I (16F) have divorced parents. I live with my mom the majority of the time and my dad less. My parents have been divorced since I was 5, so I’m used to the dynamic.

My mom has always tried for me to be her favorite parent. Ever since I can remember, she always tries to one-up my dad. Here are some examples. When I was younger, my mom used to tuck me in at night. She would talk about my dad in negative ways, such as “I can’t tell you why we are divorced yet because what he did was so bad” and “I don’t want you to stay at his house more often, I’ll miss you so much” usually while crying. It was subtly negative. She would steal my sweatshirts and cry into them when I was gone. I would come back from my dad’s house and find her wearing it and claim that she “cried for days” while I was gone. It felt weird.

I haven’t always had the best relationship with my dad, particularly from ages 11-15. I was going through a very hard patch, with my mental health, I had terrible friends in middle school… various factors. My dad is definitely more strict than my mom but he’s also very predictable if he’ll be mad about something. My dad’s punishments back then weren’t amazing, but our relationship has been significantly better after I’ve improved myself after those terrible 4 years. During these 4 years, my mom would talk about him so poorly, like how she did when I was 8. She tried to get me on my side as a parent, and then told me the divorce story. Long story short: my dad cheated on my mom with my current stepmom. I should say, fell in love with my current stepmom while still in a relationship with my mom. My dad mainly wasn’t happy with his marriage, and found someone new. He has owned up to his mistakes now. It’s been 10 years and I have no hard feelings. But my mom still does, she talks terrible of him for the divorce still. She makes odd claims that he still thinks of her. There’s no evidence of this. She hates that he doesn’t text her, which baffles me because she talks so terribly about him.

My mom is also a liar. She lies a lot. This has what has led me to such extreme distrust with her mainly. She tries to usurp my relationship with my dad and stepmom. I should also include, my mom is friends with my stepmoms kids dad. For example: “I heard that your stepmom and her sisters are fighting.” I say, “what? where’d you hear that” “your stepsiblings dad.” I’m confused at this point and I ask my dad, then my stepmom asks her ex-husband “did you say this” and he says no, confused. She lies to try to mess up my relationship with others.

I should also include something that happened last April. About a year ago now. I work for a local county park. In my area, marijuana is illegal. So I had to get a drug test before my job. Government job, the usual- I wasn’t worried about it. Well the night before my drug test I smelled weed in the house. Coming from my mom’s room. I hoped to God it was a skunk. It was not in fact a skunk. This all happened the night before my drug test. At the time, I didn’t know how second hand smoke worked, leading to me being extremely worried about failing my drug test and possibly losing my job. It was the worst. So when i confronted her about it, she got very defensive. “Everyone I know does it!” “It’s not your business what I do in my free time.” “I swear to god i’ll never do it again!” Since then, I’ve caught her on Life360 traveling to go get weed. If she’s going to use that app for me I feel like I can use it to stalk her too. But, she used this opportunity (when i confronted her) to start lying about my dad. Again, she claimed that my stepsiblings dad said he “heard on a phone call that my dad can’t wait to do weed again”. This is untrue, my dad has never touched a cigarette or blunt and wouldn’t. So they asked my stepsiblings dad AGAIN if he said this, and he said “No what?”. So she’s a liar. a big liar.

My mom is also an almond mom. When I was 8, she encouraged me to give up something sweet for Lent. Keep in mind- we aren’t religious. She has always been very thin and tries to encourage me to eat less sweets, more “healthy food”. She always refers to food as “junk” or “clean”. She gets upset when she finds I have been eating food that isn’t to her standards. Even at dinner today, she got upset that I wasn’t “eating a salad”. There was no indication that there was salad available, and it has been made aware to me that there is now an entire fridge drawer dedicated to salad. She’s very passive aggressive about how I eat.

Over this last summer, she decided to use a “macro tracking app” to “help herself as an athlete”. She did this with her husband. Her food became increasingly less good/seasoned and more carb reduced, fat and calorie reduced, and high protein. This, with my scarce knowledge of diets led me to believe she was trying to lose weight. So I tried to communicate this to my mom with my stepsister. We asked them if it was a diet app, and the only response we received was negativity and backlash. The reason we were concerned: they would measure out their food as if it was a diet. For example: 1/4 cup of black beans. She would always be on her phone entering things into this “macro” app, and discuss LOUDLY with her husband about how many calories she had left. She’s always been very skinny and this led me to worrying about her health. Also, the food I was eating left me hungry after 30 minutes since it was so disgusting I could barely eat it. They now only use teriyaki sauce to season things. It’s bad.

My mom is estranged with her parents. She is very close with my dad’s parents but suddenly this only happened after the divorce. She also will tell my grandpa “bad things” about my dad (his son) to try to manipulate him into disliking his own son. For example; “Did you know (my name)’s dad makes her pay for her own car insurance? Isn’t that horrible?” I should add, my grandpa is 76 and has key symptoms of dementia.

The biggest thing that wants me to end this relationship is something she did back in December of 2023. My grandma has never been in good health. She’s always been in poverty and fairly obese as well. Her health rapidly declined in October/November 2023 and was placed in hospice in December. So my mom and I would visit her often. She was at home in hospice, but we could tell she was declining. So on Dec 12 2023 we went to visit her. We knew she was going to die soon. She was moaning, couldn’t speak, eyes shut… typical dying person behavior, it was horrifying. My grandpa still held out hope, so him and I went to Walgreens to grab her prescription. While we were there, this left my mom alone with my grandma. My mom accessed my grandmas phone while we were gone to look at texts between my dad and my grandma. Keep in mind- nobody knows the password except me and my uncle. So this leads me to that she held the phone over my grandmas dying face to unlock it with Face ID. This disgusts me. She then told me about how my dad “said horrible things” about me in those texts. At the time, I was conditioned to feel like this wasn’t wrong, but now I’ve broken out of it. This is the worst thing and what makes me want to break this relationship.

So, regarding all of this, AITAH for wanting to move out and not want a relationship with her anymore?