Depression Understood Forums

I honestly wish there was an off switch to my guilt. Some days I can barely function under the weight of it all. Right now that dreadful feeling is creeping up on me because I'm flying back to my mother's house (which is my main residence. My parents are divorced. Currently visiting my dad for a couple of months and writing exams). My flight is in 3 weeks. But I don't want to go. I like living at my dad's house. I feel calm and healthy. At my mom's house I have depression episodes all too often. I miss all my friends around my dad's house. I don't have any friends where my mom lives. I literally sit in my room all day, everyday (my studies is correspondence) and I'm constantly in fear that my mother will have one of her anger outbursts directed at me.

The guilt comes in because I feel like a horrible person. After a lifetime with my mother how could I even think to want anything other than being close to her? What kind of selfish child would abandon her mother after everything they've been through?? Some days I think I'm exaggerating. Surely there must be something wrong with me. Maybe I just watched too much TV and now I'm mistaking her disappointment and hurt feeling over my rejection with abuse.

I also feel guilt for leaving my older brother alone there. He also doesn't have any friends there, but he pretends like it doesn't matter, because all that matters is living with my mom and her happiness and obsessing over her problems. He hasn't seen through this collective delusion she has had us under for almost all our life. I feel horrible for leaving him alone because without me he really doesn't have anyone. It's not fair that I can be happy and see my friends every weekend while he sits at home doing nothing. What right do I have to go on knowing I'm leaving them alone.

I feel selfish for even wanting to leave them, and I know these thoughts are wrong, but I can't help it. All my life I've put aside what I want because my mother comes first. She can't be unhappy, or else it's my fault. Maybe if I wasn't born she wouldn't have all these issues. Maybe she would be happy if I was just smarter and knew the answers to all her problems in life.

Right now I'm facing a big dilemma. To go on in the direction I want to go with my studies I have to switch universities next year and the only university that is approved is the one close to my dad's house. So this should be a pretty normal straight forward thing. Yet I feel guilty, like it's my fault the other universities by my mom's house aren't approved for the one thing I want to do. I'm so scared of telling her because I feel like she's going to freak out and scream at me. I know screaming doesn't sound like much, but for my entire life I've been conditioned into fear every time she starts screaming. The guilt gets so bad that some days I think I should rather quit my studies and do something simple so I can keep living with her, but at the same time I want to cry because I know my depression will spiral out of control if I do that. But is my mental heath really more important than my mother's wishes?

I don't know what I'm expecting from this. I guess it's just something I wanted to get out of my system. Maybe if I write all this in a public place I might start healing

I can't tell you that this will be all that helpful, but I'll try.

I have the same problem with my parents, but I'm significantly younger so I don't have the university problem quite yet.

I can't claim that I know what your feeling, but I feel like I do.

I felt so guilty for wanting to stay with my mom and not my dad. Its wasn't that I loved her more, It was that I felt calmer, as you said, when staying with her.

So one day at one in the morning after having a breakdown, I wrote a letter to him.

I spent three hours making say exactly what I wanted it to say and I cried and I cried some more.

My dad sent a letter back, when we talk on the phone he didn't even mention it at all.

Basically the gist of the letter was that he loves me anyway and so and so

so really the point of me telling you my life story was that, your parents are your parents and they most definitely love you no matter what.