My daughter hates me

My daughter hates me.

She is turning 22 this month, and I feel like I've lost any possibility of having a loving relationship with her. Every time I try to get closer, she throws something from her childhood back in my face and insists that I am responsible for the depression and psychological suffering she lives with today.

To give some context, I'm 41 years old and became a mother at 19. Her father was my boyfriend, and we stayed together for about seven years, until she was three. Our relationship was marked by financial hardship, and I was the only one making any real effort. I eventually left because I wanted to take care of one child, not two. After we separated, her father completely withdrew from her life. I raised her alone, still struggling financially, but I did the best I could.

My daughter is a transgender woman. She was assigned male at birth and came out as a girl at 16. I have always fully supported her in that regard.

Back to the story: when she was eight, I started dating a man who gradually revealed himself to be immature and possessive. He used to make stupid jokes involving her.

At the time, everyone—including us—still saw her as a boy. On one occasion, he secretly filmed her from behind while she was lying in bed under the covers making odd movements, then mocked her by saying, "Look at your son masturbating," and laughed. I thought it was so unbelievably childish and disgusting that I broke up with him shortly afterward. I never considered it a serious incident because he immediately deleted the video. There was nothing explicit in it—it only showed a child lying on their stomach under a blanket. What enraged me was that he thought something like that was funny.

After that, I didn't date anyone for years because I wanted to protect my daughter from any further trauma. Our relationship was very good. Although I worked long hours and only saw her at night, I tried to make our time together meaningful. When she was younger, she stayed with babysitters after school, but from the age of 11 she stayed home alone until I got back from work. I always made sure everything was prepared, and she was safe. Even though I didn't have much time with her, I tried to make that time count—we went to the movies, played video games together, and traveled during school vacations.

Everything began to change once she became a teenager. She became extremely stubborn and defiant and stopped listening to me. She constantly begged to go out at night, and after enough insistence I would eventually give in. By the age of 16, she was going out and returning home in the early hours of the morning. I never slept until she got home. She often came back drunk. Once, I had to pick her up in the middle of the night after she had gone into an alcohol-induced coma at a friend's house. When she was 18, I received a call from the hospital telling me she had attempted suicide by jumping off a roof.

She has been in therapy since she was 16 and continues to attend therapy today. I sought out psychiatrists and a neuropsychologist for her. Last year she was diagnosed with Paranoid Personality Disorder. I myself was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in 2019 and have also been in therapy ever since.

Our interactions became terrible. She blamed me for everything—for leaving her home alone when she was a child because I had to work, and for allowing her to go out when, according to her, she actually needed a stricter parent who would have forced her to stay home and kept her away from alcohol and drugs. Good moments between us became very rare. We mostly fought.

In 2022, I met my current partner. At 37, I allowed myself to fall in love again and imagine a future with someone. We moved in together. My relationship with my daughter only deteriorated further.

She had never contributed to household chores, and my partner is an extremely organized person. He became frustrated because he was always cleaning up after her. He never argued with her directly; he only expressed his frustrations to me. She wouldn't cooperate. She stayed in her room all day, only came out to eat, and wouldn't even wash the glass she had used. These issues constantly led to arguments between us, and with my partner living there, everything seemed even more obvious.

One day I was cleaning her room and found several handwritten pages. I ended up reading them. One sentence said, "I want to kill my mother, but that bitch is only the tip of the iceberg." When I confronted her, she told me she had written it during a mental breakdown and would never actually hurt me. I told her I needed time to process what I had read and asked her to stay for a while at her grandmother's house—my mother's home. Ever since she was a teenager, whenever we had a major argument, she would spend a few days there. So she went.

She later told my mother that she had attempted suicide that same night and that it was my fault because living with me was hell.

My mother does not have the financial means to support her, so I send money to help cover my daughter's expenses there and I also pay for her therapy. She has been living there since August of last year. She graduated from college and started a few internships, but she has never managed to remain financially independent.

I've tried several times to rebuild our relationship, but she remains emotionally distant. She says I need to apologize for all the horrible things I supposedly did to her. In my view, however, she exaggerates everything and has built a narrative in which I am a monster. My therapist believes that apologizing under those circumstances would reinforce her paranoid beliefs.

Yesterday I went to my mother's house to bring groceries and birthday presents I had bought for my daughter's 22nd birthday. I tried talking to her again, but she brought up another "crime" she says I committed during her childhood. She accused me of being complicit when my ex filmed her supposedly masturbating, saying that what happened was a crime and that I could still be prosecuted for something that occurred in 2014.

The reality is that my ex did not record her with any sexual intent or for child pornography. He filmed her from behind because he thought it was a joke, and his behavior alone was enough for me to end the relationship and avoid dating anyone else for years afterward.

I asked her what she wanted from me—what I could possibly do now. She said all she wanted was for me to admit that I was guilty of that incident and of all the other terrible things she believes I did, including causing her suicide attempt last year.

I left.

I am completely shattered. My family cannot understand why she behaves this way. It's as though she has become a completely different person. And I feel that I have lost my daughter forever, with no way back.