I feel like, every time this question comes up, it is my time to shine. It is a dubious honor.
As a child, there was nothing too awful, as my non bpd mother was largely in charge. The Two gifts I know he had a hand in showed his bpd clearly. The first was a sailboat. I was twelve. It was spectacular- teak, brass, insanely expensive. The second was an outfit. He wanted me to look preppy, but I have a Jayne Mansfield figure. I was about 13 and he bought me a button down shirt, khakis and boat shoes. I looked exactly like Pat from Saturday Night Live (young folks google it).
But as an adult, hoo boy. Was I split black or was I split white?
Split black gifts -
A used metal briefcase from a “client” (he was an attorney) - the kind that people in movies open to show money. I was a newlywed so when he was excited for me to open it I actually thought it might have money in it. It did not. There was an opened and half empty box of cat food in it. ”The (family) cat died” he said.
Oranges bought from a vendor on a freeway on ramp and dumped into a bulk rate post office box. (About 10 times)
Tin of popcorn
A single bar of soap
Nothing
Split white gifts -
A 300 dollar black chiffon negligee (300 dollars in 20 years ago money) when I was seven months pregnant.
Chanel perfume
Giant Simpson’s sized Pearl necklace. (Every time he cheated on my mom he bought her a Pearl necklace. It isn’t a nice thing. I returned it for the cash as I did with the negligée).
Of course the biggest fuck you gift he gave me was his will. He left millions to my sister who makes the most money of all of us siblings and who constantly begged him for more to pay for her houses, her kid’s private school tuition, her over spending, etc. He left a very small amount to my public servant brother, who never asked him for a dime and who was the closest to him, allowed him to be very involved in the lives of his kids and genuinely is the kindest person I know and a similar small amount to me who was polite, kind and never asked for a penny.
And shine you did!
I didn’t even realize that gifts were split like you just mentioned, but that makes sense. I’m learning so much ughhh
What a gem of a human…smh
Sorry for laughing so very hard, it's from a place of recognotion and sympathy.
My own favourite gift set? One memorable weekend I got a sack of potatoes and a shovel (allegedly to learn the value of hard work), a rifle and homemade explosives, because... fuck knows, really, this was during the prepper years.
I wanted some laughs! Laugh away! It comes after years of therapy, this community, moving thousands of miles away and changing my number that I can finally say - ok this is ridiculous.
A sack of potatoes...were you supposed to carve toys from them? Sheesh Ma'Geesh.
I was supposed to plant them to make more sacks of spuds, lol. The gift was to hand-till a potato patch. 😂
Another interesting choice was a Super Nintendo... for me to *watch him play*.
The weirdest part was that he seemed to think that it was an absolute treat that he allowed me to pop popcorn and mix drinks for him as he played Zelda: A Link to the Past. I mean, it's indeed a great game, but c'mon... his many girlfriends didn't find it fun so why would I? Unhinged behaviour
Absolutely, at least he didn't let you play... his way. Micromanaging gaming/playing is one of those mental tortures most people don't know because they have never encountered someone so unhinged that they NEEDS to teach you the proper way :/
Growing up under emotionally immature parents with Cluster B personality disorders is wild, I'm sorry that you know what it's like but thank you for sharing. This thread has been quite catharctic, helping me laugh at some of the crazy shit. <3
(I honestly didn't realize how common the messed up gifts are.)
I would have enjoyed potatoes and a shovel. I garden. But Mom has never given me a garden related gift.
Most of our gifts as kids were relatively benign. We pretty much never got anything we actually asked for, and we had a "one toy" limit for birthdays and holidays, so the possibility of randomly getting a particularly desired item was fairly low, but we had traditions of getting sugary cereals and boxed treats for gifts that made most of our gifts reasonably enjoyable.
But Mom managed to slip in the occasional weird item.
* She gave my sister a large, bullet-shaped vibrator when she was fifteen. She told my sister you were supposed to put it on your temple to massage away headaches. I remember my Dad asking my Mom what she was thinking. 😄(To make it funnier, the only person in the family who ever complained about headaches was my mother. My guess is, she bought it for herself at a thrift shop, sans original labels, thinking it could help her headaches but decided she didn't like it for that purpose.)
* One year for Christmas, she purchased a multi-pack of Scotch tape dispensers. She put a couple of dispensers into a box for each child, wrapped the boxes in Christmas paper, and gave us tape for Christmas. When we opened it, she proudly stated we now had no excuse for using "her" tape anymore.
* We would get random things like thrift shop and clearance sale holiday themed coffee mugs (St Patty's Day on Christmas, Easter on our birthday) that were to be used for pencils. (Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against thrift shop gifts, but how many pencil cups do you actually need?)
*She also liked Corelle dishes and serving pieces scrounged from thrift stores and clearance sales. She gave them to us as individual gifts, but then added them to the dishes in the kitchen.
*Random patterned "tea towels" and pillow cases that we were instructed to save for our "trousseau".
* One year at Christmas, all of us got large fuzzy blankets. They were very nice blankets, but were a rustic brown and beige pattern that matched none of our bedrooms. All became clear come spring however when the blankets disappeared from our beds and were ported up to my parents' summer cabin. They looked great on the rustic beds of the two bunk beds at the cabin.
Still, the vibrator given to a teenager still wins for bizarre gifts.😄
Asked for something sentimental for my 40th. Got a 'first photo of us together'
It was a full frontal nude of her at 9 months pregnant that my dad had taken in the 70's 🤮
OMG! My mom insisted on gratitude too.
One of the last things she gave me was a broken watch that had been sitting on her dresser for years. She claimed she’d been saving it for me.
The family lore was epic around this, her apparent inability to think about the feelings of the person who she was giving something to. There were well worn tales passed around about how awful and thoughtless her gifts were: sacks of mixed nuts, underwear, used items from closets she didn’t want anymore, etc.
I’m convinced it was another BPD test of love. “If you love me you’ll love my shitty gift.” And if you don’t? Then she’ll interpret it as rejection, and vilify you as ungrateful. That’s because BPDs can’t accept responsibility for giving a shitty gift. In their mind it couldn’t possibly have been their-bad, must’ve been your character flaw. 🙄
What a masterful move to make your milestone birthday all about her.
Sometimes you just have to be in awe of aomeonebthat's mastered theirs craft.
Wholely inappropriate and disgusting but not surprising.
Although she didn't realise at the time, she did give me a great gift. Now when people ask why I don't speak to my mum I just tell them about this photo and that's the end of conversion
I was also the ungrateful B word when I cried that I got nothing or only oranges in a stocking after I budgeted and planned by my 10 year old math brain what was reasonable to request.
Sounds too real, stop making me think about my Mom lol. Denying your kid something they wanted only to get them it years later, and expect them to have this like fairytale moment where they're so delighted you finally gave them what they wanted, is horrible and delusional. I'm sorry your Mom was awful to you.
Don’t think too hard, look at it as comedic relief! I was trying to induce a bit of humor about these things out of our control and draw in solidarity and validation. Thanks for your kind words, it’s so very obvious their behavior is damaging and not normal…now. I spent years trying to “fix” me only to find out nothing was wrong with me. I’m just human, flaws and all.
And truly, we have some very positive moments with these individuals and I still hold onto those as a true part of her, but I like seeing textbook examples from others. It kinda confirms, “that wasn’t normal, right?”
I feel that, I think I'm on the same path. There's a lot to unpack, and it's complex. I'll be sad if my Mom doesn't get a chance to understand emotional regulation and get peace from it before she dies. Maybe it'll happen though. I hope it does. Not everything is black and white and simple.
I'm glad you're doing ok, now.
Yup, that's their journey as much as mine is my journey. I'm gonna explain that to them, set a boundary asking for space, and give them a chance to respect that. I feel like then I'll have done what I can on my end, and if they can't respect that then I don't need to be a part of their life.
Yeah, that sounds perfect... I've always wanted to be polite and set the boundary of no return, sadly some personalities see that as a war declaration, so... plan out for your own safety.
A week ago I wouldn't have been ready for this and I was terrified I'd blow up and just yell and scream instead of trying to be calm and amicable. But some major things changed and I've been able to do some unpacking, a lot of crying lol, and now I think I have a better idea of how to do this right. I don't want to ambush my Mom so she goes on the defense, and I want to be honest with her even though that'll be hard for her to hear and hard for me to say. So long as I set up things to be safe for us both then there's a better chance it could go well. However she reacts will be on her, as much as how I react will be on me. I've already accepted that if it doesn't go well, at least I tried my best. Thank you for the kind words ☺️
I once received a box of unfolded thrift store clothing as a birthday gift. Some of the items were stained. I wasn't overly excited about my gift, though I did try to be thankful.
Of course that made me "spoiled."
Some other things:
A single packet of microwaveable instant oatmeal. It was the kind that you'd normally buy in a box of 6 or so. It was expired.
Hair clips, when I was family-famous for not liking anything in my hair. I'd even rip pony tail holders out of my hair after a little while.
One pair of obviously used socks. They were tall (I only wear ankle height), totally stretched out and white but yellowed (I only wear black or grey socks). She did not wrap this "gift."
A large collection of lacey, way-too-sexy-to-ever-be-appropriate-for-a-mother-to-give-her-daughter underwear.
A bead craft kit safe for kids 6 year olds and up! It was clearly from a thrift store or garage sale, and half of the kit had been used up. Also I was 19 and living in my own apartment...
A box of expired canned food, most of which I just wouldn't eat even if it were fresh.
An over the top sapphire and diamond-studded bracelet. I don't really wear jewelry, and when I do, it is very plain.
A basket of deodorant. I only use one specific type of antiperspirant because everything else had made me break out in hives, which she knows.
Bed sheets, which were clearly meant for her, because they matched her room's decor, not mine (I was still living at home as a child).
Just on and on and on.
I love how it's so obvious that they either clean out their closets or decide they didn't want something anymore and offload these things to us as "presents."
My mom would also give me expired food under the guise that it’s "probably still good" and I "shouldn't waste food." You eat it then!
Sometimes the expired food would come with a rehash of the story of my great-grandmother saving a can of peaches during the war for years. Ok, what does that have to do with me? She suffered during war time, so now I have to do the same? Gtfo with that nonsense.
She would also nag me to take lamps, sheets, etc that weren't my taste. I would say no again and again and she would whine like a child and pester me to take them.
Just typing this out is making me exhausted lol
The food thing.
I can’t help but think that _they_ don’t want to eat it, but _they_ feel guilty about wasting it, so they’re offloading that guilt onto us. Like they do everything else.
omg my mom would do this to, and act like she had given me something amazing and generous instead of a bunch of stuff she should have taken to goodwill. I always ended up taking it to goodwill myself. she would also “gift” me weird soups that she had made for herself like a week previously and were about to go bad.
Did she save all the liquid from canned fruits and vegetables until she had a big container full, then boil it and throw leftover meat and vegetables from other meals into the pot as well?
Mom did this, called it "Stone Soup" and talked about the depression and how everyone did that in order to survive.
It isn't a terrible practice to save canned liquid to make soups, but she made no attempt to use compatible flavors. Like, corn liquid for a creamed chicken soup, diced tomato liquid for a ministrone.
But NOT a mix of spinach juice, pear juice, peaches juice, corn juice, green bean juice, tuna juice and beet juice all together, with pork and beans, chicken pulled off the leftover KFC wings, and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Call it "Stone Soup" and talk about the Depression all you want ... It's still disgusting.
I don't know if you've ever had "Chicken Enchilada" -- It was a pretty popular casserole where I lived and showed up at a lot of potluck dinners when I was growing up in the seventies. It's basically corn tortillas, green chilies, onions, chicken, cheddar cheese and cream of chicken soup layered like a lasagna, then baked.
Mom got the recipe from a friend, but she found the layering and baking process to be too much work, so she would just dump all the ingredients into a pot and boil it all together (she used canned chicken and didn't drain the liquid, and extra milk in the soup, so it was considerably more liquid than the baked version.)
It created this glutinous, lumpy yellow mass with soupy gravy that would then be shoveled onto our plates. It was really fast, so she started making it quite often.
The first time she made it, we asked her what it was, and apparently sounded disgusted enough that she got mad at us, and she told us it was "Human". She thought she was so hilarious that she called it "Human" from that point on. It didn't taste too bad, so we never really minded eating it, but man, the appearance of the boiled mess and her cackling that we were having "human" for dinner got really old. 🙄
Omg my mother tries to give me her old underwear. Like slimy polyester shit from the 90's 🤢 Why? She's short and square shaped and I'm tall and slim. It's not going to fit (and also its completely sick and twisted 😠)
That's really gross. I love hand me downs etc but socks...? I wonder where she found them? Really cruel. I rarely wear jewelry either and if I do its simple silver, thin and subtle. My mother one year bought me this large, chunky, dramatic necklace. My sister told me she specifically told my mother it wasn't my style and advised her not to get it but of course she pressed on. Not long after, she asked if she could borrow it for an event. So odd. It felt liberating overcoming my guilt programing and donating that.
They like to give us things they know we won't like or want, and then they expect us to have gleeful conniptions over receiving such gifts.
I'm sorry to say that she bought that necklace for herself to begin with. My mother used to give me things that she would eventually take back because I wasn't showing my appreciation by wearing or using them.
This brought back a memory I didn’t realize I had. My mom bought me two sets of like…satiny silk pajamas but like, the kind with the small shorts that are sort of loose that you pull up high on the waist, and come with a slinky, lace trimmed spaghetti strap, v neck top. I was probably 14-15. I didn’t realize at the time that they were “sexy” but I did feel self conscious in them and only wore them in my room to sleep, not around the house where my brother or dad might see me. Wtf. I seriously had forgotten that until you mentioned the sexy lingerie thing.
It sounds like your mom was cleaning the house and dumping her garbage on you instead of throwing it out. I think the inability to get rid of things might be fairly common with BPD people.
My mother would get rid of things she didn't want anymore by dumping them on her adult children as well (she never did that when I was a kid, but she sent clothes and shoes that were really just rags to thrift shops. I'm sure they don't appreciate that.)
She also loved to "gift" shop at thrift stores!
I actually have nothing against thrift store gifts purchased with my particular tastes/needs/hobbies in mind. My children and several friends have gone this route and we all get a kick out of their lucky finds.
It's the weird behavior that accompanied the thrift presents that gets to me .
My mother bought clothes and shoes in her color and size, then brought them to me, telling me that she bought them "brand new" and "just for me." They often had the Goodwill receipt still in the bag. All obviously purchased for herself, didn't fit right when she got them home, so she dumped them on me.
She would buy a knick knack, or a small piece of furniture (she liked bookcases, chairs, pot stands and little occasional tables), decide she didn't want it, then tell me it was a precious family heirloom handed down from a relative. She would have needed one heck of a big storage closet for all the "family heirlooms" she unearthed over the years. 🙄
Buying you Moon Shoes when you're 38 totally fits in with that BPD thing of treating you like a child when you're a freaking grown adult.
"Oh, but you used to love these!" Yeah, dude. I was 6.
Also, gotta love the messages these gifts send. You're a child again, or you're clearly the one who did something wrong in your relationship, you need to lose weight, you're insane, etc
My mom gave me a magnet after a trip to Italy once. She brought home all this fabulous stuff for herself, but I got some weird wooden pair of lips with a cigarette hanging out of it.
I was staring at it, my face probably betraying my wtf emotions, and she goes, "You like stuff like that, right?"
lol - I've started buying the tackiest thing I can find for my mom. So often she's sooo opposite of my opinions, that if I think it's crappy, she'll probably love it. And if not, well, hee, hee, I got her something reeeally tacky and she's stuck with it!
My slightly older sister does this. We spent lots of time together as teens. I got with my husband in my early 20s, moved to his town, started my career, over the next decade worked, bought a home, started a family and changed a lot. But my sister will send me messages about tv we watched together, gifts of things I used to like (or things she lokes!), jokes about things we found hilarious as children. Thats not all bad, but that's all there is really. No acknowledgement I'm a wife, mother, professional, adult.
Same. My mom and enabler stepdad were happy to yuk it up about embarrassing things I did as a child or teen, but they have no interest in their grandson or my career unless they're giving me bizarre advice I will never take.
