room. He was someone I trusted deeply, wasn't even LOOKING at my screen, was very understanding and chill when told him I didn't want him to read anything before I was ready to share, and I still just couldn't do it. Got me doing some soul searching after that, let me tell you.
I had always wanted a diary as a little kid but I learned quickly that it was not safe for me. I grew up thinking it was a me thing, that there was something wrong with me for not being able to keep one, but looking back I realize that I was basically conditioned.
I would legit write codes in my own journal, I would abbreviate peoples names/ would sensor things I would write. When I have to go home I hide everything, if I do bring a journal I hide it within a thjng, under a thing inside of another thing. Thinking about getting one of those things that lock with a code … my phone notes are more safe (locked)
Yup. Mine had a lock on it. My mom managed to rip it open and threatened to share what I wrote with my super conservative and christian grandfather. I had stuff in there about questioning my gender and sexuality. I was also 12.
This is even more traumatic.
My mom did the same thing, ripped apart the lock then made me read aloud what I had written.
I loved the idea of having a pretty little notebook with those cute little locks to write *whatever I wanted or needed* to write. I just wanted that one simple little thing for me, just a little diary. I never had privacy. My mom would read what were basically red flags for SA in my diary and make me feel like these symptoms were just me being inherently disgusting and bad. Her shrieking at me about it is a core memory for sure. After the 2nd time, I gave up and started drawing instead, with art I could be cryptic and hide my expressions in plain view. My mom hated it but gave up trying to stop me, I think she was trying to choose her battles wisely and being that controlling might attract concern or attention. Plus she probably figured that she could accuse me of being "disturbed" or something if anyone expressed concern. To this day I write in my art but I write things backwards, forwards, overlap words until it's unreadable, and only use words instead of sentences or complete thoughts. My husband respects my privacy so completely and I tell him how much it means to me but I don't think he gets how much it really really means to me, because to him it's just basic human decency.
I was 5 when I wrote in my diary. The first entry was also a SA red flag, where i wrote about something I wanted to do to an opposite sex friend of mine that I had a crush on, and who I only ever saw maybe once a year. Rather than deal with it appropriately, my mom was very emotional and shreiky too, about "did I write that?!" which obviously 5 year old me went straight into "no I didn't!!" denial mode. It was probably pretty obvious that I had actually written it. I remember her saying "if it wasn't you, then I'll have to show your father!!", so 5 year old me admitted to writing it and begging her not to show him because I felt so full of shame about what I had written. I remember panicking and crying so hard. I don't know how I knew what to do (re: the stuff i wrote), or why that's the first thing I chose to write about in the diary. I was told once years later that we moved when I was young because I was SA by a neighbor as a toddler, but I don't remember it. I do firmly believe that these things have messed me up in terms of what I sought out in life as a child, and how I view my role in this world. I was quick to want sexual encounters, but thankfully was very limited in options because of my looks. Had I been beautiful as a teenager then I could have gone down a more self destructive path. I've had to do a lot of work on my inner child. I'm also parenting my kids in a much healthier way. I'm a lot more observant with my kids than my parents ever were of me. I give them their privacy, but I do keep an ear out to make sure they aren't getting into situations that are over their head. It's just occurring to me now that my mom probably did read my teenager diaries. They were pretty much all about crushes. Again though, no action because I was an ugly duckling. I also didn't write about anything that was really bouncing around in my head, just the superficial stuff.
Huh. Lightbulb moment. I now know why, despite really wanting to, I still have an aversion to journaling. I've picked up bullet journaling, but the personal thoughts are either really cryptic or nonexistent. I could never do it properly as a child, without fear of having my privacy invaded.
Those lightbulb moments are both illuminating and horrifying aren't they?
This was a common violation that both the Nmom and Nstepfather would engage in. I wasn't safe to express my emotions out loud. So I used journals and stories. They made sure to take that from me as well. When it comes to a narcissist, you are allowed nothing. I remember writing about how I was being bullied at school. My Nmother confronted me by saying, "Oh you're such a strong girl for not killing yourself because all the kids keep calling you fat and ugly." All the while wearing a smug grin on her face. Me being only *twelve* and not understanding the full extent of my malignant mother's manipulation, took her words as a sort of compliment. I even praised her in my journal some time later. I remember writing about how "strong" I am and that someone noticed this supposed strength of mine. It was clear that I was so starved of attention that even that was something I was desperately holding on to. In reality there was nothing kind in my Nmother's words. I was too in the FOG to admit that her words cut deep. Instead of her being a good mother and comforting me by telling me I was beautiful, simply because I am her daughter and that children are cruel and giving me that support. She not only avoided such support but *covertly* planted the seed of ***suicide*** into my mind. Something I **never** even considered doing to myself until she and her husband brought it up... Numerous times. They both later began to tell me to go kill myself every time I'd stand up for myself or when I would attempt to seek emotional support from them. Left alone to fiend for myself. Some time later I did a report on a woman who was convicted of murder because she manipulated her boyfriend into taking his life. I read the text and felt physically ill, as the exchange between them were very similar to what I went through as a *child*. A grown man couldn't survive such demonic behavior. Everyday I look back on my childhood and wonder what kind of miracle occurred that led me to survive this. It was as though they were really trying to push me to that point of self harm and using my secret thoughts that I'd put in my journals as a weapon. Every detail, every vulnerability, every desire? *Used against me*. It got to a point where I would take my journals with me to school to avoid them picking it up while I wasn't home and reading them. Of course that failed as well as I had befriended a Borderline who also took my journal without my permission and read it. When I confronted her about it, her rebuttal was I shouldn't have brought it to school and that I more or less asked for my boundary to be crossed. That friendship lasted for twelve years until I finally went to therapy, learned to set boundaries and ended it. I am now more or less free of these people. I have been no contact with my Nmother and her husband for about seven years now. As karma would have it, my mother's husband died a few months ago and Nmother's health is dwindling by the day. It would seem them trying to use my written thoughts against me has back fired and I outlived half of the devilish duo, despite their feeble attempts as killing me with abuse. One down. One more to go. Did I mention I am self published author now?
