This is a long rant which I am writing more for myself to keep of things later and as a way to get out my frustrations of what's been going on the past few months.  Sometimes I get in a cycle of irritation and I can't seem to escape it, and when it passes, I am better able to deal with everything that's going on.  So when I write about how I feel, it's an outlet for my irritation and annoyances.  So if you don't want to read my silly complaining, feel free to pass this one by.  

Well, we didn't move in with her, we all moved out of our apartment complex (my kids, my hubby, my mother and I) in different apartments and bought a house together.  And this brings us to the first point of my entry:

She feels as though this is her house, not ours.  Her famous line for the past few months has been "When I'm dead, you can do whatever you like with the house", which means "I will do what I want, when I'm gone, then you can be free to actually make decisions for the house you pay half for".  And this first point is probably the biggest point and is the motivation for so much of her bad behavior that I'm going to relay here.  

Yes, the house is in her name.  When we first moved in, all she talked about was "This is the first house I've ever bought alone!"  And I kept reminding her that she didn't buy anything at all, she just used her credit to get a loan that we're all paying for.  In fact, she wouldn't have gotten the house if I hadn't done every bit of the work (and boy, there was work, it's a VA loan--something she wouldn't have gotten if it hadn't been for her marrying a veteran).  And not only that, we pay more each month than she does (except in her brain, she's also paying more, but that's because she's been using her credit cards more and more).  When we moved in she decided to get a new stove, a new furnace, and all sorts of other stuff that really put a strain on our finances.  But I knew while these purchases weren't exactly necessary right away, they definitely would be in the future, so I agreed.  And we pay half for the furnace, but she footed the bill for our new stove because I paid $800 in groceries for several months, which if you divide that by 5, we're paying $160 a month for groceries for her, which is more than I'd be paying for that stove.  I also do all the laundry, all the cooking, and buy all the cat and dog food (and she has 5 cats).  So we are pretty equal in most of our finances, sometimes I end up paying more, and once in a great while she ends up paying for extra.  But of course, this is her house and I am not allowed to make choices for the yard or the inside without her complaining or getting annoyed with me.  

I would get it more if we moved into her house.  I would get it more if she did all the work or paid most of everything.  But we are pretty damn equal, with the heavier side falling to us most of the time.  Which I am totally fine with, because we can afford it.  But the issue is more that even before we moved in, she said to me "I get the living room, the kitchen, and the bathrooms to decorate.  You get your room."  So I knew going in this was going to be hard.  But I didn't expect it to be this annoying.  Or maybe I did?  I think my issue is more about the fact that I didn't expect me to feel so guilty.  

I spend most of my days hanging out with my husband (he's laid off due to the pandemic).  Before, when he worked 12 hours days as an ambulance dispatcher, I spent my days alone.  Our kids have their own schedules, though now that my husband is home, we all end up with the same schedule and are always hanging out together.  But even so, I keep myself busy with writing (I'm working on my memoir, and I'm almost done! Hooray!), and blogging.  I spend a lot of time on this blog lately due to everything, but it helps me to keep my mind busy and keeps me away from her.  And that's the issue.  Due to the pandemic, my mother is stuck in the house and can't visit people or have visitors.  And since we moved into a new place, she can't visit people because she doesn't know anyone (she can't drive, after we moved in I took her keys away because she can't walk a straight line, she certainly should not be behind a wheel...not to mention her driving is dangerous as hell).  So she's stuck being alone a lot.  Which makes me feel horribly guilty.  

But, when I do pay her attention or hang out with her, she crosses my boundaries and emotionally abuses me (and even as I write this, I have this nagging voice inside that says "You're overreacting!  You're making a big deal over nothing!" and guess who's voice it is?)  My husband will hang out with her, just to help alleviate my guilt, and because a) she's nicer to her him (he's her favorite, as I said in my last post LOL) and b) he doesn't let her bother him like I do.  Like, she knows I am very sensitive to smoke (it makes me cough and stuffs up my nose and can give me a migraine) and she will always light up a cigarette when I'm near.  It feels like she's intentionally keeping me away just so she can be annoyed with me for staying away from her.  Like the other day, I was sitting in my spot beneath the tree and she came over by the gate near me and just stood there smoking a whole cigarette.  I started coughing and she turned and said "Oh, sorry, I thought I was far enough away" and kept on smoking until she was done, even though she knew she was making sick.  

