As soon as I have a job, I'm out of here. And next time, I'll stay in the place with vermin and filthy, negligent, endangering roommates before I move back.
I'm living with two parents who have zero empathy for me and are using me to assuage their own battered egos from a life of pain. Unfortunately, they've never realized that you can't do things like "Repeatedly force your three-year-old's head underwater in order to 'remove her fear of water,' after she almost drowned due to your own negligence" and "cross-examine daughter after she says she has been raped" and "mock and judge your daughter's appearance, diet, and mannerisms from the moment she becomes a teenager, until she develops an eating disorder--and then keep going," and somehow have these all be little things one sweeps under the rug without repercussions in the face of fairly minimal financial support.
The full situation was that she had me drive us to a restaurant. During the drive I didn't exactly do well (I am a beginner driver, but no one and nothing was damaged, so wevs), and she repeatedly snarled at me, to a point where I was having a hard time concentrating between her and the other drivers honking at me
I made a throwaway, teasy comment about being flipped off for the first time (TROLOLOLO) and she barked at me for being too sensitive, since apparently the guy hadn't done that. When we got to the place she continued to radiate sullen upsetness. She made two vague comments about the food and then stomped out, leaving me alone at the table, because I wasn't conversing (I had no idea that she had been trying to start a conversation, and it wasn't like I was ignoring her--just not actually saying anything). In the end, we ended up with the question: "Why are you avoiding talking to me?" which I responded to with: "I find it offensive and hurtful when you dismiss my opinions with 'that's not true' and end the conversation."
For what it's worth, my mom started the arguing portion of that particular argument and I had to see it to its disappointing conclusion so that she wouldn't escalate indefinitely. I was experimenting to find out what happened if I did empathize with her and give a little ground, and treat her more like a friend. I haven't raised my voice once in the past week! My goal was to get her to go from saying "that's not true" when she thinks something is incorrect, to saying "Why do you think that?" Here are some of the hilarious things she thought were more appropriate:
a. "I should instead change how I am perceiving her dismissive behavior"
b. "I should take responsibility for her dismissive behavior--it's my fault for not immediately furnishing a long enough explanation with sources, so she doesn't know if I'm dismissable or not"
c. "I should ignore her dismissive behavior because I've been a pill for a really long time"
d. "I should ignore her dismissive behavior because she paid a lot of money when I was a kid and that should be enough to purchase my compliance"
e. "I should let her decide whether my feelings about her dismissive behavior are valid or not"
f. "Accuse me of silencing her by not permitting her to dismiss me (I said it was fine if she didn't change her mind or take my opinion on faith, I just wanted to be spoken to differently)"
g. "Attack the representative example of her dismissive behavior as unimportant"
h. "Derail the conversation over and over and over again to how my being un-interactive/avoidant has hurt her feelings, after I had already addressed that and sympathized with her multiple times"
i. "Accuse me of never putting any effort into the relationship, unlike her, which therefore means that she has had to change too much and it is now my turn (I had already changed my behavior multiple times within the same conversation to comply with requests)"
j. "Accuse me of saving up an emotional 'bill' from years and years ago and now forcing her to pay it in order to have a positive relationship (I did not bring up any old behaviors, only this one ongoing one I witness maybe five times a week, which in and of itself makes me not want to talk to her)"
k. "Derail to arguing that 'I need time by myself,' or otherwise taking quiet time, is a power play/shunning/trying to force her to change her behavior rather than discussing openly"
l. "Tell me I'm trying to make the conversation all about me and that I can't blame her for my problems all the time"
This is just a start, by the way. It was an extremely long and aggravating discussion.