The weight of silence broke in the harshest way when she confronted her mother, unveiling years of pain hidden beneath polite lies. The words exchanged were sharp and raw, yet through the anger and rejection, Daisy found a fierce clarity: the courage to choose herself and the life she deserved.
My name is Daisy and I am 19 female. My Dad is Australian and my Mom is American. I have dual citizenship. I have never really liked living with my Mom. I have talked to my Dad about moving to Australia for years.
He told me that when I am 18, I can move in at any time and he would help me get everything worked out. And he kept his word.
In 2019, I shipped a lot of my belongings, packed bags, took my needed paperwork, and left “for the summer” and never came back. I told my Mom I was visiting longer, and made excuses, but I never intended to come back.
With everything that happened in Dec 2019, I told my Mom I could not leave. I guess I didn’t have the guts to explain almost seven years of bullshit. Dad left when I was 12, she remarried three months later, and suddenly I had a step-brother that she seemed to favor more.
It just felt like I was a guest in their home.
I finally had the “talk” with my Mom and she called me an asshole for it. I explained to her that I didn’t intend to come back. I had everything I wanted with me in Australia. She said, what about paperwork.
I explained I took everything when I turned 18 and graduated HS. I said that I didn’t intend to go to college when this was over and I had applied to Uni here in Australia. I was happy.
Dad said he would support me for a few years and I was not going to be keeping my U.S. citizenship.
She started crying and ask if I hated her. I asked her why she never showed me I was more important than her new marriage and that while she was my mom, I didn’t really know how to forgive her for feeling alienated.
I said I didn’t want to talk for a while and hung up. Now I feel like an asshole?
Conclusion
The individual, Daisy, is grappling with significant guilt after finally asserting her long-held desire to leave her mother’s home and move permanently to Australia to live with her father. Her emotional position is torn between the relief of establishing independence and the distress caused by her mother’s reaction, which included accusations of being an “asshole” and asking if Daisy hated her.
The central conflict lies between Daisy’s need for emotional security and autonomy, which she sought by leaving a situation she perceived as alienating, and her mother’s expectation of continued presence and deference. The core question for consideration is whether confronting years of built-up resentment and alienation, even if causing immediate pain, is a necessary step for an adult child to secure their own well-being, or if the method and timing of the announcement constituted an unforgivable breach of familial duty.
Here’s how people reacted:
NTA for going to Australia, obviously, you do what‘s best for you.
NTA for going to Australia without telling your mom about it. If she mistreated you, these are the results she has to deal with it. She could‘ve stopped you, so yeah, not telling her was the safest bet.
NTA for being not sure whether you‘d stay in Australia and therefore lying to your Mom.
NTA for the conversation where you told her. Reep what you sow, you can‘t neglect your child and expect it to act like nothing happened. Making herself the victim in this situation just confirms this opinion – she knows she did something wrong but doesn’t want to face it. So yeah, good for you for getting out of there OP, in my experience, this is not going to change. Maybe she‘ll have an epiphany and will apologize, but I‘ll highly doubt it.
Well, you are kind of the asshole for lying to her about more than a year though, but hear me out first. You don‘t own her sh**, that‘s true. But the thing is, this attitude won’t help you with anything in life. You don’t own your abuser any decency, but I think, you own it to yourself – don‘t stoop to her level. I think I get where you were coming from, and it seems to me that you were afraid to tell her. That‘s okay. But problems won’t go away just because you ignore them. And this explicit YTA is for making your life unnecessarily harder than it needed to be – you could‘ve told her as soon as you knew you would never coming back, so you could be free of this burden much sooner.
And don‘t ever, ever feel guilty for what she‘s doing or what she did. None of this is your fault. You need to be happy in your own life, and make decisions that will ensure this. I hope you‘ll get over this and find your happiness in Australia.
Like clearly, you are a fucking asshole in this story. Everybody making excuses for you is hilarious. You lied and strung your mother along for months about the situation. That alone makes you an asshole. And you claim it’s all so justified because your mother didn’t treat you how you wanted growing up, yet you even admit she still did so many things for you. She’s literally been asking for months about when you’re coming back, yet you act like she completely neglected you and didn’t give a shit about you growing up. Contradictory much? And what about the fact that your father literally abandoned you for years, yet you are placing no blame on him. I wonder how great your mother feels that the daughter she raised for years left her for the parent who didn’t do any work on the upbringing, and then lied about it for months.
Not for leaving, not for resenting your mum, but for stringing her along for so long.
Edit : changing to esh, which should have been my call in the first place.
The mother is clearly worse than op. Sorry that my comment made it seem that I thought otherwise. However, op did not handle this well. My yta was only for the stringing along, which was the wrong approach, and will have definately make things worse in the long run…for the op more than anyone.
It’s pretty telling that she didn’t know how upset your were and didn’t even notice that you shipped all your important stuff over here.
Welcome to Australia mate!
She has the relationship with you that she created. That’s on her, you were a kid.
EDIT: Changing this to NTA. OP’s mom is manipulative and hard to talk to about anything.
OAN, don’t relinquish your US citizenship if you don’t have to. With all the political upheavals going on in the world, it’s better to keep your options open. In one of the greatest ironies I’ve seen in the past few years, Brexit champion, Nigel Farage, has both German and British citizenship.
Your mom didn’t notice you’d moved all your stuff out of your room. Didn’t notice your important papers were gone. Didn’t seem to give a sh*t you’d scrubbed your existence from the house.
You did the right thing for you.
Good luck with your new life in Australia!