omg GracieLou, your description of your mom's style and the family drama reminded me so much of my own i realized halfway through your post i was clenching my jaws and my fists!! it is SO GOOD to get away from that! let the circle be broken!!
ajarlson! so much in common. my mom's medical and driver's license have been taken away, and her life is one long list of people she has pushed away. she is out of people to call. and yes, the administrative departments of many entities have tried to get me to take her home ("but... she's your MOTHER! and there's no one else? but you still won't take her?"), to no avail. and there's certainly no chance of that now.
when I 'broke up' with my mom 8/14, i had just put her in the hands of a non-profit who could do all the things i was doing for her, from caregiving to money management, and they try to call me sometimes to say 'we know you don't want these updates BUT we thought you should know your mother is in the hospital'. great. thanks. a) she always comes out of the hospital and b) thank you for the setback, for giving me a reason to dwell on it again. it's not like i'm going to miraculously forget the way she's been treating me my whole life/the last two years. i think they just do it because they're uncomfortable. i should change my number.
edit: about guilt keeping you 'in your place' as a dutiful daughter for too long - my mom and dad had what i thought of as a wonderful marriage. my dad was a wonderful person. he died when i was 15, and when my mom's life fell apart again two years ago (after losing her second husband to suicide) i felt like my dad would have wanted me to look out for my mom. it took a bit too long to put together that my dad, as a fair and reasonable person, would only expect me to do what was actually fair and reasonable. and that whatever my dad would have wanted, i needed to do what i needed to do to get out of a crazy situation
