Originally Posted by
NWGRITS 
Even down to our relationships with our AM. I am No Contact and working recovery in Al-Anon and therapy. She goes on vacation with AM and posts pictures on FB of them at the pool with their drinks.
This hit home. My mother was a teetotaler, the whole time I was growing up, through my adulthood. When I spent time with her, she talked...make that monologue, just to be clear...endlessly, most of it involving being angry, critical, bitter, and hateful about other people. Mouth pursed. Eyes narrowed. Changing the subject, trying to interject anything positive...nothing worked. She wanted me to sit there and listen to her trash talk the rest of the awful world. That was our relationship. (Sound like fun?)
I couldn't believe it the first time I went to a family gathering after moving home, seeing her with my younger sister, laughing, chatting, cracking jokes, HAPPY, swinging a bottle of something, drinking it out of the bottle and making jokes about it!
With me, I got helpful hints about how raising a houseful of boys would be so much easier if I would just do this, this, and this...(not that she ever raised a houseful of children remotely like what I have, and not that she ever raised any boys at all.) With me, it was helpful hints about being a better mother and housekeeper.
My sister...leaving a house warming party announcing to everyone that she's leaving her kids with her husband so she can go get trashed at a party. And everyone, my mother included, is laughing it up and cheering her on for leaving her two little kids to go get plastered!
Obviously my mother has an identical twin she keeps hidden in the closet, because these can't possibly be the same people. And not surprisingly, my sister can't imagine why I have an issue with the fun-loving happy mother who approves of everything SHE (my sister) does!
It is pure insanity. Sometimes, I just stand back watching in amazement. I'd find it hard to believe if someone else told me this story, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.