A mother showing up during a mental health crisis just to nag about homework would be frustrating under any circumstances, but this teenager’s history makes it a lot more complicated than that.

In this story, one teenager had spent her childhood being largely invisible to her mother, raised mostly by her grandmother, bullied across two countries, and left to handle her ADHD diagnosis unmedicated and unsupported.

After her grandmother passed, her entire support system came crashing down and the anxiety that had always been manageable suddenly became unbearable.

So when the teen reunited with her mother, her mom had the nerve to blame her for making her anxious. And the teen didn’t have a shred of sympathy for her.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

AITA for not caring about my mother’s anxiety?

I (18F) no longer care when my mother (50-something F) keeps saying her heart is beating so fast, like she’s having a heart attack, because of me.

To give some context on our relationship, my mother wasn’t the best mentally while raising us, having many mental health issues, though I’m uncertain what exactly since she never went to professionals or talked about it with me.

Her childhood was plagued with lots of mental health issues.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been rather troublesome due to my undiagnosed ADHD.

Since my older sister is six years older than me, the only time I remember my mother paying attention to me was when I was in trouble at school.

It’s mostly been my grandma who paid the most attention to me.

She’s always had a hard time making friends too — and her mother’s behavior made it even harder.

From a young age I’ve been alienated from social circles, which my mother was unaware of since she thought I was super social and had lots of friends.

My social life got even worse when she dragged me along to Canada when my sister went there for high school.

In elementary school I was even more alienated and bullied, a trend that followed me into middle school.

This obviously had a huge impact on her life.

I began developing a ton of self-esteem and mental health issues due to the bullying and isolation from my peers, which she also didn’t know about since she didn’t really talk to me much throughout my entire elementary to early high school years.

But her mom always pushed back on getting her the treatment she needed.

Anyway, there are a lot more stories, like her knowing I had ADHD but not doing anything about it, like getting me medicated or telling me, because she didn’t want to “label” me and hold me back.

This made me think all my ADHD signs were just personal failures and that I was a useless piece of crap.

I’m going to skip to the more recent years.

Then her mother left the picture almost entirely.

From grade 9 onward I was basically left alone, including grade 9 where I was left in an apartment alone in China for months, with my dad checking in from time to time during his business trips.

Then for grades 10 through 12 I was basically alone at my aunt’s house in Canada for high school.

Before long, she lost her biggest support system.

I’m currently in my final year of high school, and since my grandma passed away I’ve gone into a kind of state where I skipped a month of school because the anxiety that being in a school building gives me, which I could usually push through, has become unbearable.

I found myself unable to do the schoolwork that has been piling up.

Life has gotten even worse lately.

For spring break they sent me back to China due to mental health concerns without asking for my input, and now my mother has followed me back to Canada, nagging me every few minutes to catch up on my schoolwork.

I’ve repeatedly told her that I want to be left alone, but she keeps coming into my room every 20 minutes or so to nag about how I need to do my schoolwork.

Now her mother is making her struggles about her.

She says that me skipping classes and not doing homework is causing her to feel really anxious, like she’s having a heart attack.

I cannot find it in myself to care about her feelings and am starting to get annoyed even when she talks to me, even though she does love me and has gotten better mentally since I was a kid.

AITA?

This mom needs to take a long, cold look in the mirror.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a young woman who struggles with her new reality after learning her adoption story was a lie.

What did Reddit have to say?

This mother isn’t really doing a good job mothering.

This mother is way more manipulative than supportive.

It’s time to start getting as far away from her mother as humanly possible.

This mother has some nerve coming back to guilt trip when she completely neglected her parenting duties for so many years.

Her teenager was practically begging for her help through every sign imaginable, and she turned her back every single time.

She showed up now not because she suddenly understood what her daughter needed, but because she was essentially forced to. If she genuinely wanted to help, walking into the room every twenty minutes to nag about homework is about as far from helpful as it gets.

This teen is carrying years of isolation, undiagnosed ADHD, bullying across two countries, and fresh grief over the one person who actually showed up for her. Her mother didn’t cause all of that alone, but she was present for most of it and chose to look the other way.

It’s hard to imagine a worse parent than this one.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a stepmom who says stepson isn’t doing enough, despite the fact that he’s working 12-hour shifts to pay for his own college.