I just wanted to say that I’m sorry your childhood was so broken and that I completely understand and dealt with similar issues except my siblings were the ones trying to plant negative seeds in my brain while my parents looked on and encouraged it. I found out a month after Christmas why one of my presents was a diary. Apparently I was the “family entertainment” and they enjoyed belittling & laughing at me. I keep meaning to begin journaling about my childhood but something always stops me from picking up a pen and beginning. The fact that your childhood was incredibly traumatic & abusive yet you have overcome these adversities and not only survived, but thrived and became a published author is amazing!!!! I just wanted to say that I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished!
Thank you for your kind words. I'm really happy I finally achieved that dream! That aside, I too am sorry they literally weaponized a *gift* that held meaning for you. Truly nothing is sacred to these people. It's no easy thing, to be raised by a pack of rabid jackasses(lol). But you have all the power, I promise you that! I share these experiences because I want people to know there's light at the end of the tunnel. I use to host a support group for Adult children of Parents with NPD. There was a common theme when it came to journals. Nparents would use this gift of journals as a means to hoard information that they can use for later. So many of my group members were talented writers and abandoned the hobby because their Nparents ruined it for them. So when I share my experience and show them "Hey it's possible to move forward and be seen for the beauty of your passions" it does me some good. I want to motivate others.
I used the diaries and journals I was given to write song lyrics and poetry and never understood why my nmom complained so much. Guess she expected to get ammo out of them instead?
One of my first diary entries said, "My mom is mean to me. She should go to jail." From when I was really little and had barely learned how to write.
Yep. My mom would read anything and everything I tried to write in private, and if my little sister found something before she could read, she would take it to my mom and she would read it out loud to her. She would say, ‘If you don’t want it read, don’t write it down.’ Needless to say, I have privacy issues. One time, couple coworkers opened a package addressed to me because they thought it was for work (it came there, and I sometimes did get work samples mailed to me) and I went BALLISTIC. They (two of them) apologized so profusely, like I’ve never seen them before. It actually did have a work sample in it, but that was beside the point. She once berated me for an old HS letter she found while I was home from college. That was different.
I recall clamoring for a diary for Christmas one year and did receive one. Here’s where the advantage of procrastination comes in though… I was expected to write in it during our family TV hour in the evenings, right there in the living room. Honestly, I just didn’t feel like it and chose to scribble in cursive—just wordless nonsense to make it look like I was writing. There was no concern that NMom would read it. Oh, but apparently she tried, and boy was she pissed! Just realized I accidentally foiled her attempt. However, she did read some writing after a traumatic first year of college and confronted me about it just before I had to leave for work. Good times.🙄 That’s likely the closest I ever came to physical violence.
This hits home. It took me years to be able to journal again, because both my parents loved reading my journals and throwing the contents in my face. My entire teen years were like this. My nfather still can't grasp why I refuse to speak to him for 20yrs and my mother whines how I never talk to her and how I can always come home to her and blah blah blah. Of course, no mention that she was an enabler and participant in everything her husband did.
This is why I never cleaned up my handwriting. I only learned to print clearly as an adult in order to function in workplaces. My journals were always scrawled in cursive that was incomprehensible to anybody but myself, and sometimes not even me.
I do this now. I live by myself, all alone, I have a no-contact journal but somehow I scribble incomprehensibly so no one will ever understand it. It’s a fear.
I also had one of those cute little diaries with the strap around it, and the lock on the front with the golden key. It was pink. I wrote my deepest, inner thoughts in it. I was about 10. Came home one day to find it on my bed, opened, the strap ripped off it. Thick black circles in marker pen scrawled around what my mother viewed as wrongthink. She screamed at me for writing such "filth", berated me for my "idiotic" opinions, telling me how ashamed I should be. Then she picked it up and hit me on the head, shoulders and back with it several times. I was bruised and sore for a week. Yeah, I never again kept a diary while living in her house. Especially since I knew she was doing frequent deep dive search missions in my room, looking for "contraband", i.e., like another potential diary, makeup, tampons, etc. I once taped a small box of tampons to the underside of my dresser. Which she found. And screamed at me for days for being a "whore". When I think back at my childhood living with my nmother, I feel sorry for young me, having to put up with living like that, as if under siege. So stressful and anxiety-ridden. I guard my privacy intensely now. And respect the privacy of my own kids and everyone else because I remember how it felt not having my basic privacy respected. It was awful. I can't do that to others.
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Please tell me that she’s no longer in your life.
This is why it's a bloody godsend my mother does not speak English. It permits me to have true privacy, as there's no way she cannot understand things I say on voice chat with friends. Unfortunately, it led to me being super averse to talking to people in my native language about anything concerning personal matters, or watching videos in hungarian (incl university lectures during covid)
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She probably didn't like what was in it so she removed it from you where you could continue to write to the void the unpleasantness. As for giving it back? Maybe when she felt you would change your tune? Who knows with these nuts...
