Dealing with a Difficult Parent...

This is probably going to be the longest article I'll ever write here... And I'm hoping and praying my mother never reads this because there are things I'm going to put here that I could never ever even think of bringing up to her. I just don't have the courage to, or the want to hurt her feelings...

Okay, so let me start with saying my mother never physically abused me. She loved me the way she knew how... mMy childhood wasn't horrible except through my teenage years and I'll tell you why in a few minutes... I should be grateful I have loving parents and shouldn't even be complaining because I know there are people out there who got abused/sexually abused by their parents. That isn't the case for me...

However, I did get mentally and verbally abused later on in my life by my mother... I'm not saying my Dad is innocent in any of this because he made some mistakes too, but to really understand why I'm writing this let me take you back in time...

So, I was a fairly happy kid. My dad taught me how to play video games at a young age. I grew up being daddy's girl. We'd play games together, fish together, play Lite Brite together and board games. When my brother was old enough, we included him into the fun. However, usually it was my dad and I while my brother spent more time with Mom.

My mother was sickly; she has Crohn's Disease plus fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, and numerous other things wrong with her body so she wasn't up to doing much while we were growing up. She always complained all the time about the house being dirty or us not picking up our rooms. The usual mom stuff.

I had difficulty in school with bullying plus having a learning disability (I have ADD) so I was struggling all throughout my middle-school and high-school days. Mom would fight with the teachers at school and go to meetings almost every week. Things didn't start getting bad until we left on a trip to Maine to visit family while we were living in Florida. My dad stayed behind and ended up having an affair with some woman he worked with. Mom ended up finding out and threatened to kick him out... they went to marriage counseling and worked things out or so I thought.

This all happened when I was 10. Anyway, years passed and my parents fought almost constantly. Seemed like my mom just gave up and started griping about everything to my father about how she didn't feel well or that he didn't do this or that or how bad us kids were while he was at work. Eventually he got tired of it and after my 16th birthday he ended up calling up one night and told my mom he wasn't coming home, that he was staying with a friend and he would be getting separation papers soon.

Mom had a nervous breakdown... She told my dad she wanted to take the car and go kill herself amongst other things. We ended up getting an apartment. Dad tried to get us kids to stay with him but I was so angry at the time that he had left that I told him no. Later on, I would find out I should have probably stayed with him instead of Mom but... oh well.

It took a while and us moving up to Maine for Mom to really change. I dropped out of high school my junior year. I couldn't handle the stress of the divorce plus school. I put off getting my GED plus a job. Mom started unleashing her anger out on me. Nothing was ever good enough for her.

Since I didn't have a job, she expected me to do things around the house which I thought was fair until she started going behind me and re-doing everything. I'd clean the kitchen, she would redo it. I would vacuum for her, she would go behind me and redo that. I took out trash for her, took out the cans & bottles for recycling. She would mention things about my weight, saying I was getting as big as a house. Guilt trip me into going to the grocery store with her... she would say she is just going to die.

Mom kind of gave up on herself and laid in the bed most of the time watching TV. Her body started to fall apart. She had an accident in a parking lot where she tripped over a piece of concrete and broke the ball of her hip off. She had a hip replacement done, a back fusion, amongst other surgeries. Having all that done, she did nothing to keep her body in shape and from wearing out. She would just lay in bed and watch TV. I guess because she was depressed.

She stopped paying her mortgage, saying she couldn't afford it but could afford to go out to eat almost every week... She would skip paying a bill so she could go out to eat. She doesn't work; she gets disability and alimony and claims she doesn't get enough. I should mention my brother isn't working either and he's 25-years-old.

So I got my GED, and then I went to CNA school and got my license. My now fiancé was my boyfriend back then and he decided to move up to Maine to be with me. My mom tried to get him to do things too, like pick up branches in the yard as well as other things all while still treating me like crap. Basically I became my Dad in the situation. Everything she was doing to my father she started doing to me and I started to see then why he left the way he did.

When Jacob and I decided to move out and come down here to Maryland to live, Mom had a fit. She didn't want me to have my own life. She told me I was being selfish, that I should stay and take care of her because that was my obligation as a daughter and that she would die without me there to help her.

I ended up leaving anyway and I'm glad I did. I'm so much happier now than I was when I lived with her. She made my life a living hell and I didn't realize it until I actually got away from it. Now, she still tries to do that on the phone but I can hang up whenever I don't want to listen to it.

Each time I call her and I'm happy, she has to say something to bring me right back down again. She's always complaining about how she doesn't feel good, my brother doesn't do anything to help her, and she can't pay her mortgage and they will foreclose on her any day. In fact when I called her to tell her the news that I had gotten engaged, she said, "I don't know whether to cry 'cause I am happy for you or cry because I don't know if I'll be able to afford to come to your wedding." Then she proceeded to ask me if my father and grandmother would be there, and of course I told her they would be... (Dad's mom and my mother never got along). Then when I don't call her for a few days, she reverts to Facebook and types a huge, long story on my comments complaining about her life so all my friends can see it.

I love my mother. She's my mom but I wish she would realize what she's doing and stop hurting me like she does. She expects me to stop everything I'm doing and take care of her. She is 58-years-old and acts like a needy child. She stresses me out, always making me worry about her even though I know she'll be fine. How do I even begin to tell her that she's wrong in making me feel guilty for her mistakes?