weekends w/NMom

[Hopalong]

Thanks, Plucky. And thanks, Marta...your post about getting the feeling about the house was very comforting.

And by the way, H & H, nothing to apologize for whatsoever about suggesting sibling help! It is so easy to forget or get details mixed up...I've done it and will again I'm sure! (Perhaps you were trying to help me conjure up a replacement brother? 

Now that I think of it, almost every time I've made friends with a good man, I've explained to them (feeling somewhat choked up), "This is like having a good brother. This is the good brother." I know over the years some of them have been confused by my feeling...but pleased. My own reaction tells me what a deep yearning that was. My brother was both N and malignantly so . He tries to be otherwise now, but in a pinch does revert to his basic nature. I have to give him credit for seriously trying very hard to become "a good person" under the influences of his gentle wife and his church. I do give him credit for that. But I'll still never feel fully comfortable around him. So if NMom keeps being the puppeteer ("Oh, all I want before I leave this planet is to know my children will get alooooong"). The other night when she started that I said, if you will stop manipulating us, stop stage-managing our relationship and just leave us alone, we might find our own way to some adult relationship. But when you call hiim up and freak him out and "sic him on me", it doesn't help.

I'm not even sure my brother realizes how much she manipulates him and always has. Even when he was in Viet Nam her worry was all about her drama...she tells the tale over and over: "When my son was iin Viet NAM" -- but never refers to what he went through over there or what it did to him. (It just piled on trauma and PTSD onto a personality that was disturbed in the first place.)

Hops

[Healing&Hopeful]

((((((((((((((((Hoppy))))))))))))))))

I'm so glad you managed to talk through things with your T, and come out the other side calmer and more at peace.  You sound much happier already.

I can relate to so much that you say Hoppy... about your Mum manipulating your brother.  My Mum does that all the time... my poor bro doesn't stand a chance, but hey ho.  Me and H can see my brother's life mapped out for him.... he will live with Mum and Dad until they die, then there will be an uproar because he will supposed to be paying half of the house to me, and it will be either "can't get a mortgage" or some such thing which will end up with me losing out.  I can see it all happening... the only other outcome will be he will meet someone just like Mum, someone who will do everything for him like a "proper wife" should.  Ballony and balls.... sorry hun.... (shut up H&H... this is about Hoppy, not you!)

I think it's normal to get attached to where we live and certain people.  I do think it's great that you've realised why you feel attached to your house and that has given you the way to let go.  A huge step forward indeed.... and I know what you mean about feeling that this is like a good brother.  I have a friend like this... a lovely guy.

Take care hon

H&H xx

[Hop guest]

Now that the drama is over, I'm feeling sickened and very sad.
I completely understand why I exploded. As ever, she kept pushing and pushing and pushing and finally went for the button where I am MOST vulnerable (calling in my brother, who traumatizes me). I do understand that this was not a result of planning on her part. Just the completely blind drive for attention that cannot be thwarted. My T said to Ns it feels like life or death. Likewise, for children of Ns, he said it feels like a life or death struggle to find empathy and to be heard.

So, now that it's over, I am not exactly hating myself for it, but sick, sad and sorry. I'm sorry because she is a 95 y/o woman and my rage scared her. I was screaming and she trembled. The day before, when I'd been up and down the stairs for the sixth time attending to her (after begging her not to move back upstairs and her telling me my wishes didn't matter, she would go anyway because the room made her happy)--I could tell she saw my anger in my face. That is forbidden, of course (anger was not allowed in our household, it was TOTALLY repressed, except by my brother toward me)...but she underestimated how "getting back" at me for resisting her demands would backfire. (I didn't know it would happen either.)

She pulled out what to me is an emotional nuke (calling in my brother)...but I was the one who acted like a nuke. She knows that's not who I am...in fact later that evening she suddenly (!!!) started talking about all the loving, compassionate, gentle things I've done for her and my Dad for years and years. (I'm wondering, wouldn't it be nice if she mentioned that to my brother?) Anyway, at some level she knows I'm a good person. And at some level, I know she also wants to be a good person.