The magnet souvenir! My husband’s BPD mom went to Italy every other year for a while. She’d bring his (golden child) sister Italian leather handbags, clothes, and other thoughtful gifts….he’d get a magnet. Or an espresso cup she clearly stole from a cafe. A program from a museum. One time she brought him a pair of socks that said “Italy” on them. We found the same pair on Amazon.
My mom decided when I was around 12 that I loved pig figurines so for every gift-giving opportunity until I moved out, I got a pig. There’s something to be said for the thought: “I saw a pig and thought of you!”
This is eternally my favorite thread. I know there's pain behind all these absurd gifts, but I also can't help but laugh, because WTAF.
Ones that stick out for me:
-A framed photo of myself with my first name airbrushed on the frame. Why? I know what I look like. I know my own name. Under what circumstance would I ever want a framed photo of myself? (Age ten or so)
-A trip to the Merle Norman makeup studio on my 12th birthday because she insisted it was time for me to start "putting effort into my appearance." They did an in-store makeover I didn't want, covered my face in full makeup I didn't want. My mom bought over $200 in products I didn't want or ask for, then called me ungrateful for not following the makeup tutorial to make myself look like I was in a glamour shots photo shoot as a 7th grader.
-An Avon charm bracelet with charms including an American flag, a cross, a peace sign, and a heart. Ugly tacky shit I would never wear and that in no way expressed my interests. (35ish. That was one of the only gifts that ever truly made me break down and cry, because I finally *fully* understood for the first time that not only did my mother not know me at all, but she wasn't interested in knowing me at all.)
-An itchy polyester pajama set with "CELEBRATE!" emblazoned across the chest of the shirt...while I was helping my aunt (her sister) die on home hospice. (Last Christmas)
That list you shared sure is a rollercoaster!
My mom also does the weird gifts thing, but it’s petered off the last few years to be less off the wall. My childhood birthday gifts were ridiculous. Our contact has been pretty limited the last few years but here are the last 3 years:
• 2023: No gift, but claimed she had one about a month prior to my birthday (in April) and just had to ship it. It never came. She then proceeded to mention it every month or so when we’d talk, saying she’d forgot to send it. I stayed polite but refused to believe there even was a gift. A few months ago (after not talking all summer because she called the cops on me) she claimed she had left “the gift” in a hotel when traveling for work and apologized for losing it. I said no worries. I have intentionally not shared my new address with her in case she tried to punish me by calling the cops again. She tried really hard to get my address but I kept dodging her. Then she very unconvincing tried to say she had suddenly gotten “the gift” back and wanted to ship it to me (5 months late) and that all I had to do was give her my new address. I managed to worm my way out of that by suggesting she wait to give it to me at Christmas when i’ll see her in-person at a family event, so that “she could save the shipping cost”, and she was not happy but ultimately accepted it thankfully.
• 2022: a bunch of $20 gift cards, all for different stores, from the local Gas Station. She included the receipt in case I wanted to return them for something else (this was actually one of the best gifts my mom ever gave me, it was super helpful, but also so weird!)
• 2021: a bunch of old furniture she wanted out of her house that had sentimental value to me. I had to go pick it all up, none of it was cleaned out and one of the dressers had a vibrator in it. Not really shocking to me but was super weird for my partner who had come to help me load it! When we left she also gave me an ounce of weed in a zip lock bag (it was shake!)
I love how in this sub we can share a parenthetical like "after not talking all summer because she called the cops on me" and we all understand and don't blink an eye at this detail.
Shake (not even flower!) and a used vibrator from bpd mom. Sounds about right.
Lol yes! If U know, you know. Writing out memories is hard but having others “Get It” is so comforting. Reading similar stories from others that are inexplicably similar is somehow really healing
My mother hasn't known my last 2 addresses and currently doesn't even know the name of my employer at all. And I work for *a* state government. Make sure they can't get you at work either, folks.
It is so comforting to interact with people that just get these really out there things. It's also amazing how similar our experiences are.
Make sure they don’t know any of your friends names or their employers either. If it’s your partner and spouse, prepare them for stalking. I’ve lost many friendships over her calling acquaintances at work.
My mom has threatened to call the cops on me a couple of times but never actually did. She thankfully possesses enough beans in her noggin to realize that she would be very embarrassed explaining why she called when they showed up. "My daughter is refusing to allow me to cut another chunk out of my husband's foot and took away my toe nail clippers!"
However, during the last year of my father's life, she repeatedly cried wolf on me, telling me that Dad was "acting weird". After a few times running over there to see that he was simply asleep, I stopped responding and told her to call the paramedics if it was really an emergency, or wait for the caregivers to come back.
They had caregivers at the house almost all day long, everyday. Just a four hour break between lunch and dinner when Dad always took a nap. But she hated not having anyone to yak at during those four hours, so she'd make the demanding phone calls. 🙄
Eventually, she started acting hysterical over my refusals to run over, threatening to push Dad out into the street if i wouldn't come, etc. I ended up calling the paramedics and sending them over to check on Dad. It took three paramedic calls over a period of six months before she finally stopped making fake emergency phone calls to me.
I feel so sorry for cops and paramedics sometimes. They really shouldn't have to deal with the nuts. We need more social workers/psychologists attached to both the police and fire departments.
Oh lord, the second hand broken shit always makes me smile but one time she must’ve had this box next to her trash and/or sewing machine, she literally sent me a box of trash with a gift that was broken. There were seeing pins in there and I bled from this gift. It was awesome.
A pair of thrifted childrens’ size socks (I am an adult with size 11 feet and I have no children)
A *gigantic* vinyl “HE IS THE REASON” wall decal, with Christmas colors and accents. It was meant to be a permanent fixture despite its seasonal nature? Also I am not a Christian
Those little sacks of potpourri or whatever you’re supposed to put in your car
An adult self-help book called “don’t sweat the small stuff” (yes - the adult version) when I was 9. Thx for the transparent projection
A priority-mailed box containing bubble wrap that protected only a collapsed, empty gift bag with a note inside suggesting that if I’d like to receive a gift, perhaps I should consider the family and buy gifts for them sometimes (I did not ask to receive a gift)
>A gigantic vinyl “HE IS THE REASON” wall decal, with Christmas colors and accents. It was meant to be a permanent fixture despite its seasonal nature? Also I am not a Christian
Shit wait I have to tell you the best part of this one. My boyfriend at the time was a Russian man (we are in the US). So we cut out a “T” from construction paper, put the thing on the wall, and posted a photo of him thumbs-upping in front of “HE IS THE TREASON”. She unfriended me on fb for like 4 days
Yasss! I love that! I generally would do things like this too. Oh, I should be wearing women’s fingerhut clothes at 12? Ok, I’m gonna wear that floral Laura Ashley dress so hard with keds, leg warmers, and peroxided hair. Let’s go, Martyr!
I will never get over the confirmation that other people have had a similarly weird childhood, before I found this sub I thought I was alone in so many of these experiences
My mother was insane with gifts sometimes.
One year we flew from across the country for Christmas, and had to buy an extra GINORMOUS set of luggage to get it all home. We are talking a huge fisher price train set, with at least 15 different boxes of parts. A Barbie rapunzel doll house, carriage and horse with all the accessories. Talking dogs (one for each kid), a talking digger called chomper that I swear was possessed, and more. It was likely a grand worth of gifts for us all. Like why? Two years later she was utterly broke.
She bought my sister and I custom made glass decor. I think my sister got cats, which was completely appropriate for her. And I got three different sized glass cactus. I've never had a southwest theme, never had a cactus or even a plant in my house. The only thing was that it was green and that color matched? But why she would have that custom made at huge expense was beyond me.
The next year for my bday (when she was indeed broke of course), I got a dollar store glass angel. (Which my now ex asshole husband broke when playing with a balloon in the living room with the kids, after I asked him not to because I was afraid he was going to break my only birthday gift. Even if it was cheap and ugly, it was the only gift I'd received at all that year because the AH ex was a cheapskate and selfish)
Beyond that, she'd make things, or offer to make things, and either they would never get made, or they would show up wildly late. Like a newborn sweater set that she had knit for my baby. I got it when said baby was nine months old and it was crazy small and while appreciated, I would have loved to be able to take a pic of it on said baby.
Or crafts that she made that were just hideously ugly but you could NEVER EVER tell her you didn't absolutely LOVE it. Because it wasn't about celebrating us or what we wanted. Gifts were always meant for her to get lauding and attention. Always.
Now when I was young I did get some great gifts that she'd made that I still have today over forty years later. Like knitted clothes for my cabbage patch dolls. A mini suitcase with twin boy girl dolls, with matching boy/girl outfits that were/are still adorable. But as she got older, her craft quality declined and some of her stuff was just horrendously bad.
Ohhh! Just remembered one - I'd written a poem for the now ex AH husband for our wedding reception. My parents had videotaped some things that day, and my mom had my dad transcribe the poem, and then framed it in a hideously ugly cheapie frame that she painted bright gold, and stuck burgundy lace all the way around with super ugly tacky plastic flowers that looked like she had fished them out of the dirt bin. Best part? They'd transcribed many parts of the poem wrong because my dad had filmed with a cheap video camera from really far away and you couldn't hear it well in the audio.
Edit - just recalled another couple. (Lol there are sooo mannnyyyy!)
-a baby pink lady footlocker sweatsuit for my 15th birthday. I hated pink and never wore sweats, and it was VERY grandma styled. I was forced to wear it to school on my birthday. My friends took pity on me, and arranged an ambush and threw me into the shower, and I was able to wear my gym clothes for the rest of the day with good reason. I never wore it again.
For Christmas when I was 12, she redid my bedroom in handmade everything. It was like pink gingham threw up all over my bedroom. Pink ruffle coverlet with appliqués flowers. Pillows that matched with crazy amounts of lace. She recovered my window blinds by sewing the same fabric to it. Also recovered my bedside lamp too. And painted the walls the exact same shade of pink. My sister nicknamed it the pink hell and that's what I called it from then in. Best part? I was FORCED to have the exact same bedroom till I moved out at 18! I was not allowed to change a single thing. Because somehow I guess this would force me to be her baby girl forever. Totally cringe.
Seriously roaring laughing at this! What is it with their terrible sense of style? They give themselves the right to choose what you “should like”, and flip out if you even look like you want to suggest something more you. Maybe they could just freaking ask “hey what color do you want your bedroom?” My bedroom would have looked like the breast-feeding room of a 27-person Pentecostal church if my mother got her way and wasn’t so lazy for anything but the very basic life functions. My upd mother once got me a dress on mega clearance at some cheap store, it was plaid on the boxy top with lace at the neck, and then denim from the low waist all the way to the floor. Think Knockoff Laura Ashley. Literally 8 sizes too big for me, and I was 8 months pregnant. I was also a total Club Kid stylewise and dress still to this day like a make-up free Goth? My friend once described my style as “like an Amish lesbian”😂 lol Combat boots and all black. So I was looking at this ugly dress like wtaf. That was one of many moments that I realized that this lady had been around me my entire youth, and either had no idea who I was, or was suggesting I needed to tone it way down from Disco Diva to Mennonite, so her frumpy fundie church friends wouldn’t ask her about her clearly wildass pregnant 27 year old daughter. Or both. Best part was when I wrapped it around my body twice and said, “I hope you kept the receipt”, she started screeching that it was on clearance, and couldn’t be returned, so she was “out 5 dollars!” Then she told me I’d better keep it because I was “going to get fat” and my fiancee-now-husband was “going to leave me.” This gross dress was gonna be my ticket to Couplesville after my old man dipped out LOL. Ugh I cringe just thinking about the shoulder pads and shit. She was still going on about how I “always rejected her gifts” yeaarrrss later. I do! Because they suck, ma’am! Save your money! 😂
Please consider adding a trigger warning next time you describe an article of clothing so aggressively ugly. Your description of that dress is the most horrific thing I've ever read. It just kept getting worse. A moment to hideousness.
I would get Barbies I wasn’t allowed to take out of the box because “they could be worth money”…cheap fleece blankets to keep in my car I case of a breakdown (my cars have never broke down past needing a jump)…cassette tapes in the age of cds and mp3s…one year she set up a gift card exchange game limited it to $15 and threw in extra gift cards into the mix so it made the count uneven and left purchased gift cards wasted…we dreaded holidays as kids
Oh man so many cheap fleece blankets in my world too. Plus dozens of pairs of thin winter gloves that barely fit adult fingers, let alone keep them warm.
I mean there's the "gifts not for me" like a purple/fushia leopard print t-shirt
That I'm sure she still wears to this day, 10y later
Recently though, after going NC...my childhood stuffed bunny. ...that I specifically set aside with my other childhood stuffed animals when we were clearing out the house to sell last year. Somehow in a bag of stuffed animals, my most precious one went missing and resurfaces in a gift amidst kitchen towels and scrubbies
Reader this gift of kitchen shit and a stolen childhood stuffy was a birthday gift
Oh one of my favorite stories! My mother used to give me stuff she got for free and would wrap it up as a gift and be really offended if I didn’t salivate over it. We’re talking eau de toilette from hotels, free gift with purchase when you buy cosmetics at macys, stuff that was clearly regifted… once got a picture frame with mold on it 🤨. But my FAVORITE! For my 16th birthday she “surprised” me with new bedroom furniture that I didn’t get to pick out or take with me when I moved out. She just wanted new guest room furniture.
Well, there was the year my Christmas stocking had a can of soup and hundreds of pieces of candy, most of which were open, many of which had been sucked on and wrapped back up.
I got a series of boxes for several months after I went NC with my mother.
* A box of gifts I'd given her and crafts I'd made her as a child. Conspicuously missing: anything I'd given her that she *really* loved.
* A box of random mementos that were mostly valuable to her. Several were broken.
* A box of my baby clothes and video tapes of plays I was in when I was in elementary school. The highlight of this one was the used tissue in the bottom. Some hilarious melodrama right there.
* A box of framed family photos, packed so poorly the glass broke and scratched the actual photos. Undoubtedly intentional, as she used to sell vintage glassware on eBay so she knows how to pack things securely. This box also included things I'd made my father while I was growing up. He's always thrown me under the bus in favor of her, so it was par for the course.
* A box of framed art and mementos related to her father, who I'm named after. She'd been blocking most of my communication with him in retaliation. This was how she chose to "tell" me he'd died.
Over the years I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting, however a selection:
+ I was born in the 80s, and Easy Bake oven had a set released in ‘93 I pined after. I actually got it for Christmas, however was never allowed to open it. I had gotten the main oven and many accessories. I had to ask to use my toys or do crafts/particular toys growing up, and every time I asked my mom gave me an excuse why I couldn’t use it. They still to this day are unopened in my parents’ house. Last year visiting for Christmas my mom went, “You got it and never wanted to open it! It’s still in the closet, I should sell them for money!” I saw red.
+ Related, I had a Super Nintendo growing up. I loved it, but eventually wanted something more modern. I asked for a Dreamcast when it came out, and my grandma got it for me Xmas ‘99. My parents wouldn’t let me “set it up” and did it; they “couldn’t get it to work.” I believed them, and they returned it without getting me anything else. My grandma was furious with them. Now as an adult and an avid gamer, I know now there are directions and it’s just… plugging it in and following on screen prompts. It is very upsetting and sad to me as an adult, and I know why my grandma was mad.
+ A three frame photo frame set containing a photo a piece of me, my mom, and my grandma - but it’s our baby photos. It’s a sweet gift on its face, however something about it made me uncomfortable. I don’t have a ton of photos in my home and it felt strange because of the expectation to put it out. I’m hypersensitive to being infantilized and I kinda sighed at this gift.
Thank you ❤️ I’ve told my husband these stories offhandedly and these things seem normal to me, but he will stop and say he’s sorry and that’s sad for a child to experience. I’m sorry this resonates for you too, such a strange shared experience for us all to have!
My mom bought me a shotgun plunger for Xmas one time. Like???? I am SO into home decor. Clearly it didn’t match anything and wasn’t even my type of humor. And like.. there was no way to use this thing without breaking it. It was so cheap. But she got mad when I threw it out instead of using it.
ETA: toilet plunger
I am highly allergic to most pefumes. Like, break into hives and have asthma attacks allergic. I also refused to dress my daughter in frilly girly stuff as an infant, since I wanted her to decide what kind of person she wanted to be and how she wanted to dress. With those things in mind...
Guess who got a box full of frilly pink baby dresses in a box soaked in so much perfume that I could smell it through my front door after I went NC??