A couple days ago I bought these wooden garden edgers at Menards.  I didn't buy them because I wanted them for myself (as I don't plant flowers in the yard).  I had to buy them because my mother planted a whole bunch of random stuff in the middle of the grass.  I have no idea why, but that's where she put them.  So she requires us to move in between them, which ends up with us little by little whittling away the edges of all her plants.  So I bough these edgers to put around her plants so we don't have to mow between them anymore.  She knew that's what I bought them for and took them and put them around some plants she planted where my dogs run (in which my dogs ruined immediately).  So I had to remove them to put them where I bought them for.  That puts me in the position to have to explain myself as to why I moved them.  I haven't yet, and she hasn't asked me, but it still nags at me.  I know that's my fault, I should just not care.  But it's hard to just let things go when you've dealt with a lifetime of crazy.  She's so unpredictable, you just don't know how she's going to react to most things, so you end up fearing the worst.   Oh, and speaking of the plants she planted that my dogs destroyed, she planted them in our area where we sit.  Not her, me and my hubby and kids.  So she's making plans to plant a whole bunch of stuff under the tree, just to make it so we can't sit there anymore (though it's dumb, because nothing grows under the tree).  And that's not me insinuating her agenda either.  She's annoyed that I won't move our table and chairs under the tree because a) again, she smokes and I don't want that near me if I can help it and b) my mother is unsteady and all the tree roots will cause her to fall.  

So when we first moved in, she would invade our space, as though, like she said, she owned the entire house herself and did whatever she liked.  She took down my drapes and put up her own without asking (just kidding, she told me to take my drapes down and put up the ones she bought online--because she never does anything, she just yells at other people to do it, without caring if I wanted my drapes up or not...something I complied with, because I didn't want to start trouble).  She would go into our bathroom, our tiny little bathroom (we have two, and the big one is hers and the little one is my family's) and rearrange everything without asking.  She'd also go into the room and use bleach spray, knowing I'm sensitive to chemicals, especially bleach, to clean everything...and all the while again, rearranging everything.  She's twice moved my radio in the kitchen without asking (it's an old fashioned radio, something I use daily while I'm cooking and when we're all eating dinner).  Every time I move everything back to where I had it.  The next day she'll smile and say "Aww, you didn't like where I put your stuff?" in a condescending tone.  The kitchen is a constant battle.  She wants to clutter up the cabinets with tons of the same things (like the same size mixing bowls or 500 coffee cups).  I will take these things and store them just a few feet away in the garage.  The other day she went into the baking cabinet and rearranged everything inside and moved it all to where I couldn't find it.  I got angry enough to say something to her about that one.  

She constantly moves the furniture in the living room around, even though she doesn't use it.  She's always saying "I know this will make you mad, but..." and then tell me how she's going to move the furniture in a major way, even if I didn't like it.  My husband and I get frequent migraines (though mine have been better lately, thank goodness, since stopping caffeine) and the windows let in too much light to face the window (light is a huge trigger for both of us).  Yet, she has ants in her pants and neeeeds to constantly rearrange stuff.  But I always explain to her, over and over again this fact, and she relents with a huff.  So my last post talked about how we decorated the living room, and now she can't move any of the furniture because our stuff would have to come off the walls (all that talk about wanting to be the one to decorate the living room and kitchen, and yet she left it blank until I finally did something for both--perhaps it's to prove a storyline that she "bought a house and became a victim of us being the ones who took over"?). 

She has to take control of everything, even if it has nothing to do with her. 

This isn't new.  She's always been this way.  If I show her my art, she will make faces and say "Hmm something isn't right..." and require me to change it in order to get her approval.  My therapist says is so she can feel like she's a part of something she can't do (or wasn't invited to do) because she can't do them herself.  It's a type of jealousy, which is why she feels she has to "bring me out a notch" every single time.  If she can't find fault with my art, she will then tell me where to put it or assert some other type of control on my piece.  I made a sign the other day that says "memories and meals are made here".  It's a huge sign that I made to put over our gridded arched mirror (which looks like a window) with two shutters I painted in the kitchen.  And, like a dumbass, I left it out where she could see it before I hung it.  And of course she starts telling everyone "I know Shay wants it above the mirror, but wouldn't it be better over the stove?"  She got everyone excited for this new placement for my sign (I blogged about this a few days ago) and then I looked like the jerk for still wanting it where I was going to put it to begin with.  