It's just a toxic mix. And having shrieked HOW DARE YOU CALL HIM IN BEHIND MY BACK AFTER ALL I'VE DONE FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS!! at the top of my lungs. ("How dare you!" sounds pretty narcissistic, doesn't it?) But it is exactly how I felt. Exactly. I was furious.

But I feel sick and sad at having frightened her. When I went upstairs I was sobbing in my bathroom, a kind of sobbing I have not done in many many years. It felt like it was coming from the depths of my being. It was like, all the hurt from childhood coming out all at once. I have told her, over and over, please do not leave me in any way legally entangled with my brother. I have told her, I will have a cordial relationship with him, but would rather you left him the house and me nothing, rather than leave it entangled bewteen the two of us. (She was forever trying to set him up as a sort of "paternal" figure in my future, because he would "take care of things.") The insult of that, when it is I who have taken care of both my parents for decades...(my brother, meanwhile, was terrorizing his own children and going bankrupt, but now they're doing very well) how she always, always, rivets to male attention and assigns males authority and respectability over females, is too much to handle. (Her FATHER abused his DAUGHTERS and my BROTHER abused--not sexually, just bullying--ME! What part of this picture can she not see? How crazy it feels to have her be so worshipful toward her son while I'm "not paying enough attention to me" Cinderella? Anyway, that's how she's wired...)

Anyway, that part got settled some while back when she agreed to leave him all the contents of the house to keep or auction, and me just the building and piano (he doesn't play). And she told me she was now perfectly at peace about that, since after I got her through her 4th or 5th hospitalization, and had slipped another disk lifting her, she said to me, I think that is fair.

Back to the other night. When I was crying those sobs, which I believe were about the betrayal I felt, that she never protected me from my brother in childhood and keeps trying to shove me into his path now... My mother was downstairs sobbing her head off, too.

She suffers too. She is human too. And she is very, very old and I yelled at her until she trembled. I feel sorry for her and guilty for blowing up and I know she does not plan and plot these things. Her manipulations are shallow, impulsive, and just aimed at scratching an itch that she will never be able to soothe, because there is not enough attention (supply) in the entire universe to fill her need. I think it's like a biological drive...not a plot. So why punish her?

I understand it. I forgive it.

But right now, I have to forgive myself, and that's proving hard. I have always been a compassionate and tenderhearted person, gentle with the sick, the old, the vulnerable. Knowing that I can explode like that at someone that old is sickening to me.

I would never, ever strike anyone. Never have. (Well, once I smacked my ex-H on the thigh with a rubber sandal when I was frustrated. And once I took a portable TV in the backyard when he wouldn't stop watching violent wrestling in front of our 3 y/o no matter how many times I asked him to just change the channel while she was in the room...)--and very tidily put it on a large garbage bag and then took a sledgehammer and demolished it.) He watched from the deck with his jaw hanging. And then I missed watching Oprah (I know, we're giving her up for N now) and he gave me a new one for Xmas since I'd felt so guilty. That was very sweet.

And once when my first dog got loose in a flock of chickens and killed several of them and I couldn't make him stop I was so upset I cracked a tree branch over his head.

God, I am confessing the worst secrets of my soul. But anyway, there it is.

It seems to me that I have anger in me that I have never owned, never dealt with. And with Mom pushing the buttons she was pushing, and so relentlessly, and calling my brother, with my defenses weakened by weeks with a hard cold and the grief and fear over losing my job...I just didn't have the strength to hold it back. I am human and I have limits and she simply will not respect them. (Or cannot. That may be the truth of it.)

I do understand what my T said last night, that the rage was necessary for me to come clear, to wake up, to get free of the hostage-to-her feeling. But it's not okay with me to have frightened and traumatized her. She's going to be fine. I just don't know how I feel about myself any more.

Thanks for listening to all this. It was very disorganized

Hopalong

[Healing&Hopeful]

((((((((((((((((((((Hoppy)))))))))))))))))))))

Anger is a very primative human response.... it is OK to feel anger and when pushed, we all have expressed it in ways we wished we hadn't.  All of us have said things in anger which we later regret, or reacted in a way that when we look back we think we could have behaved/reacted better than we did.  The way I see it honey, there is no point to keep going back over it, analyzing it, it's done... time to move on.  One thing I would suggest is that if you feel like apologising to your Mum, maybe just apologise for scaring her.  Apologise for the way you expressed your anger.  Your anger is justified hon... it really is.  It maybe could have been expressed in a different way, but the bottom line is, your anger is justified... it is there for a reason.  You don't need to feel guilty for being angry and I don't feel it's good to say sorry for being angry. 

