After years of tolerating Vicks Vaporub despite hating it, one adult finally hit a breaking point.

When her mom insisted on applying it in the middle of the night, she lost it—cursing, yelling, and demanding bodily autonomy.

Read on for the story.

AITA for yelling at my mom for putting vicks vaporub on me when I explicitly told her not to

To add context, I absolutely hate vicks vaporub, or basically any menthol rub/oil/essential oil. While I hear a lot of people talk about how good and “cooling” it feels, it’s the complete opposite for me.

It feels like it’s burning my skin, it makes my eyes water especially when it’s applied on my forehead, it keeps me awake (when I have it on at night), absolutely does the opposite from making me calm, and yea it’s just an overall uncomfortable experience.

But despite all this, I still always have it applied on me when I’m sick, but it’s always against my will.

Medicine is medicine?

My mom, while I get she has good intentions, always puts it on me even when I’m just a little bit sick despite my constant protest.

She’s been doing this since I was a kid, even when I would cry and tell her to stop putting it on me, she yells at me to stay still and to “stop whining” about it.

When I was older I finally had enough and communicated as much as I can to her on why I didn’t want it every time she insisted on putting it on me. She would grumble afterwards and call me “ungrateful” but thankfully she didn’t force it on me like she would all those times before.

Well, gee. Thank goodness for that.

It wasn’t until I had a week long cold, and this one was particularly very annoying because it just wouldn’t budge no matter what.

The past week she’d been offering to rub vicks on me again like usual, but like the last few times I refused.

This continued on, then yesterday night came and she was more adamant on rubbing some on me, and after a bit of arguing she finally gave up and just let me be, or so I thought.

Uh oh.

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to my mom hovering over me and rubbing some vicks on my temples. Of course I was startled so I asked her what the heck she was doing.

She jumped cuz she probably wasn’t expecting me to wake up and she told me she was just doing what was best for me.

Immediately I felt the burning and rushed out of bed to get some wet wipes so I could take it off, and as I was doing so she yelled at me to stop and that I could just sleep the pain off.

Oh brother.

I lost it at her and just started going off about how this was nowhere near to “looking out for me” like she said.

If she truly cared then she wouldn’t force something on me that I am clearly uncomfortable with.

Then, for some reason, as I was trying to give out my points, she cut me off and started going on a tangent about how she “owns” me and that she could do whatever she wanted with me even when I don’t want it.

Whoa.

Now this is the point of the story where I’m not proud of and is the reason why I went to this sub in the first place.

I then began to curse at her and yell at her and tell her that she didn’t own me, that I was my own person, that this is MY body and that just because she was my mother, I wasn’t going to give her the right to treat me as someone who doesn’t deserve any respect.

She then cried and called me ungrateful once again, and left the house. It is currently the next day and she hasn’t come home yet, AITA?

Most people on Reddit say she was fully justified defending her boundaries.

This person says parents don’t own their kids…what a red flag.

This person says this is ALL kinds of wrong.

And this person says this is way beyond normal.

When good intentions meet zero consent, someone’s going to feel burned.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.