I picked up a new dresser on Friday, and spent Friday and Saturday painting it with chalk paint (cocoa bean) and covering the drawers with matching gorgeous scrapbook paper and putting new knobs on it.  She was excited to see it, which made me happy.  But then she came into my room and said "Oh you need to paint all your bookcases, your other dressers, and all your wood to match!"  And then she went on a ten minute speech about how I could redo this and blah blah blah.  It got so out of hand, and all we wanted to do was show her the dang dresser.  That was it.  But it always becomes so much more than just the thing we want to show her.  She has to take over and pretend like it's all something for her to be a part of.  I get she gets excited, but it always gets uncomfortable because I don't want to keep saying "Oh yeah, that sounds neat" through gritted teeth and then after she leaves the area, we forget what she even said.  Because she always asks later why we didn't do her suggestions in a way that's supposed to guilt us (which never works).  

People looking at our house right now might say "Well, your mom is just bored and needs you to include her in your life more!".  I had someone say this to me recently.  But she was like this for my entire life.  Even as a kid.  She was jealous I played the violin.  She was jealous I was a good artist.  She was jealous I had close relationships with my friends.  She was jealous I could easily figure out things on my own and wasn't afraid to try and fail.  And every single one of these things she'd tried to crush out of me.  And still does to this day.  She questions all my choices, all my ideas, everything.  She underhandedly insults me by insulting other people who are like me or look like me.  She insults my kids in ways that are supposed to sound like jokes.  

I know I've probably said all this in other posts before.  But it just all keeps adding up and makes me want to word vomit all over the place and I don't want it to be in my daily life, as my husband and kids probably don't want to listen to it all the time LOL 

She uses her child voice quite regularly.

This is probably one of the most irritating things she does.  She will use her strange voices, sometimes childlike, sometimes just really grating, odd, and unusual voices.  Back when the stay at home order first started, she screamed as we past Aldi "I WANT TO GO TO ALDI! WAAAAHHHHH!  LET ME GO TO ALDI!" and literally screamed it the ten minutes all the way home.  I have no idea how I didn't snap on her.  My therapist says "Remember, telling her how you feel is not aggressive, it's assertive.  It's okay to tell her to stop when she's being really irritating or annoying or rude."  I'm always completely afraid to stand up to her or tell her to stop because I fear two things: a) I fear her reaction and b) I fear I will look like I'm being aggressive or a jerk.  So I sit there, and put up with this kind of insanity and drive myself crazy rather than just say "Hey, we can stop that now, it's not funny anymore."  

She'll uses these voices especially if she knows I have a migraine.  Or she'll bang her cat food bowls together really loudly knowing my head hurts.  Which is why I do not spend time in my living room unless my kids are in there, too.  I only watch TV in my room, because she always has to be the center of attention.  Which is something I write about in my next post.  

So I've been keeping busy by buying furniture, redoing our bedroom, cleaning our garage, decorating our living room, and all sorts of other house stuff (because I'm sick of living in limbo, waiting for her to do something with it all, but she won't...that is, until I start doing something, then she wants to do her own stuff LOL Arrgggghhh!).  I've also been doing creative stuff like painting and sewing and I need to do more of that, too.  I need to sew more, as I'm opening a clothing store online and need to get more items done (I do have a lot, but not enough yet).  I've also been writing (non-fiction and fiction).  So I keep pretty busy, but again, it makes me guilty because other than taking care of her meds, keeping an eye on her and cooking her food, I don't have much time for her.  It's such a strange line to walk, to have to alleviate my guilt but not too much otherwise she uses what I give her to take more and more and more, until she starts hurting me again.  Though her hurting me never stops.  It's like built into her DNA.  But it's doable to deal with these days.  It's way better than if she could drive or if we weren't under a stay at home order.  So there's that.  And some people ask "Why do you live with her if it's so bad?"  It's really not.  It's tedious.  Not horrible.  I'm just going through a rough patch right now.  It's not like when we first came back to live above her in our apartment in 2018.  Now that was torture (she was literally cruel to us).  She's annoying now, not cruel like she used to be (though she doesn't have much of a choice, it's either me or a home and she knows it).  

Well, off to go watch this very...um...strange?  Funny?  A little disturbing?  And adorable show called "Welcome to Plathville" on Hulu.  Me thinks the mother may be a narcissist LOL  We'll see.  But if you're dealing with a narc, esp. now with having to stay at home so much, I know things can get tedious.  So feel free to word vomit your annoyances below.  And I hope you're making time for yourself and finding your own peace every single day.