What you shrieked is what you feel.  IMHO I believe that what we say when we are at our angriest is what we feel.... we just could have expressed it in a better way.

That fabulous huge hearted Hoppy is still the same one we all know and love.... She just needs to love herself and know that she hasn't done anything wrong, just reacted in a way that many people would have reacted given the pressure she was under.

Take care

H&H xxxx

[Hop guest]

PS--I just called my Mom to see how she is and I apologized to her for blowing up. She said, oh I didn't even remember you yelling at me. Then she said, oh now I remember you yelled at me a little bit (for the benefit of the cleaning lady) and I thought we weren't going to do that any more. And then she said you are a very good person and a forgiving person.

Then I told her I thought I had blown up so hugely because these were primal feelings that went all the way back to my childhood. She said, yes I believe there were things going on with your brother that we didn't even know about and I've just talked to him about it. (She always believes that she can "talk to people" and straighten out their thinking or experience.) Anyway, I said PLEASE! Don't talk to him about that! I don't want you to talk to him about what's in my head! And she said, well I already did, and he said Mom, I don't even remember that.

I think I believe both of them. He laid in wait for me every single day after school (after I was bullied all day at school) and tormented me from the time I got home until I escaped to bed, whenever their backs were turned. And here I am age 55 still in therapy. I think my brother issues may go even deeper than my issues with NMom. With her, it's at least all visible, it's so surface and verbal. We've dueled our way over the years to a mostly peaceable compromise.

But with HIM, it's totally unaddressed. In the anguished letter to her about how I felt about her saying that he should come manage her estate after she dies "because he knows how to manage things"--when I'd been managing EVERYTHING including her crises and paperwork, for YEARS--that he stole from my computer and sent to himself, I told her how I felt about his treatment of me. He said nothing about that. I finally wrote him and said all these years I have suffered from this and I just really, really need you to say I'm sorry.

So he wrote back "I'm very sorry for the past." Period. I believe him, sort of... I mean, I do want to give him credit and he HAS tried hard to become a nicer person. (My SIL did put one of her kids on a plane to me once because the kid was being an irresponsible teenager and had wrecked a car, again...but she was terrified on the phone, was afraid my brother would turn violent...). Whew. I am just still scared of him.

And the LAST thing I want is for Mom to go on and on at him over the phone about how vulnerable and uneasy and disturbed and intimidated I feel about him (not to mention his recent violation of my property and privacy, which for all I know he did again as he came to town the moment I left to see my daughter a few weeks ago). I just don't want her inviting HIM into my head...I've had a hard enough time getting her out!

I think in her mother-mind, she thinks she's fixing things. She's been pulling the whole family's emotional puppet strings for so long I think it's absolutely impossible for her to stop. Maybe now that I've reached my limit she'll start a campaign with him...after all, making him listen to her insights, such as they are, will supply attention for her. And he probably feels guilty (underneath it all he has absolutely terrible self-esteem) so he'll listen as long as she will talk. I actually feel sorry for him.

I am, genuinely, very sorry that I blew up. It scared her and scared me too. She knows I would never lift a finger or hurt her physically in any way. But there is emotional violence, and I did commit it.

I guess we're each forgiving the other. And me even my brother. I just need them to leave me ALONE. I can heal, and even be strong enough to deal with either of them in small doses, but I just CANNOT be constantly hammered on and criticized and picked at and guilt tripped. I just can't do that any more.

So...I told her again (she ignored my last dozen requests)--Mom, while I'm job hunting I really do need a lot of peace and quiet and calm. If you will wait until I've found a new job, then I'd like us to have one night a week (thank you for this idea, H&H) where we just have dinner together and play Scrabble or just spend time. And she was delighted (have you got a job yet? That'll be the new refrain...) But she was pleased and I do think that will help.

