Toxic Mother and/or Anxiety?

In September, I will be in my 2nd and final year of college before I head off to university. That means that this summer, I've gotta be looking around at where I want to spend the next 4+ years of my life. Currently, I've got my heart set on unis that are a fair distance away (I live in the West Midlands of England and my main choice right now is Scotland just to put it into context) but that's because they do courses that I'm thoroughly interested in and can see myself going into fields of work that those courses can lead me to.

Right so cutting to the chase, I've obviously been making my mom aware of these choices but I’ve been given absolutely no guidance whatsoever so I must wait till I go back to college for that. She's very quick to make jokes about my choices and what I want to do and my careers which obviously doesn't feel very good to hear.

I have recently come to like the idea of attending a university in Scotland, which I know is a university which a friend of mine is hoping to attend depending on her exam results. So if I was to ever head there, I'd know someone at least. The courses I want to do there, have pretty achievable entry requirements which I think are attainable and I'm pretty confident that I want to go there or anywhere else not in my city.

This is the annoying part. So with me wanting to go to uni outside of my city, she is adamant that I can't go to anywhere out of my city because I just won't survive. I won't cope, I won't be able to make it. Throughout my home life, both parents continue to call me a nasty person and I'm selfish and mean etc. however I genuinely don't see it because I don't see it any different from how they themselves treat me or others. I actually think I'm a polite and friendly person but that's a whole other story.

My main problem is I don't know if she's trying to convince me to stay in my city (where I won't be able to do the courses I want / may not even have the grades to get in), for God knows what reasons. My brother and sister who have been to university, we're both based in the city we live in, so, either she did the same to them and it worked or she's treating me the way she is because she's never had the others even fathom the idea of stepping a foot outside of our city borders. The more she treats me this way, the more I actually want to just leave and escape and return when I have my qualifications or whatever.

But what if I genuinely am incapable of living away and really am as nasty as she says I am.

((Hi, my name is Anxiety. I'm ready to manifest and really stop you from leaving.))

The more she tries to deter me from my plans, my anxiety makes me agree and my self confidence (which is quite frankly already beneath the depths of hell) gets lower and I feel completely incapable before I've even had a chance to try. Not only that, she's not even helping me try to decide or do research and I'm well aware it's my responsibility if I want to move away and study but good grief! Even a "lets see if there are any other unis that offer what you need" would be flipping nice!! It's like she'll tell me to go and make my own decisions and the minute I do, it's the worst decision I can think of and I need to go back to my own research on why I think the unis in the city are not good enough for me. In reality, it's me that's not good enough for them! She also seems to not know how to listen. I can tell her again and again about the courses I want to do and how it applies to my interests and how I can use it later in life and make a career out of it but then it goes back to why can't I study something else to which I completely give up with the conversation.

Maybe I'm a bit over the top by calling it toxic, but at the same time, I don't really think so because I really want to leave (well ESCAPE, really!) home somehow. I went to primary and secondary school in exactly the same area as one another and my grandmothers live in that area also. My college is closer to my house so I've been in my area a lot more this year, I've pretty much circulated between two main areas of my city throughout the 17 almost 18 years of my life so excuse me for wanting to GTFO (get the ‘fudge’ out) and see more of the country I was bloody well born in! And I am a nice person, I am polite and have enough common sense to be able to survive on my own.

I'd like to think that in August or September of 2019, I'll be writing about heading off to uni and it being the place i really wanted to go to but who knows.