Hops, I'm quite concerned. You know what the issues are, you have explained them cogently and well many times here.
I'm the last person who will tell you or anyone that you have no right to negative feelings about someone who drains and abuses you. But it's not at all good for your health to stay in such prolonged forced proximity to that person.
Here is something you wrote recently on the subject, where you were coming from a very centered and compassionate place...
I may have gotten off easy in N-land compared to others.
I am sure I have.
But still, I can't deny them their humanity.
When I think that way it twists me into a direction that feels wrong.
It's not the same as condoning their behavior or making myself vulnerable to them.
Not at all.
Just philosophically, I refuse to separate myself from them as another human being.
They are broken in ways that make them dangerous for me to be around them, so I won't be.
And I know some should be locked up and have the key tossed into the moat.
Don't mean to belabor the point but somehow I feel if I reach the point where I declare that anyone, at all, is not a human being, then I am less human myself.
Hops
and here is something that expressed a very different outlook.
In 8 years of living with Ma, I have had a few friends over a few times. We hustle up to my room like escaping teenagers to chat. It's very uncomfortable. Ma was and is always jealous of my relationships with friends, and it became easier to just stop trying to have any friends in.
One day, I will be having dinner guests too. I always loved doing that.
That has been one of the big sacrifices, and I will eventually be free to enjoy feeling I have a home.
But not yet.
(My friend who has a very narcissistic mother as well as a sense of humor came by and met her and emailed me afterward: "Damn, she looks healthy.")
Hops
That post above actually implies that you are looking forward to your mother dying, so that you can have her house all to yourself for good... and
this new thread is definitely closer to the second attitude than to the first.I thought a long time about putting the actual words here. Realized, though, that if I just described what I'd read elsewhere and interpreted it, that's subjective... you need to see the actual words, to understand my concern.
Come on, Hops. If your emotions and thoughts towards your mother spend more time in the second place than in the first, maybe you need to think about you first, for a while. Make some arrangements for respite care, adult day care, an assisted living center.
You're going to tear yourself in two trying to maintain the first attitude you express above so eloquently, while the second attitude is burning away in your gut whenever your mother is in the same room with you.
You're setting yourself up for depression and somatization, migraine or other kinds of chronic pain, trying to literally force yourself into an emotional position that you just won't be able to sustain unless you get more space, more time, more freedom, the opportunity to recharge your batteries.
Please think about checking with your county or state Department of Aging or Senior Services or whatever it is. Check with your church. We're not a very civilized country with regard to the 'social contract', so eldercare is not consistently available, it's a patchwork of city/county/state and faith-based services, but there may be more options accessible to you than you think, depending on where you live.
Just having a day sitter come in a couple of times a week...
You need a break, something that is reliable and that you can count on, something that doesn't require your mother to collapse or have a health crisis / hospitalization in order for you to be able to catch your breath. You can't afford to become dependent on her misfortune to give you respite, it's not good for your soul!
I'm really worried that the tensions in this situation are going to break
you, otherwise.
Please take care of yourself!!!!!
[Edit in: I have never been more serious. My father predeceased my mother because the constant strain of coping and caregiving and damage control simply consumed him. She was overweight, had asthma, emphysema, high blood pressure, constant hospitalizations for pneumonia and UTIs, and he had NONE of those problems, yet
he died first. Please think about this, it's so important!]