Meanwhile I just have to calm down enough to think straight so I can cope with all the new work on my plate at work, and get my job hunting in full gear. I'm finally over the huge cold so I think I can start focusing now. (I've been offered another freelance contract that would take two months straight, but I think despite needing the money that I have to turn it down. I have less than six months to find a safe continuing job, since this one vanishes July 1. So taking every spare moment to do a short-term freelance gig, no matter how much I could use it, is probably a bad idea. I'm torn about that, though. Sort of think I should be organized and driven enough to accomplish it all at once. I mean, it doesn't take THAT long to dash off letters and send out resumes...and there are very few openings in town now anyway...I dunno what to do.)

She just needs to stay out of my HEAD.

Thanks again, sorry this goes on and on and ON.
Love,
Hopalong

[Hop guest]

Thank you H&H.
Having your forgiveness helps me forgive myself.
And thank you VERY VERY much for the distinction between having legitimate anger and the way I expressed it. I have only yelled at her once before (in seven years) but never like this.

But it's over, and I told her I never intend to blow up like that again.

I do think I need a new, more direct way, of handling her emotional instrusions. I think I need to have my guard completely in place, and when she starts sneaking in her remarks about family and trying to pull the strings, I am going to try saying very politely, Mom, please respect my privacy and do not discuss private things I have told you with my brother.

Mom, I do not want to discuss my brother, or analyse my daughter, or talk about my brother any more. Mom, I have decided I would rather deal with my feelings about my brother privately so please do not try to force me to discuss it. Mom, I am not going to talk about this and please tell me all about the latest book you've been reading. (That'll distract her.)

She just CONSTANTLY wants to talk about everyone's inner motives, character, feelings, and "explain" it all...and she is so completely deaf to how her gossipy judging prying prodding poking invading interfering messages just pile up and up and up.

So I need to flat-out set boundaries around what I will listen to. Whew. Exhausting prospect because if I take those subjects away, she'll feel silenced. But maybe if I get into the habit of asking her lots of questions about places she's travel, nice memories of Dad, etc, etc, every time she strays into toxic territory, that'll be okay.

Or...best of all, if I just ask her, Mom tell me more about how much people love you poem, okay?

Arrggghhhhh!!

thanks again, H & H. You are beyond kind.
((((((((())))))))))))

Hops

[mum]

hey, Hoppy. I just finally read this whole thread.... and something struck me. None of this is your doing. Not the dog, not your brother, not your mother. You were and are not responsible for it. And yet your pain seems to stem from you feeling the need to fix it. And there is no fixing it. No matter how hard you try. You can't stop your mom or brother from being who they are any more than you could stop an animal's instinctual behavoir. Yet you still try. You still want to heal, to fix, to problem solve. I was told the other day that problems come up for me so often BECAUSE I am such a problem solver. And yet I am the one who suffers for it. I take the problem, and the person who really owns the problem just whistles off while I am teetering on one toe with twenty heavy boxes of everyone else's pain!

You are such a deserving and sweet soul. Healthy people see you as a problem solver and appreciate it and love you for it.... but those in pain see it as an open invitation to dump and dump and dump. I know it's tough, and that is something I can very much relate to. You SEE how they feel, you FEEL how painful things are for them and because of this, you remain stuck in handling it.
The hardest thing I am learning is that other people NEED their pain to learn. When I take it FOR them....I am in the way. Nothing really changes, as a matter of fact, it may get worse, and then I am depleted, depressed and my life is not my own.

Would it be a possibility for you to simply LET your brother look like your mother's rescuer? LET your mother get angry when you don't always do her bidding? LET them be, Let the situation be?  I don't mean a ducks back kind of thing, I mean, c'mon, you do FEEL it, and you are doing a great job of venting (very important, mind you) but that last step......letting it be and moving on with YOUR life. Letting your mom be who she is, without you wanting something different, or without you allowing everyone else's opinion be more important than yours. 

It's OKAY to want a better life. It's OKAY not to feel guilty or responsible for everyone else's feelings. You know you are not going to suddenly turn into a selfish person......dishing guilt is just the N's way of keeping you in that same pattern with them that they like!
They hit us kind folks with the "you are so SELFISH" cry and we BUY IT!!! We CHOOSE to buy it.