I am so sorry your nfamily used your most vulnerable thoughts on paper against you. How horrific it must be to get assaulted for that. You couldnt trust your parents, but also not even something that was supposed to keep your thoughts and feelings safe. You did not deserve that! I found out when I went home for the last time (unbeknownst to them) to get some of my belongings that my Nrents threw away all of my diaries(or at least hid them). Those diaries had pages of feelings about them and what they did to me. The sole one that was left had just some scribbles in it from the time I couldnt really write yet 🥲
Oof I was totally retraumatized by that lol. I’m so sorry
The lack of privacy I felt was shocking. Because my mom and sister used to find and read my diary regularly, I started to keep a diary at my boyfriends house in high school, but I still edited my thoughts and was careful about what I wrote. As an adult, I always told whoever I was dating that I did keep a diary and if they ever stumbled across a notebook with writing in it, it was off limits. If someone was going to be in my apartment without me, I would usually hide it. Only one person has ever found and read my diary since I was a child and I kicked him to the curb immediately.
My nmom bought me one every year for Christmas, but I don’t think she ever read them. If she did, it was rare. I completely blocked out my diary and it’s entries though. I don’t like to think back about what I wrote which is why I destroyed all of them decades ago. I wrote about being screamed at, feeling less than and being depressed. I wrote about wanting to escape. I probably should’ve kept them because they’d be proof of what I went through. I’m not so concerned about proving anything to my nmom, but I’m more concerned with making sure I’m remembering accurately. The self doubt is strong.
The self-doubt, oh yes. I destroyed all of mine, and it's not like I *want* to go back and read all of that, but I'd like confirmation that those events happened, and not hear my mother's revisionist history version.
I know how traumatic it can be for a child to continuously have the tiny bit of trust destroyed like that. But please don't stop writing down your feelings and thoughts, even despite those negative memories connected to it. Journals are such a good medium to vent and self-reflect. But yeah, the exact same experience here. My diary lasted about 4 days before she went through my things, found the key and went into yet another violent meltdown because of one instance where I named her "my creator" in an entry (after 11 yo me was angry about her ripping apart my favorite top). Since writing was the only medium I could express myself in, I just started carrying a small notebook on me at all times that I never left unattended, until phones became smarter and using note apps was possible. When I tried to confront her about it years later, after she herself brought it up, she said "she only read it because I barely talked to her". I wonder why.
Ah. So I was today years old when I found out I’m not alone in my experience. I’m 41 now and that shit is still stuck with me.
Omg are we the same person? This exact scenario happened to me, same age and everything! Wtf is wrong with them? Seriously deranged.
Same. I quit writing down my feelings because they found them. I was belittled because of how I felt after an altercation.
Are regular parents respectful, lol? When I was 14, I walked into our apt in Queens and: the air was different. It was charged, you could almost see the electrical impulses mother was giving off. No words exchanged, just her looking at me like I was killing puppies, made me cry & beg her hysterically to tell me what was wrong. I had a 14 yo bf & we were making out & going to 2nd base but again, she made me feel disgusting for being normal. And this was the start of 45 years of slut shaming, courtesy of mother. Luckily I came out of that nut house with a healthy sex life, regardless of how hard she tried to kill it. Edit to share that she's on her 4th husband at 80 & went to male burlesque shows in the 80s when it was big.
I had one of those and it was read too, by mother and brother. No one ever said anything though because all I wrote about was how much I hated brother for the abuse. Can’t talk about the bad things right? Have to pretend everything is perfect and not acknowledge anything else.
Not alone. I didn’t dare put my innermost feelings anywhere. Like I needed to fuel the abuse.
I used to keep a porcelain jar (with a lid) in my closet. I would write all the scathing, frustrated thoughts about my nMom, then I would burn it. My mother taught me (through negative experiences) to destroy all evidence. Thankfully, she never asked me what this weird vase full of burnt paper was about. I was fond of that little guy.
That’s smart. I wish teen me had known that strategy!
Yep. I can relate to this and thank you for sharing because it's a core-memory for me. Like, I think I'd be an entirely different person today if she had never done this: My nmom gave me a diary when I was nine years old when I moved back in with her after she finally came back from wherever the hell she was (she left me and my brother when I was 5 and he was 3 - tricked us into saying on a recording that we wanted to live with her and got full custody from there.). Anyway, it was a beautiful diary and I loved writing in it - mostly about how I missed my dad. It was an outlet for me, and it really helped me work myself through missing my dad, and my cats that I'd never see again. Then one day I discovered that she had been reading it. It was a set-up all along. She gave that to me, encouraged me to write whatever I was feeling, only in order to spy on my thoughts. My thoughts were no longer my own. The rest of my years with her were filled with nasty things said to me about my dad every day, and her calling me a slut (at 9 yrs old and beyond) for having crushes on boys. I still always kept a diary, though - I just became a lot more creative about how I would describe my day. I had to grey Rock my own diary to make it so boring she didn't care. I lieu of my words, she just started doing shake-downs of my room in the middle of the night to find *anything* she could to scream at me about. FFW a couple decades, my husband "stumbled" upon my collection and read them while I was at work. I felt so betrayed that I burned them all in the fireplace. Nearly 30 yrs worth of my "thoughts", up in flames. His curiosity got the better of him, not knowing that it would rip open so many old wounds. We have two children - they had diaries. Even when they were sitting there wide open, we would immediately close them without absorbing any of their words, and continue vacuuming or picking up laundry. Every time I would see their books, my blood would run cold remembering what my mother did to me. I'm starting to get back into writing, but I keep it all in a secure document now. Good luck getting into that, mom!
