42-year-old mother upset that 18-year-old daughter won't be her "emotional support" at family gatherings: '[She] said I’m being selfish'

When we're young, we assume that our parents and other adults in authority are infallible, generally taking them at their word and assuming that all adults conduct themselves in mature, non-biased, morally upright, and ethical ways.

You come to find, as you age, that even the paragons of your youth are, in fact, fallible, imperfect people. This realization will often first cause you to feel resentment before you eventually come to accept as you age further that they were nothing more than people doing their best with what they had on what was often their first time doing it too.

If you were lucky enough to grow up with parents, caregivers, and other mentors who did their best to live to the golden standard they were trying to teach you, chances are that you didn't learn these lessons until later in life—trusting authority figures wholly in times where they weren't holding your best-unbiased interests to heart to sometimes brutal consequence.

You see, some people don't age, don't grow, and don't learn. They inexplicably stuck at maturity and complexity as if they were far younger than they actually were, showing wisdom and judgment far beneath their actual age. Further elaboration is almost unnecessary; you know who these people are.

Some of these people—in fact, a great many, go on to become parents themselves and/or achieve positions of power in their communities that outstrip their emotional capabilities, leaving them in elevated positions where they can wield pettiness like a weapon.

Anyways, digressing back to the story at hand. This mother clearly used her daughter as an emotional crutch for dealing with her family. Leaving her daughter in difficult situations where she needed to be the go-between for the generational emotional strain in her mother's family.

The daughter posted to this online community wondering whether or not she was wrong for refusing to go with her mother, angering her mother. See responses from readers below.

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Posted by Brad Dickson