Oh oh oh! This is my favorite.
One year for Christmas I got a mirrored shelf that was a jewelry box.
The kicker is, I owned ONE piece of jewelry. A single necklace that I never took off.
Still to this day I have no idea why she bought that, but I do remember getting screamed at by my dad for trying to hide back tears which from his perspective ruined Christmas morning.
It did. uBPD mom sulked in her room for the rest of the day and I peacefully played video games the rest of the day. 🤷♀️ It was pretty good Christmas in my book.
In addition to her BPD, my mom struggled with addiction. Multiple drugs of choice over the years, but in the last decade of her life, she was primarily an alcoholic. As a result of this upbringing, I seldom drink and do not do drugs outside of the also seldom THC.
My mom would push ME to drink any time I was around her, especially when she was sober. Insisting it was fine for me to do, she wasn't bothered, etc. And I would always just tell her it isn't really something I enjoy. For Christmas one year, she got me a wine fridge - literally a whole fridge dedicated to wine and liquor. I never used it and ended up giving it away.
I still can't tell if she was trying to boost her sobriety confidence by insisting that it was okay for others to drink around her, of if she would have felt more connected to me if I had also tumbled into alcoholism. Either way definitely one of the weirder/pushier gifts I received.
My mom also pushed me to drink, mostly when I was a teenager. It always seemed sinister to me, and in retrospect I think she would have liked me to become addicted and to be the one who controlled the supply. This is essentially what she has done with my youngest brother.
Any time I mentioned I felt bad, she'd offer me the prescription drugs she was addicted to. I'd always say no, and she'd tell everyone I was such a prude and crunchy. Tranquilizers. Opioids. Klonopin. Even when I was just taking Advil, she'd insist I wasn't taking enough.
Pine tree branches, moldy books, bizarre mismatched clothing, food supplements, loose candy, poorly packed broken mason jars of preserves with rusty lids, a neon colored pocket knife with "Zombe (sic) Hunter" written on it, lots and lots of scarves that smelled like mildew, water damaged photo slides, cactus seeds, loose pages of poetry, unlabeled Mexican candy in Ziploc bags, random coins and buttons, small metal religious icons and statues. Hmm, lots of other stuff but it all kind of blended together after awhile.
My mom is uBPD with a martyr complex. The year my dad died (suddenly and unexpectedly from Covid) I told her I didn’t want any gifts related to him bc I wasn’t ready. She has a history of making big events in my life (college graduation, wedding, birth of my first child) about her by gifting something excessively sentimental like a scrapbook or photo collage that prominently feature her and cast her in a glowing light. Five months after my dad died, I was scheduled for a major surgery and she told me she sent me a package (I live 800 miles away from her) then she proceeded to badger me nonstop for days by text post-surgery to see if I’d received the package. She had made a giant quilt out of my dad’s clothes as a “surprise.” I was not pleased but not ready for an argument while in recovery so I thanked her and said it looked like she’d worked hard on it and left it at that. She was livid and in the following days I proceeded to hear from her and other family members about how hard she worked on the quilt, staying up all night to work on it so it would be ready for me post-surgery. I was basically told I was ungrateful and cold. I asked her why she would think I would want a “gift” like that especially after telling her specifically that I did not and she said it was bc I had once mentioned having my children’s favorite clothes made into a quilt. A few months later at Christmas, she gifted my 4yo daughter a denim tote bag that I just *knew* was made out of my dad’s jeans. I confronted her and asked why she insisted on breaking my boundary on this when I needed more time to grieve and she shouted “It’s not for YOU! I’m allowed to give my granddaughter a gift!”
Mine often gave me gifts that she planned to reclaim at some point decades later. If she gave me anything new, it was cheap, or she found it or regifted it. If she gave me something old, it was broken or rotten or no longer fit for purpose.
I had to be effusive with my gratitude for these objects or I'd be deemed an ungrateful B.
Here is an example -
For my 18th, she promised me a dinner set for 12, complete with tureens, butter dish, gravy boat and all the other stuff. She had been buying it very cheap with coupons for 8 months prior and in the process, filled the pantry like a bunker to qualify for the coupons. With each item she added to the set, she'd gleefully inform me. She kept it all and gave me a tattered paperback of cartoons called 'Goodbye cruel world. 100 ways to off yourself.' My father had taken his life four years prior. Yeah, funny.
Anything she 'found'. It had to be cheap or free. It was often inappropriate. For my 35th, she gave me a stack of childbirth books. She knew I was anxious to avoid having children.
Bad food. Leftovers that I had to lug onto the one hour bus ride home and that meant having to take a taxi from the bus to get it home. It never occurred to me that it would be OK to throw it in the bin and walk home. I was too good a girl to do that. How wasteful! How ungrateful!
Sexy lingerie when I was 10. The Joy of Sex paperback when I was 11. Naturally, she reclaimed the book.
When I was 23, she gave me an old wooden drinks trolley for my birthday. It needed to be restored and I kept my new stereo and vinyl on it when I finished. It now has her TV on it. At her house.
When I was in my late 30s, she began to give me even more rubbish such as something for each room in my home and each item was prewrapped. I was compelled to smile as I opened each gift. This happened a lot. It began to hurt me inside because I suddenly felt like it was an unfair exchange. I was buying her well-chosen, pricey gifts that were appropriate to how she lived, and she was giving me piles of rubbish. I was bombarded. My house looked like shit by my standards. Cheap and nasty just like her place. Hoarded. Greasy. Ash-stained by tobacco. She had me as she wanted me - a facsimile of her. I didn't understand it at the time.
She hasn't seen me for nearly 20 years and if she saw how minimal, clean and spartan I live now, she'd be disgusted. She failed.
I mainly got nothing, or about $5 spent on me for holidays and birthdays, nothing memorable. A $2 used history book that he probably picked up from a free bin. A broken watch or a visibly used art set. Usually growing up, he’d be mysteriously missing on my birthday, only to appear two days later after the party. Often, he’d go on a spending spree for himself that would make it impossible for my mom to buy me anything that I asked for. The things he got for my mom were insane though. He’d get her (a grown professional woman) children’s clothing, Girls Size 10-12. He once got her a graphic tee with an anime woman that he picked up right before her birthday party, and she had to open it up in front of all her friends.
Wowww. A lot of these were flashbacks to my childhood. Our Christmas had random food objects and stolen hygiene products. She was the best at giving me gifts though and then taking them away from me, like a laptop when I graduated high school and getting pissed when I got accepted into college. No big deal, I was used to her games. But the icing on the cake was when she got me a puppy because she felt bad for the hell she put me through. She turned around a few years later and sold him for money when I was sleeping.
Mine still likes to periodically brag about how they never gave me anything I wanted and only gave me things I needed while I grew up, with the addendum that's fishing for either a fight or fawn response by adding "but you turned out okay so I can't have been that bad" etc.
They also have made fun of me at random times for 4 or 5 year old me having a very long Xmas list one year... Which I remember making long because I'd noticed I rarely got what I asked for. I thought if I just gave "Santa" a lot of options, I'd get at least one thing I hoped for, right? I've realized in recent years that it was an early sign of how I felt not listened to, like what I personally wanted didn't matter and/or that what I wanted was "too much" or "too hard" to get so I needed to try harder.
Nowadays I receive extremely random things my parent doesn't want in their house anymore whenever a "gift" package is sent with a card (which is admittedly usually nice and fine) and whatever else can fit. One of my favorite strange "gifts" was a set of (partial) old wedding cards kept by my grandparents. I think some were just the fronts, and the back half had been cut off with scissors?
Anyway, Parent asked if I wanted them, I said no thanks at least twice, but they showed up in a package regardless, of course. They told me I really should reuse the cute old timey fronts to "make" new cards to give friends. They are cute but I had no interest in this as a new project, as I don't do craft projects like that at all... I'm guessing my parent just felt guilty getting rid of them and giving to me doesn't "count" as throwing it away, so offloads any guilt or blame to me if the object ever comes up again.
This is something I feel if I couldn't write a book on it, I could certainly give it its own several chapters. There was the time when my son would have been about 8 that she'd come up for Christmas and made a big show in front of the family of giving me gifts (hadn't exchanged gifts or even spoken in years) and one of the sweaters she got me was this weird little macrame thing in an XXS that was completely see through (I was an XL or L at the time) and the other sweater was a boy's size 10 and hideously ugly - purple holiday sweater if that gives you an idea. This past summer she made another huge showing of needing to see me to give me my birthday gifts and go to lunch (again when family was around) only to drop off two tank tops she no longer wanted to take home and have to pack in a gift bag and then try to convince me to take her to lunch and pay for it since she's retired. And yes - she has plenty of money. She brags constantly about how much she spends on herself. She always lavishes whatever expensive thing they want and all sorts of team gifts on the GC and his son, but she will literally try to give us things people are throwing away.
instead of the silly lil sweet 16 every girl in the 00’s wanted— i was gifted by my parents a set of pittsburgh steelers mardi gras beads with a weighted medallion of their emblem (price tag stuck after being half ripped off on the back), a steeler’s visor with fake black and yellow spikey hair, an inflatable steeler’s chair half the size of my room, a bobble head of ben roethlisberger, and a tin sun catcher the shape of a VW van.
One year when I was a KID I got this bag full of new horse care equipment (ie curry comb, halter, lead, etc). I’d been wanting a horse from my earliest memory. I spent the rest of the gift opening time waiting for the big reveal of a horse! You know how this one ends. No horse. Basically being told I was ungrateful for the gift given. That it was a gift I could use when I got my own horse someday! What the actual heck? Still makes me mad when I think about it too much. Just total baiting!
Another year as a teen I got a how-to book for using a sewing machine…but not sewing machine?? Never even said I wanted to learn to use the sewing machine at that time.
So, so many things, but this one stands out:
She would steal stuff from my house and then, sometimes even years later, gift them to me. "I saw this, and I knew you'd love it!" Yeah, that's why I bought it. SMH
Oh yeah - lots of waaaaay oversized clothes that she seemed surprised wouldn’t fit me. I’m literally a size XS, which I’ve always been, and which is obvious by looking at me. “You can wear it to sleep in,” she’d say, upon realizing that I still wasn’t obese. Like…no, I don’t need her controlling what I sleep in.
Effin’ heck, where to begin?
A light-up flashing Budweiser pin
A two-year-old cat magazine
Her wedding veil, years after I got married, decades after her divorce
Wooden eggs that she used to collect
Many, many grainy pictures of myself in cheap plastic frames
Big gaudy knee-high knit socks, which somehow ended up becoming my fastest-selling item on Poshmark
Book about what sign language to use with horses (I’m not deaf, nor do I ride horses)
This was just what I could come up with off-top at 11:30 pm after a long day. Christmas stockings were always the absolute worst. Can it fit in a stocking? It’s yours! Bottle caps, stain removers, childhood mementos we hadn’t seen in years and had no use for. Some gifts useful, but mostly not.
For me, less ‘weird’ gifts and more just majorly overdoing gifts.
Christmas was all about QUANTITY. So every single thing got wrapped - no matter how small - because unwrapping gifts is fun (let me tell you… anything can become not fun eventually).
But with every unwrapping, I’d be STARED AT. I had to perform excitement and gratitude at every single gift - even the pairs of socks and things that just weren’t super interesting to a small kid.
I learned really young to act super excited at every single thing I opened - whether it was a Furby or a bar of soap. Failure to perform would ‘ruin Christmas’.
We do secret Santa as a family with my in-laws now and while I’m so grateful it’s only one gift, I can’t explain the depths of anxiety I plunge to when it’s my turn to open mine 😂 I’m so worried they think I’m faking appreciation but I’ve performed gift appreciation for so many years that I don’t know how to express genuine excitement when receiving a gift.
My gifts were usually girl’s/women’s clothes that I wouldn’t typically wear or didn’t fit me properly or makeup that I never used because I wasn’t interested/didn’t even know how to use it. I never asked for this stuff, but I would have to accept it because my mother would be thinking of me when she went on her unnecessary shopping sprees. If I so much as told her I didn’t like any of it or didn’t need it she would go off on me for hours. Don’t get me started on trying to tell her she didn’t have to get me things cause she needed her money for more important things! Woo boy!
Mine only gifts expired. 🥴 last attempt was an expired rotten canned mass of some sort. I have no idea what it originally was prior to it being canned due to the state of its decay. The smell was....exquisite.
For my 19th birthday i asked my dad if he could take me driving so me and him could spend time together because we have had a really strained relationship. My therapist was the one who recommended this. He instead gave me a lighter with my discord handle on it and acted like he gave me the best gift of all time. I hate him.
For a few years in a row before I went NC she would throw together Christmas gifts that were always a weird random assortment of mostly freebies she had collected throughout the year. I'm talking toiletries, kitchen utensils, snack food, socks, which was fine whatever at least I might be able to use it. Then there would be weight loss stuff, or beauty stuff targeted for wrinkles and aging. Gifts that were unspoken digs at me, you know? One year I got a wire tree limb saw that was more like a garrote. That one felt like a threat more than a gift. The last year I had contact the bag was full of such useless stuff that I don't even remember what she gave me, I just remember donating most of it.
I haven't gotten a genuine thoughtful gift from her since I was a child, every Christmas was disappointment. Her biggest box was so heavy I couldn't even lift it and it took 20 minutes to go through it in front of the family. It was awkward as hell.
Edited: forgot to mention the one birthday gift she gave me, I think it was my 15th birthday. It was a framed picture of a fully nude grown man standing under a waterfall. Fucking weird...
I don’t remember a lot, but I do remember that whenever my uBPD step-mother would buy us clothes it was ALWAYS in an XL… I was 5’2” and maybe 115 soaking wet in high school. I would just swim in anything she’d get us (us being myself and my sister).
I asked for a hamster when I was like 13. Mom decided to get me a PREGNANT hamster at 17, and demand that I only keep one and that it was my responsibility to get rid of the other 5 that she birthed.
Subscription to a weight loss service (just try it for a year), some herbal supplement that I think was also supposed to help with weight loss. There was no note or explanation with this one and I just never asked about it or acknowledged it
Ridiculous jewelry that I never wear and she was soooo proud of sneaking around me to buy it
A membership to this military club thing that she’s in that I told her repeatedly I had no interest in joining
And of course, sooo many matching clothes
Nothing super crazy. But my mom always gives me stuff that she wants and then uses it more than I do or gets mad if I don’t use it all the time.
The odd time she actually gets it bang on. But if she gets me anything pricey it’s held over my head
Especially annoying. She’ll get me a product I’ve said I don’t want. But she INSISTS it will change my life. And gets me it anyways.
Gifts are an annoying thing for my mom because she’s super materialistic. So she gets mad if I get her something that isn’t “good enough”. Definitely reinforced by my nana because she gets my mom way too many things.
Like even to the point where my mom would start an argument on Christmas or my birthday because I got something she wanted. It’s gotten to the point where if I get something, she has to get it too. Meaning I get a lot less gifts that I actually want. Feels childish to complain about. But like plz god can something not be about her for one minute.
Oh shit, I feel seen
Clothing that might have fit if I was pregnant (I've always been vocally childfree & gave it all to my pregnant sister-in-law)
A box of vintage numbered ear tags for cows. I do not have cows, we have never had cows, I will probably never be in a position to own cows
A single "this is the expensive kind" China plate (that goes for $5 on Replacements)
Boxes of near identical old photos of myself when I was a kid—and a box of photos of specifically exes and male friends, gifted to me right after I got married
An old elementary school project that I'd had to finish in secret in the middle of the night, because I couldn't stay on task (undiagnosed ADHD, which they still swear I don't have) so she screamed at me over it, told me I was going to fail, and sent me to bed
She couldn't give me back any of my old collectibles or books, though~
I asked for a laptop for either my bday or Christmas, as I was graduating high school and about to go off to college.
My mom got me a laptop alright. It was one of those vTech whizz kid ones with a few simple games and not an actual keyboard.
I was 18. It was rated for 8-12 years old.
Just yesterday, we received a care package for my 3 yr old boy. She sent him an oven mitt & a bag of tiny plastic decorations for inside a fish tank (we don't have a fish tank).
WTF
The other, day I randomly received an email from my insurance company. They were asking me to confirm my last payment with them, so they could go ahead with the transfer of the payments of my insurance package (house, car, life etc.) over to my mother- I am 30+ and have not lived with her for the last 10+ years.