Hoppy, I think you are marvelous. You deserve more....and you already know this. What would it take for that to manifest in your life?

[Hopalong]

Thank you so much, Mum. I think it will take making peace with myself, and then I can make peace with my mistakes and also with her...the challenge of her, the terminal humanness of her, the extreme age and physical vulnerability of her. I monsterize her and I really do believe so much of her behavior is unconscious. It almost FEELS malevolent to the recipient...but it's not. She is so cut off from the simple intention of a person who was not damaged in the ways she must have been in childhood...that I forget she is only mortal. Aggravating and  exhausting and self-absorbed in the extreme, but mortal.

I love what you said about letting the chips fall where they may. Trying not to fix all of it nor own more than my share.

Tonight my discussion group talked about the difference between being good and being authentic, being honest and being kind....what is it to find the self, what

I have had so much to process in the last few days and this forum has had everything to do with getting through it. Felt near breaking point but so much comfort here made a huge difference.

The hardest thing I am learning is that other people NEED their pain to learn. When I take it FOR them....I am in the way. Nothing really changes, as a matter of fact, it may get worse, and then I am depleted, depressed and my life is not my own.

This is profound and I want to think about it for a long time.
Thank you so much for sharing what you've learned.

With a measure more peace than I had 24 hours ago, and a huge measure more gratitude,
Hopalong

[seasons]

Hopalong,
You have received wonderful support and help. I wanted you to know I echo all the above.
 I had no idea of all that you have on your plate. I took care of my parent that were not n's and I was exhausted emotionally and physically. So I can't even imagine your stress. Oh and I understand how you must feel when she calls your brother. I shudder for you. Keep him away for your sanity.
How much more could you take.
You are human, you are doing an angels work, bless you and take care of you.......please!



quote from mum: Hoppy, I think you are marvelous. You deserve more....and you already know this. What would it take for that to manifest in your life? DITTO  (((((((((((seasons))))))))))

[Plucky]

Hi Hoppy,
I can only try to imagine the depth of guilt you feel for finally, even accidentally, giving voice to all your anger and frustrations.   I am so sorry you feel this guilt.  I don't see how you have stood it for so long.  Just reading about it makes me so angry.  You are such a wonderful person.  The qualities you have will blossom once you get her out of your head. 

I don't know if you want to hear this right now.  But I do not think your guilt is justified.  You did not maliciously attack your mother.  You only failed to control the tidal wave of anger that has been building up in you for years, and that you are never permitted by her to express in any way.   It is not your fault that you have these feelings.  Feelings are feelings.  And in your case, they are totally justified.

To embrace guilt in response to having or expressing those feelings would be to deny your feelings.  To deny reality.  To deny the truth.
 
If there were some normal way to express those feelings, you would have done so.  Youhave tried everything you can manage.  You have asked only for little crumbs of consideration and compassion.  The answer was always no. You also have other concerns in your life.  Your mother shows zero regard or you, for your feelings, etc. 

Yes, she can shed crocodile tears after she drives you to your breaking point.  And you respond as she wants, not as she deserves. 

Yes, she is 93.  93 years of lies, manipulation, selfishness, control.  I do not see why having lived so long, when the life has been a testament to selfishness and cruelty, ought to entitle anyone to continue that behaviour without repercussions.  On the contrary, if she is ever going to realise anything about herself, now is the last call.  If you are going to stand up for yourself to her, the time is approaching.

Your mother is more than living wth you.  She is inside your head.  Her revenge for your daring to stand up to her, she didn't even have to exact.  She has installed herself in your mind to do that.  You will have a lot of work to get that blaming, belittling voice out.  I think you have already taken a few steps in that direction.   

You have support from us and from your T to keep going.    I wish there were something I could do to help you along.  All I can say is, you don't need to apologise for anything up here.    Come and allow your friends to support you.

Plucky

[Hopalong]

You kiddin', Plucky? You wish there was a way to help?
Lord, you HAVE. All of you have.

In a way I may look back on the blowup as the beginning of my salvation.
Not quite yet, I'm still kind of sick. Not groveling or apologizing anymore, just sad.
In fact, the way I feel right now, still in the same house, reminds me of a dying marriage.
(Ewww. Have I been marrried to NMom? The thought's crossed my mind as a joke, but...)

