My mom always had control over my life. She picked my clothes, chose my friends, and even hid my college acceptance letter from NYU\u2014because she didn\u2019t want me to leave her. I stayed home, gave up my dreams, and tried to make her happy. Dating was nearly impossible. Every guy left once they saw how involved my mom was. But then I met Colin. He was different. Patient, kind, and somehow even managed to get along with her. A year later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
he proposed\u2014and I said yes. That\u2019s when things got worse. My mom took over our wedding completely. She picked the venue, the food, even my dress. It felt like her<\/em> wedding, not mine. Then, she dropped a surprise\u2014she expected to live with us after the wedding. When I said Colin and I were moving into his place, she lost it. A few days later, she suddenly became \u201cill.\u201d Coughing,<\/p>\n\n\n\n chest pain, constant weakness. We canceled everything. Our savings went into her treatment, and my world shrank down to caregiving and worry. Colin and I barely saw each other, and when we did, she was always between us. But something felt off. Her \u201csymptoms\u201d didn\u2019t add up. I took her to a new doctor\u2014Dr. Green\u2014and what he told me shattered me: \u201cYour mom is perfectly healthy.\u201d She had faked it all to keep me from leaving. I confronted her. She broke down,<\/p>\n\n\n\n crying, \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to be alone.\u201d My heart ached, but I had no choice. I packed my things, called Colin, and left. She begged me not to go, screamed at Colin, but I kept walking. For the first time, I put myself first. I don\u2019t know what the future holds with her, but I know this: I finally took control of my<\/em> life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mom always had control over my life. She picked my clothes, chose my friends, and even hid my college acceptance letter from NYU\u2014because she didn\u2019t want… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4453,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4452\/revisions\/4453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}