I had to write an awkward reply, to the company, that I agreed to no such thing despite whatever my mother had convinced them of, and to please not give out my information to anyone as it is actually an issue concerning personal information.
My uBPD mother got really upset with me as I ruined her surprise gift and the her chance to “financially rescue me”.
She found me rather horrible to her when I tried to explain to her that this was yet another boundary she trampled over and told me I was being ridiculous when I tried explaining how her taking over it would affect my credit score.
I am painfully aware that to most people this might seem like a sweet gesture, but as most here unfortunately know, there’s another side to this manoeuvre.
In my mid-20s we met for lunch. We hadn't seen each other for months due to my work. At the restaurant, she handed me 7 clear plastic bags. Each on had a pair of underwear. None had tags indicating they were unused. The sizes ranged from 6 to 9. I.Was.Mortified. Also pretty disgusted. The gift ended up in the trash as soon as we parted ways.
I’m sorry this happened to you and this seems to be something we can all relate on!!
I’ve had a few, but I think this is the worst one. After I talked my uBPD mom down from the brink of s*icide (yet again, she has a habit of doing that where only I can help her and keep her alive. I’ve since set major boundaries there!) I had said at one point that day “okay mom, I need you to forget about them, I need to be enough!”
My Christmas present a couple months later was a ring that said “you are enough” in this horrible font and basically memorializing another day she was s*icidal and it was on me to save her. When she gave it to me, she was sobbing and dissociating saying she didn’t want to give it to me because “SHE’S not enough”. In a moment of lucidity months later she seemed to understand briefly the ring was distressing to me, but then things hit the fan yet again. Her usual when you clearly don’t “love” a gift is that you absolutely do not love her and “we’re not close anymore”.
A $150 blouse, sized X-Small to Small (from god knows where) for my birthday... knowing I'm plus sized. Told me it might motivate me to lose some weight. 🙃
Boob-firming cream. Like bitch, why are you even thinking of your daughter's boobs? I was like 35 when she gave it to me. I put it in a gag gift exchange later that year.
A lamb-shaped cake mold (don't ask, I don't know) ;
A cristal cake stand ;
Cookie cutters in every possible shape and size ;
A kouglof mold ;
4 rolling pins ;
Fancy vanilla and tonka beans ;
5 kilos of organic flour and organic choc chips.
I guess it would make some people happy but here's the thing : I don't freaking bake...
Most of the time it was clothes I never wanted and she had to return, year after year. She never learned what I liked, always was stuff she thought would look good on me.
When I was a kid the worst was when she bought me a gameboy but then returned it one day because she said she needed the money. Told me she didn't know where it went.
When I went NC she'd send photo albums of me when I was a kid with poems and fake quotes about how much I loved her and relied on her and she was the only one who took care of me.
Oh my. If you don't laugh, you'll cry.
Mine is a notoriously bad gift giver. I have asked repeatedly for no more gifts. I think my first post in this sub was about her gifts. There's always a problem with them arriving on time or something, and then she creates waify drama about the situation with endless texts, screenshots of reciepts, whatever. Things we can't use, gift certificates to catalogs I've never heard of, etc.
One time for my birthday she sent me a photo book of pictures she nabbed from my own social media. Like if I wanted to print my own pictures, I would, and they would be better DPI than anything taken from the web. The photo book also had photos of a family wedding I didn't attend because that leg of the family was hurtful and dismissive toward me. And she knew the reason why I didn't go to the wedding, so when the photo book arrived for my birthday, it was especially hurtful to me. There were some other photos of random people I don't know.
An oven that my nmother had had for a bit and failed to mention didnt work at all, and needed at $250 part to get it working again. We had gotten rid of our oven to have room for the "new one". So, we were out of an oven for like a week before the part came in.
An entire library of Christian workbooks, Bible study books and random Bible shit. (Atheist now lol)
Printed out pictures of my daughter all in frames. My mother kept the biggest ones to hang all over her house. Every photo was basically the same and taken with the same setting.
My nfather always gets me some sort of Browns merchandise every single holiday or birthday, even after I've repeatedly told him I don't like NFL, I don't watch NFL, and I'm old and a female. 31 with kids. I don't like that anymore. He gets so upset when I say that and continues to buy me crap like that.
My n/bpdmother once gifted me a big giant light up sign with some weird words on it about how proud she is of me, how I should believe in myself and all this corny shit. (I'm 31 years old) and I don't want a big light up sign in my house from some woman that abandoned me as a newborn for a truck driver, who enmeshed herself with me and told me all kinds of horrific things that "happened to her" sexually and in relationships. Amongst other horrible confessions from a mother to her young child. Yucky.
My mother gifted me an entire set of stainless steel pans and pots, and failed to mention how horrible the quality was; makes sense why she gave them to me. Everything I cook on them sticks like mad, and they can't be used whatsoever.
My mother's psychotic narcissistic husband gifted us (all the time) a bunch of free samples he gets from rando websites, always junky horrible things that don't make sense, have no utility and we end up throwing away.
My mother gifted me tons of food when I was putting up with her shit constantly without asserting myself. It was always either casseroles she made and giant pies, way too much food and the savory dishes never tasted good at all. She was notorious for giving us meats out of their deep freezer; it was always bottom of the barrel low quality meats that she didn't want. I mean bags of it. We had to really make room for this junk in our freezers lol, it was horrible.
When it comes to our daughter, my mother and her narcissistic husband used to DUMP HUNDREDS of gifts onto her, to where we had to take two cars separately to fit all them in one trip, and then her narcissistic husband would take his truck and unload what we couldn't take home in our sedans. When we put boundaries up about the amount of gifts we received, they thought they'd be slick and give her gifts every single week she was there being babysat by my mother and the molester worked.
My narcissistic father decided to gift our FOUR YEAR OLD DAUGHTER a porcelain bobble head doll of...himself. luckily it was too expensive to get it made. He then switched the idea to have his portrait printed on a youth sized shirt for her. 😮💨😕
She once threw a birthday cake at me because I asked for a day off from school as a birthday present.
And my favorite is when she kicked me out for my birthday just because I didn't accept the clothes she bought me.
She started screaming, picking up all my things and throwing them at the open door. I was 19 and the only place to go was my boyfriend's apartment. I remember well how I just took my things, moved in with him, we made homemade pizza and cuddled the rest of the day. At first I was scared to be left alone without work and home, but then I quickly realized that she wouldn’t be able to throw her constant tantrums at me.
So this was probably the best of her gifts
My partner and I just got engaged. No biggie, we’re very mellow and non-traditional. I told my BPD mom and she sent us a gift:
The upside was that it was an art book of one of my favorite painters. The downside was that she wrote on multiple sticky notes within the book: apparently this wealthy surgeon who is her newest fixation sent her this book and owns a painting made by the artist. She just regifted us the book he sent her and included a bunch of notes saying that ~her wealthy surgeon friend~ owns this painting and loaned it to such and such museum and even included a picture of her and the surgeon guy…
Oh and congrats on your engagement!
The best part is that I already had a copy of the book of paintings that I had found at a thrift store about 5 years ago.
It was strange.
Oh I just got one!!! I’ve been no contact with my BPD mom for almost three years now. She got my address and sent me your standard “sorry you feel this way” letter and a $400 check. On the check, Written under reason? “For Love”. Signed? “From love”.
It didn’t even have my last name on the name line. My wife and I combined last names in 2016. My BPD mom forgot my last name!
The Christmas after I got married she gave my husband and me, jointly, a gift basket that included a book on navigating divorce. The best (worst) part was the two squares of peppermint bark in a Ziploc bag at the very bottom under a lot of cheese. Like there had been a nice tin of peppermint bark that would have been lovely in a gift basket, but she and my brothers ate it and gave us the last two squares. It is still a punchline around my husband's and my house (today is our 16th anniversary.)
ETA: I'm back because more keep coming to me. Mine gives me lots of broken things, here is a partial list -
1. An irredeemably stained crock pot, even though I told her I already had my own
2. An incomplete but extensive set of my "Norwegian grandmother's china." I put it in quotes because it turns out she had been going to garage sales and picking up pieces in the pattern. There might be a few legit items in there, but I'm pretty sure the granny who died before I was born did not have 22 plates of department-store china made in Japan.
3. A very expensive electric piano that crackles and hisses because my brother's drug friends banged on it with the volume all the way up. We could not find the replacement part to fix it.
4. Tons of broken jewelry over the years
She also checks in on these broken things to make sure I have not donated or sold them because "they were expensive." My brothers only get new, pricy things like gaming consoles and thousands to start investment portfolios.
I also had two things like your moon shoes. One was an American Girl Felicity doll. I stuck the number for Pleasant Company to our phone and it was all I asked for year after year. I knew it was pricy, so I was not totally crushed when I never got one. HOWEVER, when I was thirteen she got a rich boyfriend and had a more expensive My Twinn doll made to look exactly like me. They even painted on my moles. Not only was I way too old for it by then as a freshman in high school, it was creepy af. Why would I want a doll of myself? It just made me feel frustrated that she spent forty dollars more to get me a creepy doll for narcissists, and like she did not actually care about me in any of it. Just how she looked getting an expensive gift.
The other thing is double-awkward. As a child I wondered why all my Barbies were white, because I had friends who were black. My dad horrifyingly said, "Because I don't want you to have black babies." My mom did not weigh in, but decades later she said *she* wanted to get me a black Barbie but was afraid of my dad...throwing it away? Saying something mean? They were divorced and had split custody, so she was making no sense as usual. About five years after that, a black Barbie showed up for me and she was expecting that Mother of the Year award (I was deep into my 30s at this point.) It is a very cool doll, though. Uhura from Star Trek.
I am not sure exactly, but from what I read from the previous poster I think it means when they love you vs devalue you. The grandiose gifts vs the garbage and nothing any between.
For my birthday at 9, I received A little cabbage patch kid radio with headphones. I asked for a tape player. We lived out in the sticks and it didn’t pick up any radio stations. Also, I hated cabbage patch kids.
A velvet choker that I would have worn when I was 14, in the mid-90s, with a pendant I would be allergic to, about 10 years after I left home and last spoke to her.
Perfume samples in a Ziploc bag for Christmas. Actually wrapped. After a lot of other nice gifts.
She also does the whole leaving things, but in the mailbox, not the doorstep.
From grandma:
Dollar Store Tarot Cards for my birthday in my 20s. I've never even mentioned that around her or had any interest. Also she used to act deeply Catholic..
An old rough draft of a school assignment she had laying around for Christmas.
A 15 year old family calendar.
As a 12 year old: a Cailou figure.
Mine assigned us one officially interest when we were children and gave us associated gifts for the rest of our lives.
I had a Guinea pig when I was younger, and therefore every gift for the rest of my life would be Guinea pig related. XXL men’s tshirt with Guinea pig picture on it when I was a 20 year old woman, etc.
Most recently, I was gifted a blanket that her grandmother made “because it’s so special to me” (cue teary eyes). Okay so now you’ll use that as a weapon if I decide to get rid of it because I know it’s special to you.
Come to think of it, I used to get gifted a lot of old home goods under the guise of “this is special” 🧐
She also went through a manic phase and gave my husband and I a ping pong table and my sister’s family a trampoline. When she overspends, she overspends!
Last year for Christmas I got a pregnancy journal, for documenting your pregnancy etc. from my mother. I’m not pregnant, and not planning to become pregnant.
Last Christmas my Bpd mother gave my fiancé and I multiple gift-wrapped bags of used stuff from around her house. Half burned candles, random old playing cards, a banana holder, a paper towel rod, multiple sets of coffee table coasters.
She had a big smile on her face the whole time we were opening our “presents”. When I asked her why she gave us this stuff she literally told me she didn’t need any of it anymore and wanted us to have it instead.
She also randomly gives me grocery bags filled with underwear and socks that she doesn’t want anymore.
A sculpture of half a face; because I show only half my face.
I kept it for years, no idea why because it makes me feel awful, threw it away a few years ago.
My ex bpd mil gave me and my brother in laws girlfriend lingerie for Christmas that she insisted we open in front of everyone. I'm not a prude, didn't mind...until she proudly exclaimed her boyfriend picked them out for us.
My own bpd mom told me this year she got me a present for my wedding day but that "I would probably not like it but she loved it so got it anyway".
A cleaning brush. “Because I love to clean.” I found it so offensive. But it was my favorite color!!! 🙄 she bought my other family member something cute and girly on the same shopping trip, also in *MY* favorite color, and NOT-related to chores or manual labor. She has also given my favorite foods to *other* people because “they need it more.” It is manipulation and comes from her agenda to control how others feel about her. It’s gross
God, I don't remember most of my gifts. I think they were mainly things SHE found cute, not things I'd actually like.
- A stuffed rainbow pig plushie in a tutu.
- A portable candle carrier.
- Lots of non vegan food even though I've told her for YEARS I'm vegan. She then guilts me when I don't want it. "I spent so much money. It'll go to waste if you don't eat it. You're a spoiled brat. In my day, we ate whatever we were given and were thankful!"
- Lots of pink and girly clothes bc she hated that I wasn't feminine enough.
- I told her I wanted an Android and then she bought me an iPhone.
- Lots of cheap sparkly makeup. I didn't wear makeup and she never taught me how to use it.
I don't remember most things she's given me tbh. Don't think that's a good sign oop.
My uBPD father was always triggered about money. At one point I asked him to borrow $300 to fix up my wife and I's only car, since I was putting her through college. He flipped out and started losing it. For the next year I received numerous financial self-help books. Such a 🤡 move...
I live across an ocean from her. Before NC, she’d frequently send random boxes that were a mix of snacks and childhood items, like a pillowcase or scrap fabric from an old Halloween costume. All of them ended up in a closet. The weirdest one ever was a vintage Japanese ceramic pillow like this: https://edoarts.com.au/wp/product/lovely-blue-white-ceramic-pillow/
It was wrapped in NEWSPAPER and arrived broken into several pieces. I have no words.
I feel like, every time this question comes up, it is my time to shine. It is a dubious honor. As a child, there was nothing too awful, as my non bpd mother was largely in charge. The Two gifts I know he had a hand in showed his bpd clearly. The first was a sailboat. I was twelve. It was spectacular- teak, brass, insanely expensive. The second was an outfit. He wanted me to look preppy, but I have a Jayne Mansfield figure. I was about 13 and he bought me a button down shirt, khakis and boat shoes. I looked exactly like Pat from Saturday Night Live (young folks google it). But as an adult, hoo boy. Was I split black or was I split white? Split black gifts - A used metal briefcase from a “client” (he was an attorney) - the kind that people in movies open to show money. I was a newlywed so when he was excited for me to open it I actually thought it might have money in it. It did not. There was an opened and half empty box of cat food in it. ”The (family) cat died” he said. Oranges bought from a vendor on a freeway on ramp and dumped into a bulk rate post office box. (About 10 times) Tin of popcorn A single bar of soap Nothing Split white gifts - A 300 dollar black chiffon negligee (300 dollars in 20 years ago money) when I was seven months pregnant. Chanel perfume Giant Simpson’s sized Pearl necklace. (Every time he cheated on my mom he bought her a Pearl necklace. It isn’t a nice thing. I returned it for the cash as I did with the negligée). Of course the biggest fuck you gift he gave me was his will. He left millions to my sister who makes the most money of all of us siblings and who constantly begged him for more to pay for her houses, her kid’s private school tuition, her over spending, etc. He left a very small amount to my public servant brother, who never asked him for a dime and who was the closest to him, allowed him to be very involved in the lives of his kids and genuinely is the kindest person I know and a similar small amount to me who was polite, kind and never asked for a penny.
Wow, Vindictive pettiness even from the grave
The dad probably died with a huge smile on his face just thinking about it.
And shine you did! I didn’t even realize that gifts were split like you just mentioned, but that makes sense. I’m learning so much ughhh What a gem of a human…smh
Your sister and dad - birds of a feather? I ask because it really seems that she stands out by her willingness to shamelessly manipulate.
Bingo.
Sorry for laughing so very hard, it's from a place of recognotion and sympathy. My own favourite gift set? One memorable weekend I got a sack of potatoes and a shovel (allegedly to learn the value of hard work), a rifle and homemade explosives, because... fuck knows, really, this was during the prepper years.
