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If she's getting these good deals through her work, then why isn't she stopping by their houses on the way home from HER job?

I know it's hard. Like Kimber above, my mother would yell and scream at me (although in her case it's more like crying and shaking, but still with verbal insults like, "You are not right in the head!").

If your mother points out that she put a roof over her head, make sure she knows that you took care of her. (Although if she's like my mother, she will think that's nothing. My mother is going to find out just what my help was worth when she pays agency workers for minimum numbers of hours the next time she becomes incapacitated. It will become quite a scene when I refuse to take care of her and suggest my brothers take turns and come down.)
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notamaid -

It's that "trying to be respectful" thing that gets us every time. You are young, but even for some of us that are (much) older, it is hard to defy our parents, even when they are being completely unreasonable. We want to hold on to our "respectful child" role and change them back into "reasonable parent" mode.

Over time, you'll understand in your bones that it doesn't work that way and you'll let go of the need to maintain a show of "respect" for your parent. None of us wants to get in our parents' faces, telling them in so many words (or no words) that they're being unreasonable, stupid, or mean. Eventually most of us do it though. It's what is needed to set boundaries.

I like to say "you don't get to decide what anyone else should do. you just decide what you will and won't do." The problem is that when your parent is right on top of you, you end up having to justify not doing what you won't do. And that involves conflict, and calling a spade a spade, perhaps at the expense of feeling (and being) disrespectful of your parent. Eventually it will feel normal and okay to you.

You'll get there. In the meantime, you need to move out and make yourself less accessible to her. A lot of this is happening because you're in her house and she thinks you're still her kid and she can send you around to do her business however she sees fit.
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Thank you all. I agree with all of your viewpoints. I think when I move in 6 more months I will make it my business to not take any of her errand calls. I mean she literally called me when I was living thousand miles away to call them and tell them she was coming by to pick the money up. I'm sorry, but that's no longer my problem and as I get older I notice I start to tell her more & more exactly how I feel. Even with this I told her "why are you scared to ask for your own money, you need to quit that." She sent me pages of paragraphs texting making excuses and blah blah. I don't think I'm better than my mom but I do think I speak more of my mind and confront people more than she claims she does. I'm very direct 99.9% of the time and I've always lived my life on my terms. I think the issue is she can't handle the fact that unlike some, I don't ask for her permission to do anything in my life simply because I don't have to. Not that I don't respect her. I use to ignore her calls & she results into the victim mode of "no one cares about me." I hate to say it but I wish she would just remarry already.
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