[nyctimene]

I'm an only child and it was just my mother and me growing up. She was extremely depressed and very emotionally volatile. We were close and most of the time she would be very loving, but often she would have episodes of screaming at me for no reason and accusing me of not loving her and dumping all of her emotional baggage on me even though I was just a kid. She also exposed me to a lot of dangerous and unhealthy things. She changed as I got older and she was a lot more loving and less abusive, but I have a lot of left over anger and resentment towards her because of my childhood with her.

We always had a very codependent relationship because she was all I had in the world and I was very clingy, and the same was true for her. I lived with her until I was 22 and before I moved out (to live far away from her, overseas) I was very scared of leaving her because I had never been away from her before, so I made all these plans with her that we would talk on the phone every day and write to each other and we wouldn't let the distance ruin our relationship. However, since I've moved away I feel so much more free, and I have healed emotionally, and I realize that I am actually a very independent person who needs a lot of space. All of my clinging to her came from my fear of the world, and now that I'm out in the world living my own life, I no longer feel this need to be around her or talk to her all the time. I still love her, but I want space from her and I'm not getting it. I'm 27 now, and she is driving me crazy. I have to call her every other day at the same exact time, and I have to email her every single night to tell her about my day. I hate this. My days are all the same, they're very boring, I don't have enough to fill a conversation every single day. On top of that, I also just don't want to? Like, I want my days to be my own, I don't want to have to give her an entire run down of everything I did, I don't want to share every detail, it feels so smothersome. These things feel like chores because I am only doing them for her. I asked her recently if it was ok if I didn't email every night and she said that yes it was ok, but then gave me this long emotional speech about how much she loves it and how it makes her whole day and how when she left home she always made sure to call and write to her mother all the time so I should do the same. It was very manipulative.

How do I resolve this situation? I want her to see that our relationship has changed. We can't go on as we used to, spending every minute together and being codependent and never having any space. She sees our past relationship simply "very close, and special" whereas I see it as something that was very unhealthy and smothering. Our relationship has to be different now, I have my life and she has hers. I've grown as a person, I'm different now and I can't continue to stagnate with her in these same old unhealthy patterns. We can talk regularly but I don't want to have to speak every single day. I want space!

The reason this is so difficult is that I feel very guilty for changing my mind. It used to be that I wanted to call her all the time, I wanted to always be near her, and I never wanted our relationship to be any other way. I felt like that because I was very mentally unstable and dealing with a lot of things and I was afraid of everything and she was like my safety blanket. Now I am healthy, and so I have changed my mind about how I want our relationship to be, but she hasn't. She is still stuck in the same unhealthy place and she wants us to keep on being as codependent as we always were. I feel guilty, like I have betrayed her by growing and changing.

Sorry this is so long. Does anyone have any advice?