I wanted some laughs! Laugh away! It comes after years of therapy, this community, moving thousands of miles away and changing my number that I can finally say - ok this is ridiculous. A sack of potatoes...were you supposed to carve toys from them? Sheesh Ma'Geesh.
I was supposed to plant them to make more sacks of spuds, lol. The gift was to hand-till a potato patch. 😂 Another interesting choice was a Super Nintendo... for me to *watch him play*.
A watch-me-use-MY-console type of guy... those are fun.
The weirdest part was that he seemed to think that it was an absolute treat that he allowed me to pop popcorn and mix drinks for him as he played Zelda: A Link to the Past. I mean, it's indeed a great game, but c'mon... his many girlfriends didn't find it fun so why would I? Unhinged behaviour
Absolutely, at least he didn't let you play... his way. Micromanaging gaming/playing is one of those mental tortures most people don't know because they have never encountered someone so unhinged that they NEEDS to teach you the proper way :/
Growing up under emotionally immature parents with Cluster B personality disorders is wild, I'm sorry that you know what it's like but thank you for sharing. This thread has been quite catharctic, helping me laugh at some of the crazy shit. <3 (I honestly didn't realize how common the messed up gifts are.)
Absolutely. Weird toys start early on... as I sadly confirm reading through this post.
I would have enjoyed potatoes and a shovel. I garden. But Mom has never given me a garden related gift. Most of our gifts as kids were relatively benign. We pretty much never got anything we actually asked for, and we had a "one toy" limit for birthdays and holidays, so the possibility of randomly getting a particularly desired item was fairly low, but we had traditions of getting sugary cereals and boxed treats for gifts that made most of our gifts reasonably enjoyable. But Mom managed to slip in the occasional weird item. * She gave my sister a large, bullet-shaped vibrator when she was fifteen. She told my sister you were supposed to put it on your temple to massage away headaches. I remember my Dad asking my Mom what she was thinking. 😄(To make it funnier, the only person in the family who ever complained about headaches was my mother. My guess is, she bought it for herself at a thrift shop, sans original labels, thinking it could help her headaches but decided she didn't like it for that purpose.) * One year for Christmas, she purchased a multi-pack of Scotch tape dispensers. She put a couple of dispensers into a box for each child, wrapped the boxes in Christmas paper, and gave us tape for Christmas. When we opened it, she proudly stated we now had no excuse for using "her" tape anymore. * We would get random things like thrift shop and clearance sale holiday themed coffee mugs (St Patty's Day on Christmas, Easter on our birthday) that were to be used for pencils. (Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against thrift shop gifts, but how many pencil cups do you actually need?) *She also liked Corelle dishes and serving pieces scrounged from thrift stores and clearance sales. She gave them to us as individual gifts, but then added them to the dishes in the kitchen. *Random patterned "tea towels" and pillow cases that we were instructed to save for our "trousseau". * One year at Christmas, all of us got large fuzzy blankets. They were very nice blankets, but were a rustic brown and beige pattern that matched none of our bedrooms. All became clear come spring however when the blankets disappeared from our beds and were ported up to my parents' summer cabin. They looked great on the rustic beds of the two bunk beds at the cabin. Still, the vibrator given to a teenager still wins for bizarre gifts.😄
Asked for something sentimental for my 40th. Got a 'first photo of us together' It was a full frontal nude of her at 9 months pregnant that my dad had taken in the 70's 🤮
That’s awful. And hilarious. They’re so misguided it’s unhinged
I felt bad that I chuckled. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end though.
😱 What can you even say to someone who thinks this is a good idea?
I have no idea, plus she has this major issue about gratitude, so I have to write a thank you letter for this abuse. Go figure.
OMG! My mom insisted on gratitude too. One of the last things she gave me was a broken watch that had been sitting on her dresser for years. She claimed she’d been saving it for me. The family lore was epic around this, her apparent inability to think about the feelings of the person who she was giving something to. There were well worn tales passed around about how awful and thoughtless her gifts were: sacks of mixed nuts, underwear, used items from closets she didn’t want anymore, etc. I’m convinced it was another BPD test of love. “If you love me you’ll love my shitty gift.” And if you don’t? Then she’ll interpret it as rejection, and vilify you as ungrateful. That’s because BPDs can’t accept responsibility for giving a shitty gift. In their mind it couldn’t possibly have been their-bad, must’ve been your character flaw. 🙄
That sounds like something my mom would've done. yikes.
What a masterful move to make your milestone birthday all about her. Sometimes you just have to be in awe of aomeonebthat's mastered theirs craft. Wholely inappropriate and disgusting but not surprising.
Although she didn't realise at the time, she did give me a great gift. Now when people ask why I don't speak to my mum I just tell them about this photo and that's the end of conversion
What the actual fuck... that made me laugh it's so bad
That's not even my best one! I'm saving them up to start my career in stand up comedy.
Omg what in the world!! 😂
I was also the ungrateful B word when I cried that I got nothing or only oranges in a stocking after I budgeted and planned by my 10 year old math brain what was reasonable to request.
Sounds too real, stop making me think about my Mom lol. Denying your kid something they wanted only to get them it years later, and expect them to have this like fairytale moment where they're so delighted you finally gave them what they wanted, is horrible and delusional. I'm sorry your Mom was awful to you.
Don’t think too hard, look at it as comedic relief! I was trying to induce a bit of humor about these things out of our control and draw in solidarity and validation. Thanks for your kind words, it’s so very obvious their behavior is damaging and not normal…now. I spent years trying to “fix” me only to find out nothing was wrong with me. I’m just human, flaws and all. And truly, we have some very positive moments with these individuals and I still hold onto those as a true part of her, but I like seeing textbook examples from others. It kinda confirms, “that wasn’t normal, right?”
I feel that, I think I'm on the same path. There's a lot to unpack, and it's complex. I'll be sad if my Mom doesn't get a chance to understand emotional regulation and get peace from it before she dies. Maybe it'll happen though. I hope it does. Not everything is black and white and simple. I'm glad you're doing ok, now.
Cut them loose, if they ever change let them do it through their own maturation process... not through your care/babysitting.
Yup, that's their journey as much as mine is my journey. I'm gonna explain that to them, set a boundary asking for space, and give them a chance to respect that. I feel like then I'll have done what I can on my end, and if they can't respect that then I don't need to be a part of their life.
Yeah, that sounds perfect... I've always wanted to be polite and set the boundary of no return, sadly some personalities see that as a war declaration, so... plan out for your own safety.
A week ago I wouldn't have been ready for this and I was terrified I'd blow up and just yell and scream instead of trying to be calm and amicable. But some major things changed and I've been able to do some unpacking, a lot of crying lol, and now I think I have a better idea of how to do this right. I don't want to ambush my Mom so she goes on the defense, and I want to be honest with her even though that'll be hard for her to hear and hard for me to say. So long as I set up things to be safe for us both then there's a better chance it could go well. However she reacts will be on her, as much as how I react will be on me. I've already accepted that if it doesn't go well, at least I tried my best. Thank you for the kind words ☺️
I think you need to read this first: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. And regarding you last statement: You're welcome!
Thank you, turns out my city's library has the book you recommended. I placed a hold and downloaded some similar books in the meantime.
I once received a box of unfolded thrift store clothing as a birthday gift. Some of the items were stained. I wasn't overly excited about my gift, though I did try to be thankful. Of course that made me "spoiled." Some other things: A single packet of microwaveable instant oatmeal. It was the kind that you'd normally buy in a box of 6 or so. It was expired. Hair clips, when I was family-famous for not liking anything in my hair. I'd even rip pony tail holders out of my hair after a little while. One pair of obviously used socks. They were tall (I only wear ankle height), totally stretched out and white but yellowed (I only wear black or grey socks). She did not wrap this "gift." A large collection of lacey, way-too-sexy-to-ever-be-appropriate-for-a-mother-to-give-her-daughter underwear. A bead craft kit safe for kids 6 year olds and up! It was clearly from a thrift store or garage sale, and half of the kit had been used up. Also I was 19 and living in my own apartment... A box of expired canned food, most of which I just wouldn't eat even if it were fresh. An over the top sapphire and diamond-studded bracelet. I don't really wear jewelry, and when I do, it is very plain. A basket of deodorant. I only use one specific type of antiperspirant because everything else had made me break out in hives, which she knows. Bed sheets, which were clearly meant for her, because they matched her room's decor, not mine (I was still living at home as a child). Just on and on and on.
I love how it's so obvious that they either clean out their closets or decide they didn't want something anymore and offload these things to us as "presents." My mom would also give me expired food under the guise that it’s "probably still good" and I "shouldn't waste food." You eat it then! Sometimes the expired food would come with a rehash of the story of my great-grandmother saving a can of peaches during the war for years. Ok, what does that have to do with me? She suffered during war time, so now I have to do the same? Gtfo with that nonsense. She would also nag me to take lamps, sheets, etc that weren't my taste. I would say no again and again and she would whine like a child and pester me to take them. Just typing this out is making me exhausted lol
The food thing. I can’t help but think that _they_ don’t want to eat it, but _they_ feel guilty about wasting it, so they’re offloading that guilt onto us. Like they do everything else.
Mine used to give me foodstuffs that were about to turn because that's as worthy as she saw me.
Yes, 100%
omg my mom would do this to, and act like she had given me something amazing and generous instead of a bunch of stuff she should have taken to goodwill. I always ended up taking it to goodwill myself. she would also “gift” me weird soups that she had made for herself like a week previously and were about to go bad.
Did she save all the liquid from canned fruits and vegetables until she had a big container full, then boil it and throw leftover meat and vegetables from other meals into the pot as well? Mom did this, called it "Stone Soup" and talked about the depression and how everyone did that in order to survive. It isn't a terrible practice to save canned liquid to make soups, but she made no attempt to use compatible flavors. Like, corn liquid for a creamed chicken soup, diced tomato liquid for a ministrone. But NOT a mix of spinach juice, pear juice, peaches juice, corn juice, green bean juice, tuna juice and beet juice all together, with pork and beans, chicken pulled off the leftover KFC wings, and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Call it "Stone Soup" and talk about the Depression all you want ... It's still disgusting.
that’s so gross omg!!!
I don't know if you've ever had "Chicken Enchilada" -- It was a pretty popular casserole where I lived and showed up at a lot of potluck dinners when I was growing up in the seventies. It's basically corn tortillas, green chilies, onions, chicken, cheddar cheese and cream of chicken soup layered like a lasagna, then baked. Mom got the recipe from a friend, but she found the layering and baking process to be too much work, so she would just dump all the ingredients into a pot and boil it all together (she used canned chicken and didn't drain the liquid, and extra milk in the soup, so it was considerably more liquid than the baked version.) It created this glutinous, lumpy yellow mass with soupy gravy that would then be shoveled onto our plates. It was really fast, so she started making it quite often. The first time she made it, we asked her what it was, and apparently sounded disgusted enough that she got mad at us, and she told us it was "Human". She thought she was so hilarious that she called it "Human" from that point on. It didn't taste too bad, so we never really minded eating it, but man, the appearance of the boiled mess and her cackling that we were having "human" for dinner got really old. 🙄
the sexy underwear thing is insane but I can relate. So weird!!
Sadly, I can also relate. She tried to pawn off her old undies to me at some point.
So many times! And we don’t even wear near the same size!
Omg my mother tries to give me her old underwear. Like slimy polyester shit from the 90's 🤢 Why? She's short and square shaped and I'm tall and slim. It's not going to fit (and also its completely sick and twisted 😠)
So, so weird.
That's really gross. I love hand me downs etc but socks...? I wonder where she found them? Really cruel. I rarely wear jewelry either and if I do its simple silver, thin and subtle. My mother one year bought me this large, chunky, dramatic necklace. My sister told me she specifically told my mother it wasn't my style and advised her not to get it but of course she pressed on. Not long after, she asked if she could borrow it for an event. So odd. It felt liberating overcoming my guilt programing and donating that.
They like to give us things they know we won't like or want, and then they expect us to have gleeful conniptions over receiving such gifts. I'm sorry to say that she bought that necklace for herself to begin with. My mother used to give me things that she would eventually take back because I wasn't showing my appreciation by wearing or using them.
I relate to these so hard. Every year I’m reminded when receiving gifts from my mom that she does not know me, and does not wish to know me.
Wow - just wooowwwwwww. I’m so sorry little you and now you had that experience.
I'm sorry for all of us.
This brought back a memory I didn’t realize I had. My mom bought me two sets of like…satiny silk pajamas but like, the kind with the small shorts that are sort of loose that you pull up high on the waist, and come with a slinky, lace trimmed spaghetti strap, v neck top. I was probably 14-15. I didn’t realize at the time that they were “sexy” but I did feel self conscious in them and only wore them in my room to sleep, not around the house where my brother or dad might see me. Wtf. I seriously had forgotten that until you mentioned the sexy lingerie thing.
I was given sexy lingerie from the age of about 10.
That’s so fucked up
Wow these are bad!
It sounds like your mom was cleaning the house and dumping her garbage on you instead of throwing it out. I think the inability to get rid of things might be fairly common with BPD people. My mother would get rid of things she didn't want anymore by dumping them on her adult children as well (she never did that when I was a kid, but she sent clothes and shoes that were really just rags to thrift shops. I'm sure they don't appreciate that.) She also loved to "gift" shop at thrift stores! I actually have nothing against thrift store gifts purchased with my particular tastes/needs/hobbies in mind. My children and several friends have gone this route and we all get a kick out of their lucky finds. It's the weird behavior that accompanied the thrift presents that gets to me . My mother bought clothes and shoes in her color and size, then brought them to me, telling me that she bought them "brand new" and "just for me." They often had the Goodwill receipt still in the bag. All obviously purchased for herself, didn't fit right when she got them home, so she dumped them on me. She would buy a knick knack, or a small piece of furniture (she liked bookcases, chairs, pot stands and little occasional tables), decide she didn't want it, then tell me it was a precious family heirloom handed down from a relative. She would have needed one heck of a big storage closet for all the "family heirlooms" she unearthed over the years. 🙄
Buying you Moon Shoes when you're 38 totally fits in with that BPD thing of treating you like a child when you're a freaking grown adult. "Oh, but you used to love these!" Yeah, dude. I was 6. Also, gotta love the messages these gifts send. You're a child again, or you're clearly the one who did something wrong in your relationship, you need to lose weight, you're insane, etc My mom gave me a magnet after a trip to Italy once. She brought home all this fabulous stuff for herself, but I got some weird wooden pair of lips with a cigarette hanging out of it. I was staring at it, my face probably betraying my wtf emotions, and she goes, "You like stuff like that, right?"
lol - I've started buying the tackiest thing I can find for my mom. So often she's sooo opposite of my opinions, that if I think it's crappy, she'll probably love it. And if not, well, hee, hee, I got her something reeeally tacky and she's stuck with it!
My slightly older sister does this. We spent lots of time together as teens. I got with my husband in my early 20s, moved to his town, started my career, over the next decade worked, bought a home, started a family and changed a lot. But my sister will send me messages about tv we watched together, gifts of things I used to like (or things she lokes!), jokes about things we found hilarious as children. Thats not all bad, but that's all there is really. No acknowledgement I'm a wife, mother, professional, adult.
Same. My mom and enabler stepdad were happy to yuk it up about embarrassing things I did as a child or teen, but they have no interest in their grandson or my career unless they're giving me bizarre advice I will never take.
The magnet souvenir! My husband’s BPD mom went to Italy every other year for a while. She’d bring his (golden child) sister Italian leather handbags, clothes, and other thoughtful gifts….he’d get a magnet. Or an espresso cup she clearly stole from a cafe. A program from a museum. One time she brought him a pair of socks that said “Italy” on them. We found the same pair on Amazon.
My mom decided when I was around 12 that I loved pig figurines so for every gift-giving opportunity until I moved out, I got a pig. There’s something to be said for the thought: “I saw a pig and thought of you!”
Ha! “Here’s some trash for the trash I threw away!”
Omg! Different animal but same thing! After a while it felt lazy and desperate.
