APBYG – I don’t know if it’s a matter of winning as much as of minimizing your losses. I decided that enduring criticism for not bringing friends over was preferable to being degraded and humiliated in front of my friends. That way at least I was controlling what my peers knew – choosing to keep my peers out, rather than them witnessing the abuse and my feeling rejected because they didn’t want to be around her either. And how could I blame them? I never studied with friends until college!
Saysme – “people assume every time she sees her mother, her mother yells at her. that her entire pesach is going to be misery with not a moment of peace.” This was my life. Even when there was no yelling, I was constantly on guard because I never knew when it WOULD start. It is terrifying and exhausting to be a teenager trapped in this situation. You don’t understand unless you’ve been there. Even my (future) husband didn’t believe that “someone could be THAT bad” until he met her. He was shaken to the core and would brace himself when we’d see her. We almost never see her now, and when we do she tones it down – at least in front of me – I think because she knows I don’t fear her anymore, and I will defend my children from her without a second thought.