She just started toying with me again (there is ALWAYS manipulation, the threat of payback) by saying,
oh you know, I've got to get another lawyer, just didn't like that guy...

[--What? I thought it was all settled two years ago? Not possible to leave that sore place in me in peace.]

I just said, do what you need to do, but if you're making changes that will have a big effect on my life, I'd really appreciate it if you'd tell me.

She says, oh there are lots of things I might do...but of course they'd all be for your benefit.

And then it clicked. Do Not Eat the Antifreeze... (If I decide I NEED to know what she's going to do or not do...then I'm hooked. And she can toy with that bruise forever. If I say to myself, you don't have to know, you have to be sane and calm and guard your health, then I am free.)

Then she asks me to bring her food, and I do, and she says in this gooey voice: awww, you shouldn't have (she has said that for years right after getting people to do things for her---she makes so many speeches that "sound" like concern and gratitude that you eat up the praise and keep hopping)..

I think the worst part is wanting to believe more in that small piece of real love I did feel from her when I lost my job. That was real. It's painful to block my own love. I guess I do still love her, it just hurts to.

I know that I shocked and scared her (and on a deeper level than she can admit, enraged her), and she will never let her anger out directly, so there will be more manipulation and maneuvering.

One decision I can make is just be too busy to drive her to the lawyer if she decides to take the house away now. (She very well might, or she might not. She's played will games before...it's what makes her feel powerful because she knows I want the house.) I don't think I should help her hurt me. And if she won't tell me what she's planning, that hurts me. Soon-to-be-jobless tired me.

I still want it. But in the last few days the power of that want has loosened a great deal. People talk about "letting go" as though it's one easy opening of the hand...I don't find it that way, it's more like a rope (noose?) unraveling one strand at a time.

thanks all...hope I don't bore you to absolute death with this.
I think my relationship with her (and my brother) is the core source of my lifetime craziness.
My daughter got it too, but she's caught on so much earlier than I did. That's a blessing.

(I wish I had shielded her, but I let my mother spend waaaaaay too much time w/her before I knew about Narcissism.)

Well, life's long. A nice man at work was commiserating when I had to go pick up a computer thingie, we just got to chatting and he has a manipulative elderly Dad. He said, hey look at her this way, if she's 95, at 55 you're barely halfway through!

Hopalong

[Plucky]

And then it clicked. Do Not Eat the Antifreeze... (If I decide I NEED to know what she's going to do or not do...then I'm hooked. And she can toy with that bruise forever. If I say to myself, you don't have to know, you have to be sane and calm and guard your health, then I am free.)

Yeeessss!  The Golden Rule of Ns.  DO NOT NEED ANYTHING FROM THE N.   Ns are like those drug pushers in 1970's movies.  They give you or offer you something only to get you hooked, exploit you, rob you, suck the life from you,  then discard you. 
So don't need nor accept anything from the N.  It's a Trojan Horse.

I have gone so far as to get rid of my mother's gifts to me.   Not that they are anything I want anyway.

I think the worst part is wanting to believe more in that small piece of real love I did feel from her when I lost my job. That was real.

Maybe.  An N can express real love sometimes. As the old saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut evey now and then.

One decision I can make is just be too busy to drive her to the lawyer if she decides to take the house away now.

Great idea.  When she asks you to take her, before she even tells you when, tell her you can't.  Then when she tells you when, say "I can't."  Don't say sorry.  She's had more than her share of sorrys from you!  When she changes the appointment, tell her you can't.  When she asks what time you can take her, just say you will let her know if a time crops up when you can.  Then never bring it up again.  When she brings it up again, tell her you will let her know.  If she won't let it go, pick a date way in the future, or a date you know she can't.    If in the future, tell her at the last minute that you can't.    For rescheduling, start back at the beginning.

He said, hey look at her this way, if she's 95, at 55 you're barely halfway through!

What does that mean?   That she only ruined half your life?  Well, claim all the rest back now!

Plucky

[Healing&Hopeful]

She says, oh there are lots of things I might do...but of course they'd all be for your benefit.

I agree with Plucky (((((Hoppy)))))

This struck me as well.... Do you not know what to do for your benefit? 