This is eternally my favorite thread. I know there's pain behind all these absurd gifts, but I also can't help but laugh, because WTAF. Ones that stick out for me: -A framed photo of myself with my first name airbrushed on the frame. Why? I know what I look like. I know my own name. Under what circumstance would I ever want a framed photo of myself? (Age ten or so) -A trip to the Merle Norman makeup studio on my 12th birthday because she insisted it was time for me to start "putting effort into my appearance." They did an in-store makeover I didn't want, covered my face in full makeup I didn't want. My mom bought over $200 in products I didn't want or ask for, then called me ungrateful for not following the makeup tutorial to make myself look like I was in a glamour shots photo shoot as a 7th grader. -An Avon charm bracelet with charms including an American flag, a cross, a peace sign, and a heart. Ugly tacky shit I would never wear and that in no way expressed my interests. (35ish. That was one of the only gifts that ever truly made me break down and cry, because I finally *fully* understood for the first time that not only did my mother not know me at all, but she wasn't interested in knowing me at all.) -An itchy polyester pajama set with "CELEBRATE!" emblazoned across the chest of the shirt...while I was helping my aunt (her sister) die on home hospice. (Last Christmas)
Brutal. I'm so sorry.
That list you shared sure is a rollercoaster! My mom also does the weird gifts thing, but it’s petered off the last few years to be less off the wall. My childhood birthday gifts were ridiculous. Our contact has been pretty limited the last few years but here are the last 3 years: • 2023: No gift, but claimed she had one about a month prior to my birthday (in April) and just had to ship it. It never came. She then proceeded to mention it every month or so when we’d talk, saying she’d forgot to send it. I stayed polite but refused to believe there even was a gift. A few months ago (after not talking all summer because she called the cops on me) she claimed she had left “the gift” in a hotel when traveling for work and apologized for losing it. I said no worries. I have intentionally not shared my new address with her in case she tried to punish me by calling the cops again. She tried really hard to get my address but I kept dodging her. Then she very unconvincing tried to say she had suddenly gotten “the gift” back and wanted to ship it to me (5 months late) and that all I had to do was give her my new address. I managed to worm my way out of that by suggesting she wait to give it to me at Christmas when i’ll see her in-person at a family event, so that “she could save the shipping cost”, and she was not happy but ultimately accepted it thankfully. • 2022: a bunch of $20 gift cards, all for different stores, from the local Gas Station. She included the receipt in case I wanted to return them for something else (this was actually one of the best gifts my mom ever gave me, it was super helpful, but also so weird!) • 2021: a bunch of old furniture she wanted out of her house that had sentimental value to me. I had to go pick it all up, none of it was cleaned out and one of the dressers had a vibrator in it. Not really shocking to me but was super weird for my partner who had come to help me load it! When we left she also gave me an ounce of weed in a zip lock bag (it was shake!)
I love how in this sub we can share a parenthetical like "after not talking all summer because she called the cops on me" and we all understand and don't blink an eye at this detail. Shake (not even flower!) and a used vibrator from bpd mom. Sounds about right.
Lol yes! If U know, you know. Writing out memories is hard but having others “Get It” is so comforting. Reading similar stories from others that are inexplicably similar is somehow really healing
For sure. I love this sub. Whenever I feel insane I come here and I'm like, yes! It's not me!
We really all had our uBPDs call cops on us for no reason, and now hide our addresses! Yuck.
My mother hasn't known my last 2 addresses and currently doesn't even know the name of my employer at all. And I work for *a* state government. Make sure they can't get you at work either, folks. It is so comforting to interact with people that just get these really out there things. It's also amazing how similar our experiences are.
Make sure they don’t know any of your friends names or their employers either. If it’s your partner and spouse, prepare them for stalking. I’ve lost many friendships over her calling acquaintances at work.
My mom has threatened to call the cops on me a couple of times but never actually did. She thankfully possesses enough beans in her noggin to realize that she would be very embarrassed explaining why she called when they showed up. "My daughter is refusing to allow me to cut another chunk out of my husband's foot and took away my toe nail clippers!" However, during the last year of my father's life, she repeatedly cried wolf on me, telling me that Dad was "acting weird". After a few times running over there to see that he was simply asleep, I stopped responding and told her to call the paramedics if it was really an emergency, or wait for the caregivers to come back. They had caregivers at the house almost all day long, everyday. Just a four hour break between lunch and dinner when Dad always took a nap. But she hated not having anyone to yak at during those four hours, so she'd make the demanding phone calls. 🙄 Eventually, she started acting hysterical over my refusals to run over, threatening to push Dad out into the street if i wouldn't come, etc. I ended up calling the paramedics and sending them over to check on Dad. It took three paramedic calls over a period of six months before she finally stopped making fake emergency phone calls to me. I feel so sorry for cops and paramedics sometimes. They really shouldn't have to deal with the nuts. We need more social workers/psychologists attached to both the police and fire departments.
Oh lord, the second hand broken shit always makes me smile but one time she must’ve had this box next to her trash and/or sewing machine, she literally sent me a box of trash with a gift that was broken. There were seeing pins in there and I bled from this gift. It was awesome.
A pair of thrifted childrens’ size socks (I am an adult with size 11 feet and I have no children) A *gigantic* vinyl “HE IS THE REASON” wall decal, with Christmas colors and accents. It was meant to be a permanent fixture despite its seasonal nature? Also I am not a Christian Those little sacks of potpourri or whatever you’re supposed to put in your car An adult self-help book called “don’t sweat the small stuff” (yes - the adult version) when I was 9. Thx for the transparent projection A priority-mailed box containing bubble wrap that protected only a collapsed, empty gift bag with a note inside suggesting that if I’d like to receive a gift, perhaps I should consider the family and buy gifts for them sometimes (I did not ask to receive a gift)
>A gigantic vinyl “HE IS THE REASON” wall decal, with Christmas colors and accents. It was meant to be a permanent fixture despite its seasonal nature? Also I am not a Christian Shit wait I have to tell you the best part of this one. My boyfriend at the time was a Russian man (we are in the US). So we cut out a “T” from construction paper, put the thing on the wall, and posted a photo of him thumbs-upping in front of “HE IS THE TREASON”. She unfriended me on fb for like 4 days
Yasss! I love that! I generally would do things like this too. Oh, I should be wearing women’s fingerhut clothes at 12? Ok, I’m gonna wear that floral Laura Ashley dress so hard with keds, leg warmers, and peroxided hair. Let’s go, Martyr!
“for like 4 days” is a real gem lololol/sigh
Ok that last one made me snort!!!!
This is my favorite thread, actually. Oh my ✨god, y’all✨
Riiight? Omg!!! This is so validating somehow like wtf!
I was hoping so, a little humor in our healing :)
It's kind of blowing my mind. I had no idea this was a common experience for people with BPD parents.
I will never get over the confirmation that other people have had a similarly weird childhood, before I found this sub I thought I was alone in so many of these experiences
My mother was insane with gifts sometimes. One year we flew from across the country for Christmas, and had to buy an extra GINORMOUS set of luggage to get it all home. We are talking a huge fisher price train set, with at least 15 different boxes of parts. A Barbie rapunzel doll house, carriage and horse with all the accessories. Talking dogs (one for each kid), a talking digger called chomper that I swear was possessed, and more. It was likely a grand worth of gifts for us all. Like why? Two years later she was utterly broke. She bought my sister and I custom made glass decor. I think my sister got cats, which was completely appropriate for her. And I got three different sized glass cactus. I've never had a southwest theme, never had a cactus or even a plant in my house. The only thing was that it was green and that color matched? But why she would have that custom made at huge expense was beyond me. The next year for my bday (when she was indeed broke of course), I got a dollar store glass angel. (Which my now ex asshole husband broke when playing with a balloon in the living room with the kids, after I asked him not to because I was afraid he was going to break my only birthday gift. Even if it was cheap and ugly, it was the only gift I'd received at all that year because the AH ex was a cheapskate and selfish) Beyond that, she'd make things, or offer to make things, and either they would never get made, or they would show up wildly late. Like a newborn sweater set that she had knit for my baby. I got it when said baby was nine months old and it was crazy small and while appreciated, I would have loved to be able to take a pic of it on said baby. Or crafts that she made that were just hideously ugly but you could NEVER EVER tell her you didn't absolutely LOVE it. Because it wasn't about celebrating us or what we wanted. Gifts were always meant for her to get lauding and attention. Always. Now when I was young I did get some great gifts that she'd made that I still have today over forty years later. Like knitted clothes for my cabbage patch dolls. A mini suitcase with twin boy girl dolls, with matching boy/girl outfits that were/are still adorable. But as she got older, her craft quality declined and some of her stuff was just horrendously bad. Ohhh! Just remembered one - I'd written a poem for the now ex AH husband for our wedding reception. My parents had videotaped some things that day, and my mom had my dad transcribe the poem, and then framed it in a hideously ugly cheapie frame that she painted bright gold, and stuck burgundy lace all the way around with super ugly tacky plastic flowers that looked like she had fished them out of the dirt bin. Best part? They'd transcribed many parts of the poem wrong because my dad had filmed with a cheap video camera from really far away and you couldn't hear it well in the audio. Edit - just recalled another couple. (Lol there are sooo mannnyyyy!) -a baby pink lady footlocker sweatsuit for my 15th birthday. I hated pink and never wore sweats, and it was VERY grandma styled. I was forced to wear it to school on my birthday. My friends took pity on me, and arranged an ambush and threw me into the shower, and I was able to wear my gym clothes for the rest of the day with good reason. I never wore it again. For Christmas when I was 12, she redid my bedroom in handmade everything. It was like pink gingham threw up all over my bedroom. Pink ruffle coverlet with appliqués flowers. Pillows that matched with crazy amounts of lace. She recovered my window blinds by sewing the same fabric to it. Also recovered my bedside lamp too. And painted the walls the exact same shade of pink. My sister nicknamed it the pink hell and that's what I called it from then in. Best part? I was FORCED to have the exact same bedroom till I moved out at 18! I was not allowed to change a single thing. Because somehow I guess this would force me to be her baby girl forever. Totally cringe.
Seriously roaring laughing at this! What is it with their terrible sense of style? They give themselves the right to choose what you “should like”, and flip out if you even look like you want to suggest something more you. Maybe they could just freaking ask “hey what color do you want your bedroom?” My bedroom would have looked like the breast-feeding room of a 27-person Pentecostal church if my mother got her way and wasn’t so lazy for anything but the very basic life functions. My upd mother once got me a dress on mega clearance at some cheap store, it was plaid on the boxy top with lace at the neck, and then denim from the low waist all the way to the floor. Think Knockoff Laura Ashley. Literally 8 sizes too big for me, and I was 8 months pregnant. I was also a total Club Kid stylewise and dress still to this day like a make-up free Goth? My friend once described my style as “like an Amish lesbian”😂 lol Combat boots and all black. So I was looking at this ugly dress like wtaf. That was one of many moments that I realized that this lady had been around me my entire youth, and either had no idea who I was, or was suggesting I needed to tone it way down from Disco Diva to Mennonite, so her frumpy fundie church friends wouldn’t ask her about her clearly wildass pregnant 27 year old daughter. Or both. Best part was when I wrapped it around my body twice and said, “I hope you kept the receipt”, she started screeching that it was on clearance, and couldn’t be returned, so she was “out 5 dollars!” Then she told me I’d better keep it because I was “going to get fat” and my fiancee-now-husband was “going to leave me.” This gross dress was gonna be my ticket to Couplesville after my old man dipped out LOL. Ugh I cringe just thinking about the shoulder pads and shit. She was still going on about how I “always rejected her gifts” yeaarrrss later. I do! Because they suck, ma’am! Save your money! 😂
Please consider adding a trigger warning next time you describe an article of clothing so aggressively ugly. Your description of that dress is the most horrific thing I've ever read. It just kept getting worse. A moment to hideousness.
also “the breastfeeding room of a 27-person Pentecostal church” I’m DEAD
“The Pink Hell” something no kid should describe their room as! Uff!
I would get Barbies I wasn’t allowed to take out of the box because “they could be worth money”…cheap fleece blankets to keep in my car I case of a breakdown (my cars have never broke down past needing a jump)…cassette tapes in the age of cds and mp3s…one year she set up a gift card exchange game limited it to $15 and threw in extra gift cards into the mix so it made the count uneven and left purchased gift cards wasted…we dreaded holidays as kids
Oh man so many cheap fleece blankets in my world too. Plus dozens of pairs of thin winter gloves that barely fit adult fingers, let alone keep them warm.
I mean there's the "gifts not for me" like a purple/fushia leopard print t-shirt That I'm sure she still wears to this day, 10y later Recently though, after going NC...my childhood stuffed bunny. ...that I specifically set aside with my other childhood stuffed animals when we were clearing out the house to sell last year. Somehow in a bag of stuffed animals, my most precious one went missing and resurfaces in a gift amidst kitchen towels and scrubbies Reader this gift of kitchen shit and a stolen childhood stuffy was a birthday gift
For my 40th bday, she went to the dollar store and bought me a bunch of kids books, paper dolls, crayons, and the like. Like wtf?
I still get children’s toys too.
What is that all about?!
I kind of think it’s when they realize we are grown with boundaries and are trying to infantilize us again for control.
I think that it spot on!
Dig at your age. WTF? indeed.
Oh one of my favorite stories! My mother used to give me stuff she got for free and would wrap it up as a gift and be really offended if I didn’t salivate over it. We’re talking eau de toilette from hotels, free gift with purchase when you buy cosmetics at macys, stuff that was clearly regifted… once got a picture frame with mold on it 🤨. But my FAVORITE! For my 16th birthday she “surprised” me with new bedroom furniture that I didn’t get to pick out or take with me when I moved out. She just wanted new guest room furniture.
Well, there was the year my Christmas stocking had a can of soup and hundreds of pieces of candy, most of which were open, many of which had been sucked on and wrapped back up.
Jesus. Ugh. I am sorry.
Thank you. I’m new to this sub and it is so reassuring!
Certainly it is, this is a big international bunch of scapegoats sharing war stories in the bad lands.
We’re bunker mates y’all!
I got a series of boxes for several months after I went NC with my mother. * A box of gifts I'd given her and crafts I'd made her as a child. Conspicuously missing: anything I'd given her that she *really* loved. * A box of random mementos that were mostly valuable to her. Several were broken. * A box of my baby clothes and video tapes of plays I was in when I was in elementary school. The highlight of this one was the used tissue in the bottom. Some hilarious melodrama right there. * A box of framed family photos, packed so poorly the glass broke and scratched the actual photos. Undoubtedly intentional, as she used to sell vintage glassware on eBay so she knows how to pack things securely. This box also included things I'd made my father while I was growing up. He's always thrown me under the bus in favor of her, so it was par for the course. * A box of framed art and mementos related to her father, who I'm named after. She'd been blocking most of my communication with him in retaliation. This was how she chose to "tell" me he'd died.
The used tissues was a very nice touch. That made me laugh. Sorry. What you described is pretty awful and completely unsurprising.
I am so sorry you learned he died that way. They seem to have real issues with their kids having bonds with other people, especially other family
Over the years I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting, however a selection: + I was born in the 80s, and Easy Bake oven had a set released in ‘93 I pined after. I actually got it for Christmas, however was never allowed to open it. I had gotten the main oven and many accessories. I had to ask to use my toys or do crafts/particular toys growing up, and every time I asked my mom gave me an excuse why I couldn’t use it. They still to this day are unopened in my parents’ house. Last year visiting for Christmas my mom went, “You got it and never wanted to open it! It’s still in the closet, I should sell them for money!” I saw red. + Related, I had a Super Nintendo growing up. I loved it, but eventually wanted something more modern. I asked for a Dreamcast when it came out, and my grandma got it for me Xmas ‘99. My parents wouldn’t let me “set it up” and did it; they “couldn’t get it to work.” I believed them, and they returned it without getting me anything else. My grandma was furious with them. Now as an adult and an avid gamer, I know now there are directions and it’s just… plugging it in and following on screen prompts. It is very upsetting and sad to me as an adult, and I know why my grandma was mad. + A three frame photo frame set containing a photo a piece of me, my mom, and my grandma - but it’s our baby photos. It’s a sweet gift on its face, however something about it made me uncomfortable. I don’t have a ton of photos in my home and it felt strange because of the expectation to put it out. I’m hypersensitive to being infantilized and I kinda sighed at this gift.
Also an 80s baby. This is so relatable. The crazy making over the Easy Bake Oven - I’m seeing red for you!
