Today, my family was hosting a surprise birthday party for my aunt. Everything was fine until we were eating in the backyard with everyone. The conversation would change every so often. We were first talking about past injuries we all had and my mom and aunts spent a good amount of time laughing at my uncle when he spoke about a facial injury he had when he was younger. She also brought the embarrassing story of how I broke my arm when I was little.

While this was happening, I was busy remembering something that happened a year ago, when my mom got mad at me, my cousin, and my aunt for laughing about something she shared with us. It wasn’t anything serious, my mom even found it really funny, but then she got really pissed about it and didn’t speak to the three of us for like a week. Anyways I was remembering that and my cousin asked me what I was thinking about. I brought it up (not the reason why my mom was mad, but how she acted when she was mad) and then we all started talking about how each of us get when we’re mad. I briefly said something about how my mom is when she’s mad and how I am usually the one who has to apologize even if my mom was the one who started the argument over something so little.

Anyways, I said this, no ill intent at all. Everyone moved on from that and continued to talk about how everyone else gets when they’re mad. My mom went inside, I followed her, just wanting to spend time with her and joke around like we always do. We go inside and she says something along the lines of, “why do you always have to embarrass me in front of people?” And I was genuinely so caught off guard before saying that I didn’t mean to and how nobody even cared, but she started tearing up and said, “no, I can feel they’re judging me,” before she went to the bathroom. I stood there, feeling like absolute shit before going upstairs to wait for her to come out. When she did, she went straight to her room and locked herself inside.

I felt HORRIBLE. She told me that I sometimes say too much in front of people, but I genuinely can’t tell when something is too much for her to handle.

One of my aunts came upstairs to tell us that we were serving the cake now. I was already tearing up because I felt so bad and my aunt noticed. She asked what was wrong. I burst into tears and told her what happened. My aunt became annoyed with my mom. She brought up that my mom was just laughing about my uncle’s past facial injury and everyone else’s bad moments, but she couldn’t handle it when it happened to herself.

My aunt reassured me that it wasn’t my fault before she went to talk to my mom, who didn’t even respond to her calls or knocks on the bedroom door. I continued to cry and my cousin came to comfort me. By the end of the night, most of my family was informed of what happened and all of them agreed that she was taking it too seriously.

Still, I feel so horrible. Does anyone know how I should apologize to my mom? She hasn’t left her room at all, please help.