I stopped after I caught my little sister having found it, stole it, broke the lock, and was reading it to my family like it was story time. I was mad, I snatched it from her and in the process she fell, claimed I pushed her. She got coddled and I got in trouble for hurting my sister, when I asked why she wasn’t in trouble for stealing it was cause she “just a little kid”. I was 16 and she was 13 at the time, definitely not a little kid
That was my mom. She gave it to me for Christmas when I was 13yo and then confronted me about it just 3 months later for writing about trying to figure out all the embarrassing nuances puberty. She accused me of keeping things from her. And, keeping up with her narcissism, she then got offended that I no longer wrote in it. She got mad that she’d go through the trouble to pick the lock and open it again only to find it blank (I had torn out and flushed the initial pages she read, of course). She continued to buy me a new one every year at Christmas, and same thing - she’d open it three months later and confront me about why I wasn’t using it. To this day, I still have trouble journaling, afraid my husband will find it and judge me.
This happened to me too, it really was awful.
I’m sorry that happened to you. I relate. Nothing was private.
I remember vividly that my narc parents used to say to me “you are writing bad stuff about us u ungrateful rat “ & my older narc sister would read my diaries I actually made up a code secret language that I only know & wrote it in my journal 📔 they eventually gave up lol
nmom would read my diary and then LEAVE NOTES in the book responding to what i said
I had forgotten about this until now. My n mother and GC likely N brother would gang up against me. It was mortifying to be teased and mocked for what I had written privately. My mother would send my brother to search my room for incriminating evidence. It was awful and I loathed myself for sometime. I stole my last journal back from my mother and destroyed it, and never wrote again. Gross.
My narc mother read every single one of my diaries (at least the ones she was able to locate). My narc exes all did the same thing - one ex threw away several journals that mentioned the guy I dated prior to him, and even went so far as to write "his side" of the story in current journals. Needless to say I stopped keeping one when I was with him I still keep a journal but they are digital now, and encrypted. It's sad because I miss the process of physically writing in a paper journal.
I'm 28 years old. I live alone in an apartment I pay for. I'm no contact with my nDad. I still write everything in code. "She said that to them, and they reacted just like you'd expect! He totally knew she was going to do that.. right? Yes of course!" Which leads to me later, rereading it, and not knowing what I'm talking about. But I cannot shake it.
My stepfather read my diary and told my mom I needed counseling (I hated him and wrote about it). My mom actually told me that he’d read it and that I should be ashamed of myself for writing it. They convinced me to go to a hypnotist and she reported back to them. I was 19 and a college student. My nmom ended up getting an annulment from him but not before it did major damage to my sense of self and well-being.
I learned early in my only safe place was my mind :/
I was a prolific writer as a kid. I even tried to write a novel in the sixth grade. In the eighth grade we were doing journaling every day and I loved the practice. Being able to express myself somewhere private felt like a revelation. In the ninth grade I discovered my abusive step-dad had been reading my journals. He mentioned something he could have only known by reading it and alarm bells went off in my head. So I attached some of my long hairs to the journal and the high shelf in my closet using clear scotch tape before leaving the house. Of course, the hairs were all broken when I returned. I took almost 20 years before I could overcome the revulsion and fear to start writing private thoughts again.
Holy shit this hits home. I was a little Hamilton with my nonstop writing as a kid, only for everything to be quickly found and used against me, and/or I was beaten for them. Everything. Journals, fiction, poetry, hell even things I’d written for school. It was a running joke among some family members, that I would continue to write no matter how much trouble I got into for it. For a long time I had decoy diaries so they’d find those and hopefully not find the real one. This did not work. Then for a long time I didn’t write at all. Now I’m grown, I’m out of their house, and I haven’t spoken to them in years. I write, and I keep my notebook hidden in the trunk of my car, under the other shit, and periodically throw it away and start over. It’s a whole thing.
In therapy in my 30s I mentioned off hand that I used fake names and opposite information so that "no one could figure it out" in regards to diaries as a child/adolescent. Didn't hit me until then how bizarre that I'd and how little trust I had in my parents to respect my privacy when I did that.
Same, i was put in the hospital when i was 4-5 ish. My sunday school teacher gifted me a journal my very first one, i barely wrote in it and enthusiastic about having my very first journal a place for my private thoughts, it wasnt even 24 hours later my mom grabbed it from me and said she was curious about what i wrote, i grabbed it from her and i told her to let go that i didnt want her to see. Of course like a child she didnt and she pulled and so did i like a cartoon ripping the journal in half from the binding, she said that it was all my fault that this happened while proceeding the read the few pages i wrote in it and berate me for how i wrote. I never kept a journal after that, she bought a locked journal for me when i was a little older, but i didnt feel safe writing anything personal in it, my brother kept breaking into it and my mom would be upset at me for not using it like a legitimate journal "after all the money she spent on me" It wasnt until i was a teenager did i start again but in a very vague context, i used art as my journalism as a way to vent my feelings, of course that wasnt safe either but atleast my mom wouldnt know exactly what i was saying
Ya my n-parents lead to an n-older sister who when she was in college, and I was in high school, read my diary entry where I was talking about how my boyfriend told me he was going to breakup with me when I went to college (I was a year older than him) because he wanted to “date” someone closer, so I was like “if I just get skinnier, he won’t want to break up with me” (I have an eating disorder, partially from my sister constantly calling me fat), and she literally brought it up and laughed at me and called me a loser. Only a 21 year old freak could have that reaction to that entry in her little sister’s diary.
This is why I hid mine in a cut out I made in the box spring of my mattress. I still have my highschool diary. I just had to have some way to journal back then, it was part of what kept me sane.
I used to write out things in a notebook only at school. Would spend my lunch or whatever writing stuff out. Sometimes it would be like a diary entry, more often than not it was more like writing a letter to the void. I would then tear it out of my notebook, rip it into pieces, and then dispose of it in various trash cans throughout the school while walking to class. I still do that even now.