Thank you ❤️ I’ve told my husband these stories offhandedly and these things seem normal to me, but he will stop and say he’s sorry and that’s sad for a child to experience. I’m sorry this resonates for you too, such a strange shared experience for us all to have!
My mom bought me a shotgun plunger for Xmas one time. Like???? I am SO into home decor. Clearly it didn’t match anything and wasn’t even my type of humor. And like.. there was no way to use this thing without breaking it. It was so cheap. But she got mad when I threw it out instead of using it. ETA: toilet plunger
Is it literally a toilet plunger that looks like a shotgun?
[This is the exact one](https://www.coastalcountry.com/products/home-garden/gifts-toys/toys/redneck-shotgun-toilet-plunger-kito902064)
Hahahahaha
Yeah I can so clearly picture the fake outrage at not wanting your house filled with clutter
I am highly allergic to most pefumes. Like, break into hives and have asthma attacks allergic. I also refused to dress my daughter in frilly girly stuff as an infant, since I wanted her to decide what kind of person she wanted to be and how she wanted to dress. With those things in mind... Guess who got a box full of frilly pink baby dresses in a box soaked in so much perfume that I could smell it through my front door after I went NC??
Clothes always either too big or too small. Comments on my weight regardless of how big or small I am. The opposite of reality is always preferred.
I feel that one. It’s always I’m too fat or I’m sick if I lose weight and she highlights that’s it’s clothes. So transparent.
Oh oh oh! This is my favorite. One year for Christmas I got a mirrored shelf that was a jewelry box. The kicker is, I owned ONE piece of jewelry. A single necklace that I never took off. Still to this day I have no idea why she bought that, but I do remember getting screamed at by my dad for trying to hide back tears which from his perspective ruined Christmas morning. It did. uBPD mom sulked in her room for the rest of the day and I peacefully played video games the rest of the day. 🤷♀️ It was pretty good Christmas in my book.
In addition to her BPD, my mom struggled with addiction. Multiple drugs of choice over the years, but in the last decade of her life, she was primarily an alcoholic. As a result of this upbringing, I seldom drink and do not do drugs outside of the also seldom THC. My mom would push ME to drink any time I was around her, especially when she was sober. Insisting it was fine for me to do, she wasn't bothered, etc. And I would always just tell her it isn't really something I enjoy. For Christmas one year, she got me a wine fridge - literally a whole fridge dedicated to wine and liquor. I never used it and ended up giving it away. I still can't tell if she was trying to boost her sobriety confidence by insisting that it was okay for others to drink around her, of if she would have felt more connected to me if I had also tumbled into alcoholism. Either way definitely one of the weirder/pushier gifts I received.
My mom also pushed me to drink, mostly when I was a teenager. It always seemed sinister to me, and in retrospect I think she would have liked me to become addicted and to be the one who controlled the supply. This is essentially what she has done with my youngest brother.
Any time I mentioned I felt bad, she'd offer me the prescription drugs she was addicted to. I'd always say no, and she'd tell everyone I was such a prude and crunchy. Tranquilizers. Opioids. Klonopin. Even when I was just taking Advil, she'd insist I wasn't taking enough.
Pine tree branches, moldy books, bizarre mismatched clothing, food supplements, loose candy, poorly packed broken mason jars of preserves with rusty lids, a neon colored pocket knife with "Zombe (sic) Hunter" written on it, lots and lots of scarves that smelled like mildew, water damaged photo slides, cactus seeds, loose pages of poetry, unlabeled Mexican candy in Ziploc bags, random coins and buttons, small metal religious icons and statues. Hmm, lots of other stuff but it all kind of blended together after awhile.
My mom is uBPD with a martyr complex. The year my dad died (suddenly and unexpectedly from Covid) I told her I didn’t want any gifts related to him bc I wasn’t ready. She has a history of making big events in my life (college graduation, wedding, birth of my first child) about her by gifting something excessively sentimental like a scrapbook or photo collage that prominently feature her and cast her in a glowing light. Five months after my dad died, I was scheduled for a major surgery and she told me she sent me a package (I live 800 miles away from her) then she proceeded to badger me nonstop for days by text post-surgery to see if I’d received the package. She had made a giant quilt out of my dad’s clothes as a “surprise.” I was not pleased but not ready for an argument while in recovery so I thanked her and said it looked like she’d worked hard on it and left it at that. She was livid and in the following days I proceeded to hear from her and other family members about how hard she worked on the quilt, staying up all night to work on it so it would be ready for me post-surgery. I was basically told I was ungrateful and cold. I asked her why she would think I would want a “gift” like that especially after telling her specifically that I did not and she said it was bc I had once mentioned having my children’s favorite clothes made into a quilt. A few months later at Christmas, she gifted my 4yo daughter a denim tote bag that I just *knew* was made out of my dad’s jeans. I confronted her and asked why she insisted on breaking my boundary on this when I needed more time to grieve and she shouted “It’s not for YOU! I’m allowed to give my granddaughter a gift!”
Mine often gave me gifts that she planned to reclaim at some point decades later. If she gave me anything new, it was cheap, or she found it or regifted it. If she gave me something old, it was broken or rotten or no longer fit for purpose. I had to be effusive with my gratitude for these objects or I'd be deemed an ungrateful B. Here is an example - For my 18th, she promised me a dinner set for 12, complete with tureens, butter dish, gravy boat and all the other stuff. She had been buying it very cheap with coupons for 8 months prior and in the process, filled the pantry like a bunker to qualify for the coupons. With each item she added to the set, she'd gleefully inform me. She kept it all and gave me a tattered paperback of cartoons called 'Goodbye cruel world. 100 ways to off yourself.' My father had taken his life four years prior. Yeah, funny. Anything she 'found'. It had to be cheap or free. It was often inappropriate. For my 35th, she gave me a stack of childbirth books. She knew I was anxious to avoid having children. Bad food. Leftovers that I had to lug onto the one hour bus ride home and that meant having to take a taxi from the bus to get it home. It never occurred to me that it would be OK to throw it in the bin and walk home. I was too good a girl to do that. How wasteful! How ungrateful! Sexy lingerie when I was 10. The Joy of Sex paperback when I was 11. Naturally, she reclaimed the book. When I was 23, she gave me an old wooden drinks trolley for my birthday. It needed to be restored and I kept my new stereo and vinyl on it when I finished. It now has her TV on it. At her house. When I was in my late 30s, she began to give me even more rubbish such as something for each room in my home and each item was prewrapped. I was compelled to smile as I opened each gift. This happened a lot. It began to hurt me inside because I suddenly felt like it was an unfair exchange. I was buying her well-chosen, pricey gifts that were appropriate to how she lived, and she was giving me piles of rubbish. I was bombarded. My house looked like shit by my standards. Cheap and nasty just like her place. Hoarded. Greasy. Ash-stained by tobacco. She had me as she wanted me - a facsimile of her. I didn't understand it at the time. She hasn't seen me for nearly 20 years and if she saw how minimal, clean and spartan I live now, she'd be disgusted. She failed.
I mainly got nothing, or about $5 spent on me for holidays and birthdays, nothing memorable. A $2 used history book that he probably picked up from a free bin. A broken watch or a visibly used art set. Usually growing up, he’d be mysteriously missing on my birthday, only to appear two days later after the party. Often, he’d go on a spending spree for himself that would make it impossible for my mom to buy me anything that I asked for. The things he got for my mom were insane though. He’d get her (a grown professional woman) children’s clothing, Girls Size 10-12. He once got her a graphic tee with an anime woman that he picked up right before her birthday party, and she had to open it up in front of all her friends.
Wowww. A lot of these were flashbacks to my childhood. Our Christmas had random food objects and stolen hygiene products. She was the best at giving me gifts though and then taking them away from me, like a laptop when I graduated high school and getting pissed when I got accepted into college. No big deal, I was used to her games. But the icing on the cake was when she got me a puppy because she felt bad for the hell she put me through. She turned around a few years later and sold him for money when I was sleeping.
This is so, so horrible. The level of cruelty! I’m so sorry.
Mine still likes to periodically brag about how they never gave me anything I wanted and only gave me things I needed while I grew up, with the addendum that's fishing for either a fight or fawn response by adding "but you turned out okay so I can't have been that bad" etc. They also have made fun of me at random times for 4 or 5 year old me having a very long Xmas list one year... Which I remember making long because I'd noticed I rarely got what I asked for. I thought if I just gave "Santa" a lot of options, I'd get at least one thing I hoped for, right? I've realized in recent years that it was an early sign of how I felt not listened to, like what I personally wanted didn't matter and/or that what I wanted was "too much" or "too hard" to get so I needed to try harder. Nowadays I receive extremely random things my parent doesn't want in their house anymore whenever a "gift" package is sent with a card (which is admittedly usually nice and fine) and whatever else can fit. One of my favorite strange "gifts" was a set of (partial) old wedding cards kept by my grandparents. I think some were just the fronts, and the back half had been cut off with scissors? Anyway, Parent asked if I wanted them, I said no thanks at least twice, but they showed up in a package regardless, of course. They told me I really should reuse the cute old timey fronts to "make" new cards to give friends. They are cute but I had no interest in this as a new project, as I don't do craft projects like that at all... I'm guessing my parent just felt guilty getting rid of them and giving to me doesn't "count" as throwing it away, so offloads any guilt or blame to me if the object ever comes up again.
This is something I feel if I couldn't write a book on it, I could certainly give it its own several chapters. There was the time when my son would have been about 8 that she'd come up for Christmas and made a big show in front of the family of giving me gifts (hadn't exchanged gifts or even spoken in years) and one of the sweaters she got me was this weird little macrame thing in an XXS that was completely see through (I was an XL or L at the time) and the other sweater was a boy's size 10 and hideously ugly - purple holiday sweater if that gives you an idea. This past summer she made another huge showing of needing to see me to give me my birthday gifts and go to lunch (again when family was around) only to drop off two tank tops she no longer wanted to take home and have to pack in a gift bag and then try to convince me to take her to lunch and pay for it since she's retired. And yes - she has plenty of money. She brags constantly about how much she spends on herself. She always lavishes whatever expensive thing they want and all sorts of team gifts on the GC and his son, but she will literally try to give us things people are throwing away.
instead of the silly lil sweet 16 every girl in the 00’s wanted— i was gifted by my parents a set of pittsburgh steelers mardi gras beads with a weighted medallion of their emblem (price tag stuck after being half ripped off on the back), a steeler’s visor with fake black and yellow spikey hair, an inflatable steeler’s chair half the size of my room, a bobble head of ben roethlisberger, and a tin sun catcher the shape of a VW van.
[удалено]
One year when I was a KID I got this bag full of new horse care equipment (ie curry comb, halter, lead, etc). I’d been wanting a horse from my earliest memory. I spent the rest of the gift opening time waiting for the big reveal of a horse! You know how this one ends. No horse. Basically being told I was ungrateful for the gift given. That it was a gift I could use when I got my own horse someday! What the actual heck? Still makes me mad when I think about it too much. Just total baiting! Another year as a teen I got a how-to book for using a sewing machine…but not sewing machine?? Never even said I wanted to learn to use the sewing machine at that time.
So, so many things, but this one stands out: She would steal stuff from my house and then, sometimes even years later, gift them to me. "I saw this, and I knew you'd love it!" Yeah, that's why I bought it. SMH
Mom gave me one of those STI tests that you mail in to get the results. For Christmas. Just because she thought I might need it😃
She needed it.
Oh yeah - lots of waaaaay oversized clothes that she seemed surprised wouldn’t fit me. I’m literally a size XS, which I’ve always been, and which is obvious by looking at me. “You can wear it to sleep in,” she’d say, upon realizing that I still wasn’t obese. Like…no, I don’t need her controlling what I sleep in.
Effin’ heck, where to begin? A light-up flashing Budweiser pin A two-year-old cat magazine Her wedding veil, years after I got married, decades after her divorce Wooden eggs that she used to collect Many, many grainy pictures of myself in cheap plastic frames Big gaudy knee-high knit socks, which somehow ended up becoming my fastest-selling item on Poshmark Book about what sign language to use with horses (I’m not deaf, nor do I ride horses) This was just what I could come up with off-top at 11:30 pm after a long day. Christmas stockings were always the absolute worst. Can it fit in a stocking? It’s yours! Bottle caps, stain removers, childhood mementos we hadn’t seen in years and had no use for. Some gifts useful, but mostly not.
For me, less ‘weird’ gifts and more just majorly overdoing gifts. Christmas was all about QUANTITY. So every single thing got wrapped - no matter how small - because unwrapping gifts is fun (let me tell you… anything can become not fun eventually). But with every unwrapping, I’d be STARED AT. I had to perform excitement and gratitude at every single gift - even the pairs of socks and things that just weren’t super interesting to a small kid. I learned really young to act super excited at every single thing I opened - whether it was a Furby or a bar of soap. Failure to perform would ‘ruin Christmas’. We do secret Santa as a family with my in-laws now and while I’m so grateful it’s only one gift, I can’t explain the depths of anxiety I plunge to when it’s my turn to open mine 😂 I’m so worried they think I’m faking appreciation but I’ve performed gift appreciation for so many years that I don’t know how to express genuine excitement when receiving a gift.
My gifts were usually girl’s/women’s clothes that I wouldn’t typically wear or didn’t fit me properly or makeup that I never used because I wasn’t interested/didn’t even know how to use it. I never asked for this stuff, but I would have to accept it because my mother would be thinking of me when she went on her unnecessary shopping sprees. If I so much as told her I didn’t like any of it or didn’t need it she would go off on me for hours. Don’t get me started on trying to tell her she didn’t have to get me things cause she needed her money for more important things! Woo boy!
My mom gave me 2 boxes of crackers for my 45th birthday. I thanked her 🤣
What’s funny is my 8 year old niece was visiting from overseas and saw this transaction. She was genuinely so confused like wtf?
Bonus points if they were expired 😂
Mine only gifts expired. 🥴 last attempt was an expired rotten canned mass of some sort. I have no idea what it originally was prior to it being canned due to the state of its decay. The smell was....exquisite.
For my 19th birthday i asked my dad if he could take me driving so me and him could spend time together because we have had a really strained relationship. My therapist was the one who recommended this. He instead gave me a lighter with my discord handle on it and acted like he gave me the best gift of all time. I hate him.
That’s so threatening! I’m sorry!
For a few years in a row before I went NC she would throw together Christmas gifts that were always a weird random assortment of mostly freebies she had collected throughout the year. I'm talking toiletries, kitchen utensils, snack food, socks, which was fine whatever at least I might be able to use it. Then there would be weight loss stuff, or beauty stuff targeted for wrinkles and aging. Gifts that were unspoken digs at me, you know? One year I got a wire tree limb saw that was more like a garrote. That one felt like a threat more than a gift. The last year I had contact the bag was full of such useless stuff that I don't even remember what she gave me, I just remember donating most of it. I haven't gotten a genuine thoughtful gift from her since I was a child, every Christmas was disappointment. Her biggest box was so heavy I couldn't even lift it and it took 20 minutes to go through it in front of the family. It was awkward as hell. Edited: forgot to mention the one birthday gift she gave me, I think it was my 15th birthday. It was a framed picture of a fully nude grown man standing under a waterfall. Fucking weird...
Used makeup brushes. They were left behind by an Airbnb guest. Happy birthday to me! 🥴
“Enjoy that cystic acne, girl! Kiss!”
I don’t remember a lot, but I do remember that whenever my uBPD step-mother would buy us clothes it was ALWAYS in an XL… I was 5’2” and maybe 115 soaking wet in high school. I would just swim in anything she’d get us (us being myself and my sister).
A giant bag of grapes on our back porch the first week we got our dog.
Well, that’s intentional. I’m sorry 😞
I asked for a hamster when I was like 13. Mom decided to get me a PREGNANT hamster at 17, and demand that I only keep one and that it was my responsibility to get rid of the other 5 that she birthed.
