Things that my Mother does and says that have probably scarred me for life

Upon returning home from a long, rainy day today, I was forced to use my mum's new set of house keys to let myself in.

The reason I don't have my own keys is because when I was twelve and had my very own set, they disappeared within two hours of very proud house-key ownership and NEVER resurfaced. Since that very day, my mum hasn't trusted me with another set of my own keys and I have been forced to enter my house by going over the gate, through a small alley between my house, several overgrown plants and the fence and then through the glass door... and on occasion, when the glass door was locked, I resorted to the dog door.

Unfortunately I have grown and cannot use the dog door anymore and while I am physically mature, my mum STILL won't give me my own set of keys.

Her resolution to my growth and house-key-responsibility issues?

1. Buy a small, plastic rock with a hole in it

2. Hide the keys in the small, plastic rock

3. DON'T place the small, plastic rock in the garden like a sensible adult, but in the cactus plant outside of the front door so every time her daughter reaches for the key-rock (which is already useless when the keys could be hidden under a REGULAR ROCK like a sane human being) I have to mutilate my poor hand and stab it continuously until I grasp the key rock and release it from its spiky prison in order to open the door!!!!

Needless to say, today's experience drew blood and ended in a very hurty way.

Mum's reasoning for such a painful and over protective key-hiding process is that while someone may suspect the key is under a rock (or in a small, plastic replica of a rock), they'd never plunge their hands into the cactus plant expecting to retrieve a key, because a cactus is a horrible and painful plant that people generally avoid contact with to spare their digits...

But it is perfectly necessary in her mind for me to send my hand to war each and every day, and wound it in spiky-plant-related battle to let myself into my own house.

This is not the first time my mum has done or said something to make my life a little bit more of a living hell than everyone else's (except for perhaps those people who get abducted by terrorists while they're on holiday, or Tony Abbot's children). Let's reminisce...

• She has been known to show new friends and potential boyfriends photos of me as a child, often pausing in the process to say things like "Missy used to loooove eating flowers" or "Here's my girl wearing big girl pants for the first time! She used to lift up her dresses to show everyone how smart they looked on her!"

• When I have dyed/cut my hair, asked about a piercing or attempted to defile my body in any way she doesn't deem fit, her excuse was "I made that body myself and it is rightfully MINE, don't you ever ruin it or I'll do bad things to you in your sleep!"

• She like to tell almost everyone she meets about how I was born and she 'Skwuzzed me right outta her!'

• I'd never met anyone of another culture until primary school, where I made the mistake of walking up to an Iranian girl and asking her 'Why did your mummy paint you?'. My mum isn't a racist, it just happens I never met anyone who was foreign for the first four years of my life... and for that I blame her.

• We didn't have a computer in our house until I was ten. TEN!!!!!!!!! I had no idea what the internet was! It was like living in a third world country. I don't recommend it.

• She once grounded me for five months. The only reason my punishment was FIVE MONTHS LONG was because she forgot I was being grounded.

• When she was a single mum, her cooking abilities extended to defrosting pies and also making tuna pasta. The end. Now she is married she is no longer trusted in the kitchen, and her dinners are rarely missed.

• She drags me into psychics and hippy shops, making me listen to how the oracle predicts that Archangel Michael is within my aura and how I will turn into a raging lesbian drug addict (Which was just a role I was auditioning for in a TV show... funnily enough I didn't get the role, and I'm pretty sure it was the witchcraft of that evil psychic after I insulted her and her magic crystal)

I say all this about my mum, but he thing is, no matter what, I really do love her, and as much as I like it or not, she has helped to make me the person I am. I just hope that one day I may as cruel to my children as she is to me.