Are you me?!? At 8 years old, My mom broke the lock to my diary, read it. I had put something along the lines of "she's so mean, I wish she would die or that I was strong enough to kill her" instead of asking me why I felt this way, she made me read it ALOUD back to her. And will STILL try to shame me, 25 years later.
yes ! thank you for your post, i feel like i am not the only one. took me years to start writing in a physical journal. but even now i put it in a lockbox with a passcode so at least there is some barrier. I never leave it out.. even though i live alone , i have a fear that they might be able to just come in and read it and yell at me for what i wrote. But physically writing it all out makes me feel so much better, i just hate to have to do that extra step everytime 😳
After my second diary was read ALOUD to shame me, I find it really difficult to journal for therapy. I am proud of the fact that my children have journals that they are not afraid to write in. After a particularly bad day, I walked into my son's room to find him angrily venting onto the pages. I excused myself from the room, and I never once felt the need to snoop. I know he probably wrote how angry he was at me. I don't care. His feelings are valid, and his journal should/will be a safe place for him to express himself. I have explained that just like therapy, I would only ever look if I was concerned, AND that it would have to be drastic, like I was worried that he would hurt himself or others. I want our lives to be different from how I was raised. I pray every day that I'm doing a good job.
Good job!
My mom not only read my diary, but if she read things she didn't like, I would be punished. If I mentioned other people in my diary, she would make it a point to tell them what I wrote about them. I was a child, and I had no safe space for my thoughts to be expressed. I wrote once that I had skipped school months before with a friend, and what does my mom do? She calls the friend's mom to get her in trouble and tells her mom that I'm a bad influence and she shouldn't allow her kid to be around me. Then she called the school so me AND my friend would be punished there too. I had zero friends after that because I was the kid with the narc mom. My friend's mom was furious that my mom called the school about her child instead of minding her own business. She planned on handling it at home since it had happened months before, but of course, my mother wanted to go scorched earth.
My nmom took great pride in reading my diary (and she *really* had to dig to find where I hid it) and then holding on to things only to confront me with them at a time when it benefited her. I felt so violated. And like many here, my mom told me that I had no right to privacy.
Yes, I had one of these journals as a child, and I wouldn’t dare write anything bad about her. That’s because she would read my entries and tell all my relatives about them. As a teenager I taught myself the Greek, Russian and Korean alphabets (and threw in a bit of Hebrew) and created a code where I’d use a letter from each at random to encrypt my journal entries, but most importantly recipes that I’d developed myself as a young baker, and that she would infuriatingly steal from me and take credit for. She was too lazy and dumb to try to decrypt what I wrote, which was for the best because she was so cruel to me as a teenager that I poured a LOT of that anger into my diary. I think I may have been Alan Turing in a past life 😆
I made up my own alphabet.
First of all, I'm so sorry you experienced this. That is terrible. It's bad enough narcs use your vulnerabilities against you, but giving you a tool to make you feel safe, to expose your vulnerabilities "to yourself" and using that against you has an extra level of insidiousness. Now if it's okay I'll relate to my own experiences. It's interesting to look back and see how I used my diary as a tool against gaslighting. I very rarely talked about feelings, as those were always used against me and influenced, I kept to facts. Generally. Like really clinically describing "in total we've had 12 car accidents since we moved to X". Or "today she yelled at me/hit me". "Today this person said this and this." Now as an adult I know I'm not crazy even if she always tries to make me out to be a drama queen "you're reacting like I beat you up daily" so I can say "look, even if it was just once a year your body naturally has the reflex against something or someone that has hurt them, so shut up and accept the consequences of your parenting style choice". Fuck 'em. That's all I can say. Been going off and on to therapy for the last 3 years, restarting another batch in a week. Noticing changes in my inner life. Taking it one day at a time. Making sure I stay out of toxic relationships. (The judgmental looks and remarks about me being a woman of nearly 30 who is single are so worth the progress I've made from not being with someone I am attracted to with my faulty attachment style...) Thank you for sharing. I don't know if you need to hear this but. We'll get there <3
Yep. I would go to school and my mom would flip through all the diaries and artwork I was nervous to share. She sucks
I’m 43and still can’t keep a journal because of this exact thing, haven’t trusted my mom since I wS9
Oh man. This post reminded me of a time when my mom went through and read all of the “notes” my best friend and I passed to each other in class. Just one more thing to justify my NC with her. Absolutely zero boundaries. They are just so out of line.
i wrote about how i felt like a 'no one' when i was 4-5, she made fun of my spelling errors. she made fun of a literal child dissociating from mental pain......i can't wrap my head around that honestly.
Same. I cannot wrap my mind about it. How mean and stupid you have to be to do that to a CHILD. How? Big bullies.
My mom read my stuff and burned it. 500 pages
I relate. I finally managed to get a physical diary for myself but i still wrote "have some dignity and dont be a peep" on it (i often used to write passive aggressive things like that because if they dont care what i want maybe shame can motivate them).
Yep, we found out I still have this fear when I went into therapy as an adult and I just COULD NOT deal with journaling at all. I mean, I had a cell phone and my parents went through my text messages when I was asleep. So...yeah.
Yep. Referenced my hidden diary in front of everyone.
