...with my mother.

If you've been here with me  (or even if you're new here, and would like to go back and read from post one) then you know my story.  I started this blog a short while before I realized my mother had narcissistic personality disorder.  Like days before.  I had read about it years before, but I didn't pay much attention to it, because she was really good at hiding it.  But after I figured it out, I realized she really didn't hide it well at all.  It was me who didn't understand the disorder back then.  Day one was a huge fight between us, all over a silly little blog post I wrote that was public.  Family members found it and showed it to her and BAM!  Huge blowup (and large amount of denial and lies on her part).  That whole first week was a blur of "what the hell is going on here??!" as narcs become more erratic the more you make them mad (case in point, the other day my son was talking about his steaks he makes and my mother interrupted him over and over and over again until I intervened and told her to shush--she was angry my son supposedly didn't know how to make steak, and I said he makes the best steaks on earth, to which she replied that I hate steak, and I said "No, ma, I hate your steak, I love his."  And wow, did nothing make sense out of her mouth after that!).  

If you've been here a  bit, you'd know that I went no contact after that first fight.  But my family was struggling so bad for money for those two months, I had to go back.  And of course, I was under her control again.  We all were.  Then I had to take her keys away because I didn't want her to drive anymore.  I couldn't get a doctor to diagnose her with dementia, but I knew she had it (I seem to have a keen dementia radar, as much as I have a narc radar).  So after trying over and over to get her doctors to take her driving privileges away, and kept coming up unsuccessful, I had to give her keys back.  The night I did, I went full no contact for a year and five months.   

Then we made some kind of fucktarded choice in our lives to move out of state, sight unseen, FIVE HUNDRED miles away.  And we get there??  And the place was destroyed (so much so, it should have been condemned).  So we became homeless for three weeks (oh, and our car also got destroyed while there as well!).  And what did we have to do?  Go crawling back to her (in a rental car).  

For the next six months, our lives were total hell.  She was cruel and mean and horrible, and even tried to starve us by not letting us use her car to go to the food pantry to get food, nor would she buy us any.  But we saved enough money to get a shitty car from a buy-here-pay-here place and all of a sudden, we became free again.  And ma got on new meds, and she started to chill out (thank goodness, because she got so angry at me during the holidays that she threw a bunch of cheesecake at me!--all because she was jealous our mutual friend gave us cheesecake and she didn't want us to have any).  

Life has been pretty baseline normal since then.  There've been ups and downs, but I stayed away from her as much I could (though I would do her weekly medication fill, and take her to her appointments).  We lived upstairs, she lived downstairs in our apartment building.  Life began to even out and eventually she got a hair up her ass to look for houses.  So I had to take the reigns, even though I didn't want to move in with her, just to make sure she didn't pick a house with no fenced in yard or something else awful (we have dogs).  She's that kind of person who would pick a house that only SHE liked, and fuck the rest of us, even though we're paying half of everything.  

So I found a house, met the realtor, put in the offer, and he accepted.  All without her seeing it (though with her permission).  And I did all the paperwork, made all the appointments, and did absolutely everything.  And I mean everything, including paying over $1,000 for all the fees.  And she complained the whole way, per usual.  And then came move in time and we moved her entire house for her.  AND paid for the Uhaul.  And then we had to rent a Uhaul for our own stuff.  And she did was complain we weren't doing it fast enough.  The amount of stress she put me in has left me in this state of numbness I can't even explain.  I've felt this way before.  Back before we went no contact the last time.  It was this state of "everything you say is either a lie or bullshit, so why am I even listening to you?"  BUT this time I HAVE to listen to her, as I am her caretaker. 

Oh yes, it turns out I was right, because after we came back and I took her to the doctor, what did she get diagnosed with?  Oh yes.  Dementia.  AND (god dammit) she could have been diagnosed back then if they had just looked at her freaking cat scan from a year prior, as she has dementia which is caused by strokes, which you can see right on it.  ARRRGGGHHH.  Oh well.  I am glad things turned out the way it did.  Becoming homeless and losing everything we owned for a bit (we came back with literally nothing) taught us some damn valuable lessons.  And had I learned she had had dementia back then?  I would never have went no contact.  We needed our life lessons to be where we are at right now and to become who we are right now.  

So here we are.  In a new house.  A very small house but on a fenced-in half acre, which is what we wanted.  My mother is driving me nuts on a daily basis, but it's only been a few weeks, eventually things may even out (or maybe they'll get worse? who knows!) and I'll be able to relax.  Maybe.  

So why, you ask, did we buy a house together, knowing the torture it would be to move in with your narc mother?  Well, we had a 85 year old landlord who could kick the bucket at any moment and there was no where for either of us to go if that happened.  We all needed stability and somewhere safe to live.  So this was pretty much our only choice.  And yes, it's as bad as I though it would be (maybe not quite as bad), but since I expected it, it's not a surprise.  I am working on letting things go (though it doesn't always work these days).  I am working on my own peace and happiness, but I need to shake this pervasive numbness that has entered my being for the past two weeks.  I can't work on me if I can't feel anything.  It's a coping mechanism, I realize this.  It's how I protect myself from her cruel and hurtful words (which have been spewing out of her mouth lately...though only to later in the day be all happy and nice! yay! *sarcasm*).  After all the stress of buying the house, setting up our mutual accounts so we can pay bills together and literally running her life and our life on a daily basis AND not to mention her barking orders at me all day long, I am just wiped.  I literally go to sleep the second my head hits the pillow.  Not in a good way, either.  

I want to enjoy our surroundings.  I want to enjoy our new house (which doesn't feel like my home yet).  I want to enjoy this last stretch of life with my mother, even if I am just putting up with her shit.  I just want to be fully here and present for all of this and shake this numbness.  I just need to give it time.  And maybe I'll make some grateful lists so I can clearly see all the amazingness we have our lives right now.  I hate that I'm missing it all.  

So I vow to be present for all of this.  And find a way to work through all the crap I deal with daily and let it go (and to stop taking offense).  Easier said than done, right?  But that's my goal.  

I'll find a way.  We all will.