I think you know what benefits you, not your Mum doing what she thinks is beneficial to her daughter.  She's treating you like a child here, where you're the one who's looking after everything, doing everything.  And she makes me angry too... Your anger is totally justified.

Hugs

H&H xx

[Hopalong]

Bingo, Plucky, about the not needing. Even when I try to scare myself with extreme poverty fantasies, I have two friends who've said they'd never let me go without a roof over my head. And a church family. So I really can believe, if I am willing to, that my whole life can slip down a few rungs of the economic ladder and still be full of love, friends, church, sunshine, breezes, music and happiness. It's all up to me. And you're soooo right, Plucky, that the key is not needing her legacy. If one comes, that's gravy. But I need to be my own meatloaf.

(With magnificent metaphors like that, you know I must be a great poet, right?) 

I didn't mean that I would try to block her from visiting her lawyer if she decides to create a new will and force the sale of our house...I wouldn't do that. She can always ask our cleaning lady (who also sometimes will take her to non-urgent doctors' appointments). I just meant that I think I should not actively help her to hurt me. If she rearranges her estate again so it's not possible for me to inherit the house, or if she sets it up so I must negotiate with my brother, that will hurt me and she knows it. So I would not participate by being her chauffeur for that appt. Or, my brother could come to town and she could go with him, set up whatever she wants. (I have no idea what she plans to do and she may wind up not doing anything. She's just mailed my brother a long letter. But the most important thing I can do is...what Mum said. LET the chips fall where they fall. That's my job.)

H&H, thank you so much for stating the obvious that I don't see while I'm letting my emotions and thoughts be hijacked by her running commentary, nudging, prodding, poking, and steering of me. You are exactly spot on. I do know what is to my benefit. More than any piece of economic security, it's serenity. Sanity. Peace.

And my mother is not capable of not trying to control the way you would control a child. She cannot relate any other way. It's not conscious, just hard-wired. She is anxious and very dependent. I just ordered a book about dealing with difficult aging parents, and the summary of a dependent parent (meaning emotionally, not the very legitimate physical stuff) sounded so much like her. Lightbulb. It's not only Nism, it's that mixed with high dependency.

This has helped a lot. Thanks for reading it.

PS to Cat and Seasons--DONT DO IT!!!

[Surrounded]

Hopalong---I have been reading these posts and something that struck me yesterday but I told myself to leave it alone, but it still bothers me.  You said your mother talked to your brother about you.  And about how you felt.  Was that her right, really? Seems like someting more going on here.   I know you can't stop her, but do you think it is possible that she is now using him to get back at you?  Gang up on you?  You have crossed her.  My mother has done the same kinds of things and she uses my siblings as her allies to launch attacks, guilt trips, manipulations, punishments on me.    You also mention she sent him a large letter??  Does this bother you or is it normal?

I now I am not the healthiest person to give advice, but I know that I have stayed by my husband's side for way too many years caring for him and babying him and doing anything he wished all the while hoping he might be able to produce something physical (money) I could show for it.  I figured, heck, I might as well come out with something.  I sometimes feel he has made financial blunders just to keep me around hoping and needing.  I am now ready to give this up.  I don't care.  It would be nice, but I can't control any of that. 

My mom also threatens to leave all her assets (not much, I think, but who knows, she is such a tight-wad) to the church.  (Cult--in this case).  I don't care anymore, I actually never did, we never had anything growing up from her so why expect it now.  It really would have been nice to have emotional assets from her during her lifetime or my childhood even, but---I can only deal with the non-existence of our relationship at this point of my life.  Sure, her cruelty of leaving her kids with nothing will upset me, but it won't break me.  It's just stuff.   I almost expect it.

Anyway, you can't control her.  Don't let her control you.  But, IMO, be aware of a gang-up of the "innocents" being planned against you by mom and brother.  I hope I am wrong.  It just doesn't seem like they have much compassion for anyone but themselves----I can't believe your brother says he can't remember bullying you.  What a jerk!!!  Do you think he has changed?  I have seen everyone's very worst side come out when it comes to money......

Sorry if this is way off base, or if I have crossed the line.  I am concerned, though.  Take care.    Hugs, babe!!