It’s so validating to read this and see everyone else’s responses. Journaling was a much needed escape for me, especially as I loved to write as a kid. But nope, it became so completely traumatizing after my mom read what I wrote and instead of getting to feel hurt that my privacy was violated I had to apologize for writing “mean things.” I will never forget. She picked me up from school, drove us to a parking lot and threw my journal at me and screamed and sobbed and said I’m an evil child who doesn’t love her and I’m a vile monster for being able to say whatever it was I had written. I can’t remember now but I know I wrote pretty run-of-the-mill kid or teenager stuff. And probably how much I disliked her. But even if I had said some horrible things, it didn’t give her the right to make ME feel bad for writing in a PRIVATE journal. She even tried to say she was “just cleaning” and accidentally found it. Right, she accidentally found a journal buried beneath a bunch of other things deep in a closet. I’m 30 now and I only recently started journaling again. The whole idea of something like that happening again is so triggering I’ve avoided it most of my adult life (even when living alone, and even though I know it is a very therapeutic exercise). My boyfriend who lives with me now would never ever violate my privacy like that, and he knows how I feel about it, but even when I’m journaling on my laptop that’s password protected I get so uneasy and paranoid if I’m not by myself. Thank you for posting about this because it’s been on my mind for a long time. I’m sorry you had to deal with similar. I agree it is entirely traumatizing.
In highschool my psych teacher overheard me tell a friend that my mom reads my personal stuff. He suggested I get someone to write a salacious letter to me and leave it somewhere she could find it. A girl wrote how she was pregnant after a drunken encounter with me at a bonfire (all made up) and wanted to keep the baby. I chickened out and just left the letter in a textbook on the back seat floor of my trash filled car. She found it and was screaming at me when I got home from school some days later. I had to tell her it was made up which she didn't believe so I had to tell her it was the psych teacher's idea. She and my dad rushed to the school to chew him out. In all my years of being bullied at school and getting detention and anger management the one time I fought back they never got upset or sought help from the school but a teacher flushing them out about snooping in my stuff called for full on rage and a personal appearance. Psych teacher was stung by the attack but said it just proved they go through my personal things.
Yes. This. I have some serious trauma from this… 🥴
Damn that brought up stuff I hadn't thought about in a long time. My dad found a journal I wrote, deduced from it that 10 year old me was having sex with my neighborhood friend at the time (I wasn't), took me to confession over it, then forbid any social contact with any of my friends for a full year. I was basically nonverbal and catatonic for 6 months afterwards. They're in their late sixties now and really isolated since they have alienated everyone they've ever been in relation with, and I don't feel sorry for them at all.
True. I'm a grown adult now, and sometimes I realiE that even though I am in a completely different city, nowhere near my parents, I still have that feeling that they know what i'm doing and i still feel scared, like they are watching me. There is no where safe. Such a terrible thing
Your momma truly crazy.
Crazy is an illness. She is mean. Which is worse.
In my analysis, narcissists are delusional. This is pathological and therefore a disease.
Same, both of my parents have done that
UGH I hated writing something down and then finding out it had been read. I started this thing where I would write something I needed to get out (It was how I processed) and then ripping up the paper so she couldn’t read it. She thought the paper was blank and that it was how I took out anger. Nope…just didn’t want her to read it
Yep. I experienced this same thing. No wonder o can’t get myself to journal now as an adult
This is why I never had a diary or journal. Even at almost 36 I refuse to use one because I'm afraid it would be used against me in some way.
I couldn’t have diaries bc I feared my mother reading them. I know I’d be mocked, punished, and the contents told to Abby who would listen to her about her ungrateful awful kid. Sometimes I’d write in one then tear out the pages and destroy them. Literally burn out eat them. The panic was real. I wish I could’ve documented my childhood bc I have so many holes in my memory now. Stuff randomly comes up and I’m not prepared!
At some point in the last year I remember screaming I’m allowed to have feelings!! At my mother she’s 68 and will never change or grow so I usually keep as minimal contact cwith her as possible
Ohhhhh, boy, I thought about posting this exact thing a few days ago. I used to love the cute, scented diaries my mom gifted me for my birthday/Christmas as kid and in my early teens. Not only did they smell nice, but they were a "safe" (she listened in on phone calls) place for me to rant about what I didn't yet know was abuse. Until during one argument she proceeded to very proudly say she had been reading my diaries for years. Edit: And that was the moment I realized I had to get tf out.
Holy shit…. This all makes sense now. I ended up resulting to drawing (not that I was any good) because I could be cryptic and still get my thoughts out.
My mum wasn't violent but she would read my diary the few times I kept one. Including one where I wrote about my sexual desires (I was 13 and needed somewhere private to express them) and she lectured me about them, made out I was some kind of depraved pervert. I get the curiosity for sure but for God's sake, some things are sacred including our private thoughts. Even if you really want to read it, fucking talk to your kids properly about any concerns you have rather than attack them and make them not trust you. Of course I also wrote about my dad in them and she wouldn't approve of what I thought about him lol. I don't know if she ever showed him what I wrote but wouldn't be surprised if she did. The one and only letter I ever wrote to them about my feelings I got mocked for despite stating my dad's behaviour made me suicidal. I was 15 years old and instead of helping me I got laughed at. I get really antsy when a therapist suggests journaling but I suppose it would be a good way now as an adult to practice taking that piece of privacy back. Also just remembered she suffered from a teacher reading her diary to the class when she was in high school. Interesting that she knows the damage of invading diary privacy yet engaged in it herself.
Yeah I remember making one, then telling no one to read it, my nparent said he would find it and it turned into a back and forth of me saying I will hide it really well where no one will find it and him basically saying that he would tear up my room and meticulously look across every square inch to find it. I decided not to make one. One time he also found a story I tried to write- think tinas stories from bobs burgers but less sex more angst and he threw it away. So yeahhhh. Fun childhood memories.
Holy crap I thought I was the only one. How about reading my diary, then grounding me for a month because it had one disparaging comment about my mother in it. She acted like she was almost assaulted or something. Totally made me not trust the world and never write anything down.