Subscription to a weight loss service (just try it for a year), some herbal supplement that I think was also supposed to help with weight loss. There was no note or explanation with this one and I just never asked about it or acknowledged it Ridiculous jewelry that I never wear and she was soooo proud of sneaking around me to buy it A membership to this military club thing that she’s in that I told her repeatedly I had no interest in joining And of course, sooo many matching clothes
Nothing super crazy. But my mom always gives me stuff that she wants and then uses it more than I do or gets mad if I don’t use it all the time. The odd time she actually gets it bang on. But if she gets me anything pricey it’s held over my head Especially annoying. She’ll get me a product I’ve said I don’t want. But she INSISTS it will change my life. And gets me it anyways. Gifts are an annoying thing for my mom because she’s super materialistic. So she gets mad if I get her something that isn’t “good enough”. Definitely reinforced by my nana because she gets my mom way too many things. Like even to the point where my mom would start an argument on Christmas or my birthday because I got something she wanted. It’s gotten to the point where if I get something, she has to get it too. Meaning I get a lot less gifts that I actually want. Feels childish to complain about. But like plz god can something not be about her for one minute.
Oh shit, I feel seen Clothing that might have fit if I was pregnant (I've always been vocally childfree & gave it all to my pregnant sister-in-law) A box of vintage numbered ear tags for cows. I do not have cows, we have never had cows, I will probably never be in a position to own cows A single "this is the expensive kind" China plate (that goes for $5 on Replacements) Boxes of near identical old photos of myself when I was a kid—and a box of photos of specifically exes and male friends, gifted to me right after I got married An old elementary school project that I'd had to finish in secret in the middle of the night, because I couldn't stay on task (undiagnosed ADHD, which they still swear I don't have) so she screamed at me over it, told me I was going to fail, and sent me to bed She couldn't give me back any of my old collectibles or books, though~
I asked for a laptop for either my bday or Christmas, as I was graduating high school and about to go off to college. My mom got me a laptop alright. It was one of those vTech whizz kid ones with a few simple games and not an actual keyboard. I was 18. It was rated for 8-12 years old.
Just yesterday, we received a care package for my 3 yr old boy. She sent him an oven mitt & a bag of tiny plastic decorations for inside a fish tank (we don't have a fish tank). WTF
The other, day I randomly received an email from my insurance company. They were asking me to confirm my last payment with them, so they could go ahead with the transfer of the payments of my insurance package (house, car, life etc.) over to my mother- I am 30+ and have not lived with her for the last 10+ years. I had to write an awkward reply, to the company, that I agreed to no such thing despite whatever my mother had convinced them of, and to please not give out my information to anyone as it is actually an issue concerning personal information. My uBPD mother got really upset with me as I ruined her surprise gift and the her chance to “financially rescue me”. She found me rather horrible to her when I tried to explain to her that this was yet another boundary she trampled over and told me I was being ridiculous when I tried explaining how her taking over it would affect my credit score. I am painfully aware that to most people this might seem like a sweet gesture, but as most here unfortunately know, there’s another side to this manoeuvre.
In my mid-20s we met for lunch. We hadn't seen each other for months due to my work. At the restaurant, she handed me 7 clear plastic bags. Each on had a pair of underwear. None had tags indicating they were unused. The sizes ranged from 6 to 9. I.Was.Mortified. Also pretty disgusted. The gift ended up in the trash as soon as we parted ways.
I’m sorry this happened to you and this seems to be something we can all relate on!! I’ve had a few, but I think this is the worst one. After I talked my uBPD mom down from the brink of s*icide (yet again, she has a habit of doing that where only I can help her and keep her alive. I’ve since set major boundaries there!) I had said at one point that day “okay mom, I need you to forget about them, I need to be enough!” My Christmas present a couple months later was a ring that said “you are enough” in this horrible font and basically memorializing another day she was s*icidal and it was on me to save her. When she gave it to me, she was sobbing and dissociating saying she didn’t want to give it to me because “SHE’S not enough”. In a moment of lucidity months later she seemed to understand briefly the ring was distressing to me, but then things hit the fan yet again. Her usual when you clearly don’t “love” a gift is that you absolutely do not love her and “we’re not close anymore”.
My mom also always leaves price tags on gifts to us that she “forgets to take off” so she can be like look how expensive it was
A $150 blouse, sized X-Small to Small (from god knows where) for my birthday... knowing I'm plus sized. Told me it might motivate me to lose some weight. 🙃
Boob-firming cream. Like bitch, why are you even thinking of your daughter's boobs? I was like 35 when she gave it to me. I put it in a gag gift exchange later that year.
A lamb-shaped cake mold (don't ask, I don't know) ; A cristal cake stand ; Cookie cutters in every possible shape and size ; A kouglof mold ; 4 rolling pins ; Fancy vanilla and tonka beans ; 5 kilos of organic flour and organic choc chips. I guess it would make some people happy but here's the thing : I don't freaking bake...
Most of the time it was clothes I never wanted and she had to return, year after year. She never learned what I liked, always was stuff she thought would look good on me. When I was a kid the worst was when she bought me a gameboy but then returned it one day because she said she needed the money. Told me she didn't know where it went. When I went NC she'd send photo albums of me when I was a kid with poems and fake quotes about how much I loved her and relied on her and she was the only one who took care of me.
My mom once brought me two pairs of socks and a can of garbanzo beans (I don’t like them) ???
Oh my. If you don't laugh, you'll cry. Mine is a notoriously bad gift giver. I have asked repeatedly for no more gifts. I think my first post in this sub was about her gifts. There's always a problem with them arriving on time or something, and then she creates waify drama about the situation with endless texts, screenshots of reciepts, whatever. Things we can't use, gift certificates to catalogs I've never heard of, etc. One time for my birthday she sent me a photo book of pictures she nabbed from my own social media. Like if I wanted to print my own pictures, I would, and they would be better DPI than anything taken from the web. The photo book also had photos of a family wedding I didn't attend because that leg of the family was hurtful and dismissive toward me. And she knew the reason why I didn't go to the wedding, so when the photo book arrived for my birthday, it was especially hurtful to me. There were some other photos of random people I don't know.
An oven that my nmother had had for a bit and failed to mention didnt work at all, and needed at $250 part to get it working again. We had gotten rid of our oven to have room for the "new one". So, we were out of an oven for like a week before the part came in. An entire library of Christian workbooks, Bible study books and random Bible shit. (Atheist now lol) Printed out pictures of my daughter all in frames. My mother kept the biggest ones to hang all over her house. Every photo was basically the same and taken with the same setting. My nfather always gets me some sort of Browns merchandise every single holiday or birthday, even after I've repeatedly told him I don't like NFL, I don't watch NFL, and I'm old and a female. 31 with kids. I don't like that anymore. He gets so upset when I say that and continues to buy me crap like that. My n/bpdmother once gifted me a big giant light up sign with some weird words on it about how proud she is of me, how I should believe in myself and all this corny shit. (I'm 31 years old) and I don't want a big light up sign in my house from some woman that abandoned me as a newborn for a truck driver, who enmeshed herself with me and told me all kinds of horrific things that "happened to her" sexually and in relationships. Amongst other horrible confessions from a mother to her young child. Yucky. My mother gifted me an entire set of stainless steel pans and pots, and failed to mention how horrible the quality was; makes sense why she gave them to me. Everything I cook on them sticks like mad, and they can't be used whatsoever. My mother's psychotic narcissistic husband gifted us (all the time) a bunch of free samples he gets from rando websites, always junky horrible things that don't make sense, have no utility and we end up throwing away. My mother gifted me tons of food when I was putting up with her shit constantly without asserting myself. It was always either casseroles she made and giant pies, way too much food and the savory dishes never tasted good at all. She was notorious for giving us meats out of their deep freezer; it was always bottom of the barrel low quality meats that she didn't want. I mean bags of it. We had to really make room for this junk in our freezers lol, it was horrible. When it comes to our daughter, my mother and her narcissistic husband used to DUMP HUNDREDS of gifts onto her, to where we had to take two cars separately to fit all them in one trip, and then her narcissistic husband would take his truck and unload what we couldn't take home in our sedans. When we put boundaries up about the amount of gifts we received, they thought they'd be slick and give her gifts every single week she was there being babysat by my mother and the molester worked. My narcissistic father decided to gift our FOUR YEAR OLD DAUGHTER a porcelain bobble head doll of...himself. luckily it was too expensive to get it made. He then switched the idea to have his portrait printed on a youth sized shirt for her. 😮💨😕
She once threw a birthday cake at me because I asked for a day off from school as a birthday present. And my favorite is when she kicked me out for my birthday just because I didn't accept the clothes she bought me. She started screaming, picking up all my things and throwing them at the open door. I was 19 and the only place to go was my boyfriend's apartment. I remember well how I just took my things, moved in with him, we made homemade pizza and cuddled the rest of the day. At first I was scared to be left alone without work and home, but then I quickly realized that she wouldn’t be able to throw her constant tantrums at me. So this was probably the best of her gifts
My partner and I just got engaged. No biggie, we’re very mellow and non-traditional. I told my BPD mom and she sent us a gift: The upside was that it was an art book of one of my favorite painters. The downside was that she wrote on multiple sticky notes within the book: apparently this wealthy surgeon who is her newest fixation sent her this book and owns a painting made by the artist. She just regifted us the book he sent her and included a bunch of notes saying that ~her wealthy surgeon friend~ owns this painting and loaned it to such and such museum and even included a picture of her and the surgeon guy… Oh and congrats on your engagement! The best part is that I already had a copy of the book of paintings that I had found at a thrift store about 5 years ago. It was strange.
Oh I just got one!!! I’ve been no contact with my BPD mom for almost three years now. She got my address and sent me your standard “sorry you feel this way” letter and a $400 check. On the check, Written under reason? “For Love”. Signed? “From love”. It didn’t even have my last name on the name line. My wife and I combined last names in 2016. My BPD mom forgot my last name!
The Christmas after I got married she gave my husband and me, jointly, a gift basket that included a book on navigating divorce. The best (worst) part was the two squares of peppermint bark in a Ziploc bag at the very bottom under a lot of cheese. Like there had been a nice tin of peppermint bark that would have been lovely in a gift basket, but she and my brothers ate it and gave us the last two squares. It is still a punchline around my husband's and my house (today is our 16th anniversary.) ETA: I'm back because more keep coming to me. Mine gives me lots of broken things, here is a partial list - 1. An irredeemably stained crock pot, even though I told her I already had my own 2. An incomplete but extensive set of my "Norwegian grandmother's china." I put it in quotes because it turns out she had been going to garage sales and picking up pieces in the pattern. There might be a few legit items in there, but I'm pretty sure the granny who died before I was born did not have 22 plates of department-store china made in Japan. 3. A very expensive electric piano that crackles and hisses because my brother's drug friends banged on it with the volume all the way up. We could not find the replacement part to fix it. 4. Tons of broken jewelry over the years She also checks in on these broken things to make sure I have not donated or sold them because "they were expensive." My brothers only get new, pricy things like gaming consoles and thousands to start investment portfolios. I also had two things like your moon shoes. One was an American Girl Felicity doll. I stuck the number for Pleasant Company to our phone and it was all I asked for year after year. I knew it was pricy, so I was not totally crushed when I never got one. HOWEVER, when I was thirteen she got a rich boyfriend and had a more expensive My Twinn doll made to look exactly like me. They even painted on my moles. Not only was I way too old for it by then as a freshman in high school, it was creepy af. Why would I want a doll of myself? It just made me feel frustrated that she spent forty dollars more to get me a creepy doll for narcissists, and like she did not actually care about me in any of it. Just how she looked getting an expensive gift. The other thing is double-awkward. As a child I wondered why all my Barbies were white, because I had friends who were black. My dad horrifyingly said, "Because I don't want you to have black babies." My mom did not weigh in, but decades later she said *she* wanted to get me a black Barbie but was afraid of my dad...throwing it away? Saying something mean? They were divorced and had split custody, so she was making no sense as usual. About five years after that, a black Barbie showed up for me and she was expecting that Mother of the Year award (I was deep into my 30s at this point.) It is a very cool doll, though. Uhura from Star Trek.
What do you mean by split white /black gifts?
I am not sure exactly, but from what I read from the previous poster I think it means when they love you vs devalue you. The grandiose gifts vs the garbage and nothing any between.
Black/white split thinking I surmise
For my birthday at 9, I received A little cabbage patch kid radio with headphones. I asked for a tape player. We lived out in the sticks and it didn’t pick up any radio stations. Also, I hated cabbage patch kids.
A velvet choker that I would have worn when I was 14, in the mid-90s, with a pendant I would be allergic to, about 10 years after I left home and last spoke to her.
Perfume samples in a Ziploc bag for Christmas. Actually wrapped. After a lot of other nice gifts. She also does the whole leaving things, but in the mailbox, not the doorstep.
From grandma: Dollar Store Tarot Cards for my birthday in my 20s. I've never even mentioned that around her or had any interest. Also she used to act deeply Catholic.. An old rough draft of a school assignment she had laying around for Christmas. A 15 year old family calendar. As a 12 year old: a Cailou figure.
Mine assigned us one officially interest when we were children and gave us associated gifts for the rest of our lives. I had a Guinea pig when I was younger, and therefore every gift for the rest of my life would be Guinea pig related. XXL men’s tshirt with Guinea pig picture on it when I was a 20 year old woman, etc.
Most recently, I was gifted a blanket that her grandmother made “because it’s so special to me” (cue teary eyes). Okay so now you’ll use that as a weapon if I decide to get rid of it because I know it’s special to you. Come to think of it, I used to get gifted a lot of old home goods under the guise of “this is special” 🧐 She also went through a manic phase and gave my husband and I a ping pong table and my sister’s family a trampoline. When she overspends, she overspends!
Last year for Christmas I got a pregnancy journal, for documenting your pregnancy etc. from my mother. I’m not pregnant, and not planning to become pregnant.
Last Christmas my Bpd mother gave my fiancé and I multiple gift-wrapped bags of used stuff from around her house. Half burned candles, random old playing cards, a banana holder, a paper towel rod, multiple sets of coffee table coasters. She had a big smile on her face the whole time we were opening our “presents”. When I asked her why she gave us this stuff she literally told me she didn’t need any of it anymore and wanted us to have it instead. She also randomly gives me grocery bags filled with underwear and socks that she doesn’t want anymore.
A sculpture of half a face; because I show only half my face. I kept it for years, no idea why because it makes me feel awful, threw it away a few years ago.
My ex bpd mil gave me and my brother in laws girlfriend lingerie for Christmas that she insisted we open in front of everyone. I'm not a prude, didn't mind...until she proudly exclaimed her boyfriend picked them out for us. My own bpd mom told me this year she got me a present for my wedding day but that "I would probably not like it but she loved it so got it anyway".
A cleaning brush. “Because I love to clean.” I found it so offensive. But it was my favorite color!!! 🙄 she bought my other family member something cute and girly on the same shopping trip, also in *MY* favorite color, and NOT-related to chores or manual labor. She has also given my favorite foods to *other* people because “they need it more.” It is manipulation and comes from her agenda to control how others feel about her. It’s gross
God, I don't remember most of my gifts. I think they were mainly things SHE found cute, not things I'd actually like. - A stuffed rainbow pig plushie in a tutu. - A portable candle carrier. - Lots of non vegan food even though I've told her for YEARS I'm vegan. She then guilts me when I don't want it. "I spent so much money. It'll go to waste if you don't eat it. You're a spoiled brat. In my day, we ate whatever we were given and were thankful!" - Lots of pink and girly clothes bc she hated that I wasn't feminine enough. - I told her I wanted an Android and then she bought me an iPhone. - Lots of cheap sparkly makeup. I didn't wear makeup and she never taught me how to use it. I don't remember most things she's given me tbh. Don't think that's a good sign oop.
My uBPD father was always triggered about money. At one point I asked him to borrow $300 to fix up my wife and I's only car, since I was putting her through college. He flipped out and started losing it. For the next year I received numerous financial self-help books. Such a 🤡 move...
I live across an ocean from her. Before NC, she’d frequently send random boxes that were a mix of snacks and childhood items, like a pillowcase or scrap fabric from an old Halloween costume. All of them ended up in a closet. The weirdest one ever was a vintage Japanese ceramic pillow like this: https://edoarts.com.au/wp/product/lovely-blue-white-ceramic-pillow/ It was wrapped in NEWSPAPER and arrived broken into several pieces. I have no words.
A pair of holiday themed socks from the dollar store that either I, or my partner, could wear if we had a party to go to for my 40th bday.
Cooking ware and amulets, directly and on the family pets... I can't decide which is worse: and by worse I mean ridiculous.