I guess I'll go eat worms

If my mom had any genius in her, it was her mastery of cleverly shaming her daughter, her only daughter until I was 14, with brothers all over the place.

If I expressed any sadness or disappointment to my, um, mother, something I quickly learned not to do -- I was on my own growing up, my dad abandoning his daughter to her mother almost entirely, he liked his sons --  my mom would say this diddy she claimed was a 'poem':

Nobody loves me

Everybody hates me

I guess I'll go eat worms.

I did not know the word shame when she said this, like when I was five and six years old, but I felt deeply ashamed when my mom would recite these lines in a sing-song-y screech that I think my mom thought was cute.  I felt a lot of shame. I was ashamed that I felt bad. I felt ashamed that I had believed my mom might care that I felt bad. And, after the first time she said this shit to me wihtout offering just a little bit of comfort, like a listening ear for a couple minutes, I was very painfully ashamed that I had turned to her for emotional support.

My mom never offered me emotional support, not even a listening ear.   When she would say that nobody loves me whine to me, gosh, I felt bad. But I never considered telling her I didn't like it because she would assuredly have said something even more wounding.