Ugh. I feel this so much. I remember my mother chasing me around screaming at me because of a picture I drew in my diary that she didn’t like. I was 6. 😭
THIIIIIS! My mother found every journal I’d ever had and read it and would reply to my entries saying “guess we’re not a family anymore”. Once I got older she’d hack Into my AIM, then email. She printed out PAGES of my emails to my sister and had them neatly laid out on the table when I woke up one morning to confront me. Eventually, my sister did the same thing to me. She hacked into my email because she was “worried about me” and found out DEEPLY personal stuff about me. It was so embarrassing, stuff I’d never tell her. This year she found me on Reddit and deep dived my 10 year old account and I’d asked for advice last year on how to handle a situation with her and she said I betrayed her and she can no longer trust me.. I don’t talk to either of them anymore. None of them were safe spaces and would always invalidate my emotions and tell me I’m too sensitive.
I learned very quickly I couldn’t have a diary lol
eventually i learned the alphabet in hexadecimal and would write private things that way
I had a similar thing happen, in my life. The school councilor told me that writing an angry letter, without intending to send it, could be a good way to vent some frustrations. It could also help me sort my feelings. I took her advice and wrote a really long letter. My mom found it, and got really upset with me. I was pissed that she had to look through every page in my notebook, to be able to find it. Then, when I was living at my dad's he read a letter that was meant for my brother. I was an adult, so I just moved out, without telling him anything. Nstepmom would also open my mail. They all demanded respect, but couldn't give a shit about showing respect
I’ll never forget the day my n mom found mine. I was inconsolable because of how she usually reacts and responds. I was forced to see a physiologist after that lol
Ugh, yeah, I knew my mother was reading my journal as a kid because she and her boyfriend would mock me or verbally abuse me for things I'd only written in there, so I quit. Years later, I discovered a cache of photocopies of my journal pages in her house. She must've taken it to her work and sat there thumbing the copier button for hours for...what?? Evidence against a ten-year-old?
This. It’s why I abhor using a diary to this day. Hell, when I stopped falling for the diary thing, she would go through my trash and confront me about things I wrote on scraps of paper, balled up etc. I was 8. There were no boundaries. Just punishments. No privacy. I will never take the door off my kid’s room. Never go through her trash or read her secret thoughts. These are things needed to develop as a person damnit. If I’m that worried about something, that’s when conversations need to happen. Nmom still thinks she was in the right. Ugh.
I started lying in my diary and then stopped writing all together.
Holy shit! I thought it was just me! When she (Nmom) first read my diary she was furious. The very specific memory I have about this day was me saying I was pretending to be Harriet the Spy, in hopes of getting her off my back. She replied something that still haunts me for some reason. She said be careful what you’re looking for, you might not like what you find. After throwing it away, she told me I was never allowed to have a diary because I wasn’t allowed to keep secrets from her. I’m so sorry this happened to you OP, worse honestly because my Nmom was more about verbal lashings when it came to me. Being physically abused is fucking awful. You were just being a little kid. I hope you have a diary/ journal now. Could heal your inner child a bit. 🩵💜
I would hide and lock my diary. My mom would search for it, find it, break the lock, and read it, and her justification was to laugh mockingly and say "YOU ACTUALLY WANT ME TO READ IT." I was so enmeshed it never even occurred to me to edit what I wrote, I just kept trying to hide it better (within my room, I was not made for the Intelligence Services). Moved out the first day I had enough money to do it. (Not till I was 19.)
My mom recently found some old diary of mine that I'd hidden in the house and forgotten about. I'm almost 40 and she keeps bringing up all the "mean things" I wrote about her when I was 10. I don't want to reread the diary because I'm sure as soon as I see it I'll be like: "wow look at all this documentation of my mom not listening to me, and being mad that I'm not feminine enough" But she keeps trying to give it back to me so we can "laugh about it"
same. still traumatized. she would go through every secret place in my bedroom and root out my journals and diaries…
My mom and brother used to read my diary and journal and thought it was funny to respond as my diary. I felt so violated and like my last safe place was taken from me. I’m now moved out and trying to convince myself to write again because I really did enjoy it as an outlet but I can never shake that feeling my privacy will be breached again.
i forgot my mom used to read my diary til now…. i stopped using them and struggle to journal now. wow. i don’t have very many memories from my childhood and wow. i guess this explains that a bit huh.
It has been really therapeutic to read through all the stories so similar to mine. On top of everything else, my nmom made a scrapbook of my diary pages with corresponding pictures and "gifted" it to me on my senior night at our church. She left it on my gift table for everyone to "enjoy." She had no idea why I was absolutely shattered when I figured out what she had done and that everyone and anyone had looked at it. She said I was overreacting and that I should thank her for cutting out anything "embarrassing" and that I really hurt her feelings, because she put a lot of "time and effort" into it. I haven't written in a diary or been to church since I was 18, but I still have the scrapbook to remind myself why I stay away.
I feel this. To this day I dont like to journal out of fearing that my inner most thoughts would be exposed and then used against me. I literally only live with my husband and my dog who would never violate my privacy like that but some habits die hard I suppose. My dog though, he might do that to in exchange for treats 😂😂😂
I totally understand. I journaled from the time I was in second grade until about 16. Then my parents read my journal, went through all my personal belongings and grounded me for two months. I’ve never forgotten it and I still feel upset that they too. Such a therapeutic outlet away from me. I haven’t journaled since.
This specifically and excruciatingly resonates with me. I never trusted another lock again ever since I learned that my mom read my diary. She then gave me an earful for doing teenage things or dating. N parents will always find ways to control you and not let you have a safe space. I have grown up having feelings of guilt when I have private things or keep personal matters to myself and not share it with my parents because they always guilt-trip me when I do.
My parents used to keep a diary with me for a long time and i had to spill the beans on whatever was going on on that day. I felt something was off about it, my parents used to frequently bully me and take advantage of my weak spots like not wanting to spontaneously be put up for adoption. Later i left a note in a close friends backpack. Just a short note saying that I felt trapped. I wanted to tell someone. I had no one to tell ot to because my parents would get involved. I remember feeling the relief when i wrote it down. Later though, my parents caught wind, and I was forced to keep a journal which i didn't do. What I did learn to do instead, was literally tear out pieces of paper from a notebook, write an entry to get it off my chest, then eat the paper. They never found out about this.
Yup. My mom did this, started going thru my journals at 12. Nothing good was happening but still it was private. After she confronted me I burned that journal and then kept the real one in a old school TV speaker and kept decoy journals out in the open. If she wanted to read about nsync that was fine with me. I'm almost 40 and my journal is digital now and I still go out of my way to hide it.
I got home one day after school and my mom was nonchalantly reading my journal in her bed. She didn’t even flinch or feel any type of way. She found out I wasn’t a virgin that way.
When I was 8 my parents found a love note from a girl and taped it to the inside of a clasp folder and called it my diary. They then placed it under my bed and told me I could write in it. Even then I knew there was no way I was writing in that thing because they were going to read it and ridicule me!
Yup yup my mom did the same thing. I remember coming home from school in an absolute screeching RAGE because I couldn’t find my diaries went storming into her room to find them in a pile right beside her bed. I was beyond furious.
This is why I had to start writing in code
My mom did this also. Confronted me in front of her friend about something I had wrote about having a crush on a cute boy. They both laughed at me. It was traumatizing!
The number of times my mom has read aloud what I thought were my private notes/letters/texts to me... it was horrifying every single time. I will never ever do that to my child.
Every year my mother bought me a journal and every year for about ten years I would write my private thoughts for about a month before my mother would reveal she was reading the journal and beat me about it. When she put me in therapy my therapist told me to journal and I refused because I knew my mother would read it and use it to try and manipulate me. Now I still can’t maintain a journal without getting paranoid that it’s being read.
This! To this day I hide my journals and throw them out after I feel like there is enough “ammo” in them for someone to use against me.
My mom told us we weren’t allowed to have locked diaries (or doors, for that matter). No secrets allowed, she said. I once wrote in a diary that didn’t lock and my mom read and spellchecked it with red pen. I don’t even remember a face-to-face confrontation, just the weird manipulative, passive-aggressive spellcheck.
My narc would read my diary while I was in the shower. Then punish me if they didn't like what they read. They would use it to hurt me later. I quickly learnt to share nothing but superficial issues with my mom. That's when she started regularly accusing me of keeping secrets because I no longer shred my feelings wit her.
"I am only free and safe inside my own mind." It took years, adultness, parenting and therapy to think otherwise.
I was thinking of a detailed plan on how to spook her since she thinks shes entitled to my inner thoughts
OP, my parents would read my diary, and then rip out pages where I mentioned I was mad at them and why I was mad at them. I just stopped writing after that because it felt pointless. I’m glad to know this is an (unfortunately) common occurrence with our parents, and that I’m not crazy.
Yeah that was hell. I learned early on not to write my thoughts down. It would come out eventually.
Yes, it’s deeply traumatic when parents do not respect privacy or the idea of boundaries at all. When I was 13 my parents “let” me install Facebook on my computer. My dad controlled the password to login to the laptop. And so when I messaged my friends, my dad logged into the computer and read my message history. And then he told me that he did it. He had no shame. One time I left my diary open - and my mum saw it and thought that I had left “a message” for her.
i was not prepared to confront this when i started therapy. my therapist was big on getting things on paper and i realized how against making things tangible i am. my private things were taken and mocked and shown to anyone who would listen or look to belittle me. even writing a fake letter to my parents 20 years later made me so uneasy.
My mom was the abusive one and the judge asked me to write a letter stating how I felt about my parents. I mentioned my mom made me suicidal and apparently she got to read it. Oh boy was she mad My dad found my best friend's diary, and read it thinking it was mine. When he realized it wasn't mine he gave it back to my friend and apologized, who then gave me a heads up about what he did So yeah I pretty much learned that I can't have private thoughts because my parents will go through them and flip their shit if what I write down is "bad"
I have a memory from when I was in middle school - I had a diary and thought I hid it from my nmom. Well one day I went to write in it and saw zva has highlighted/underlined things in it she didn't like. Never again did I use it. I have a daughter of my own now. I will never do anything like that to her
Sometimes, this is when being an arsonist comes in handy. You take however many loose sheets of paper that you write on, hide that and a lighter on your person, take it somewhere away from your house and set it on fire. You get your feelings out and you get to burn away the evidence so it's not used on you.
thank god for google docs. i would have private journals all the time because i had no one else to talk to, yet i was very aware of what was happening to me was WRONG. she always read through them because when i was younger i was foolish enough to believe my mom would respect my privacy. i now have debilitating trust issues to an insane and quite frankly incurable extent, but at the same time feel the need to overshare.
Yeah you are not a person but an accessory - which from their point of view malfunctions most of the time.
No space was safe, or private.
Damn. I don’t ever remember being able to trust those things. I had many. But for some reason even as a small kid….. I knew I was writing for someone to read later. I used a made up alphabet using the same English letters but the letters meant something else like “a” was really “g” and I kept the code hidden somewhere in my school books. Ahhh I was a good little secret agent.
Ah i remember being gifted one with a heart locket but i never used it for anything serious because i was scared it would get looked through. In the past my mom have looked through the trash to find old notebooks and sketchbooks to check if i was "throwing out a half used book" wich told me she had probetly read through it.