Blustery.  Yes, that's the word that describes today perfectly.  It's very windy outside, dark and bleak, with a slight chill.  All the leaves are falling from the trees.  Typical October anymore: the leaves turn and then immediately fall before you can take pictures of them.  Today is laundry day.  Mother's laundry basket was by her door, filled with various items, such as clothes, underwear, and towels.  She won't keep her towels in the bathroom.  She doesn't keep much of anything of hers in there, preferring to keep her stuff in her room.  Which is odd, that her stuff isn't there but she insists on rearranging everything all the time.  So I had enough the other day and took everything of mine out of there and put it in my room.  Sounds childish, but I never can find my stuff, and I prefer that nobody puts my stuff anywhere but me.  She was surprised by this, but I had to do it.  And now the bathroom closet is pretty much bare.  Not sure what to do about that, but for now, this is the way it is.  

I woke up in extreme pain.  Not sure why.  I could barely move my upper body and it made me feel like I had a horrible migraine, though I don't.  It's just muscular.  But that doesn't make it any less painful.  This is me.  It's who I am.  The woman in pain most days.  Why?  I assume stress.  Maybe it's my ACEs catching up with me?  If I push myself too hard some days, I'll wake up hurting everywhere.  But sometimes I can push myself too hard and be in no pain at all.  Doesn't make any sense.  There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to these cycles.  Maybe it's a fibro flare?  Maybe it's Sjogrens (something I suspect I have)?  I've been having massive dryness in my hands and feet and lips and mouth and getting frequent nosebleeds lately.  And I've also been hydrating.  But who knows.  Doctors are notorious for not diagnosing you properly for years on end, so we'll see what comes of that.  If anything.

I take her laundry basket, and she catches me and asks me to wait while she grabs her PJs to throw in.  She isn't allowed on the basement steps, as she can barely walk without falling normally.  It was a huge fight for so long, something that stressed me out unbelievably at the time.  She's quit now.  Especially since our staircase just recently broke and my oldest son almost fell through it.  So my husband and I just paid for it to be replaced yesterday.  Another strange issue is that all of these big issues keep happening and we keep paying for them and she never once reminds me to take half from her.  I mean I do, but it's just odd she's not reminding me that we are not expected to pay for these things all by ourselves.  Recently we had a tire blowout and had to get a new tire, and some thing in our engine needed to be replaced.  All of which we paid for.  I do not tell her "Hey, I'm talking half for this from you" because then she'll say "Well, I don't drive" or "I don't use the basement", as a joke, but I assume deep down she's being for real.  So I just take when I do the bills and she never says anything about it.  It's a strange situation to be in.  And she checks her bank regularly, so it's not like she doesn't realize it.  It still feels really odd.  

Even though I'm in pain and feel terrible (my allergies are causing me to feel like I have a cold, so I also feel very run down), I still do her laundry.  I still cook dinner practically every day (yesterday we had take out as I was busy all day).  I stock the fridge daily with her water bottles (she refuses to drink out of my Brita pitcher).  I shop for all groceries each week.  I run her errands.  I order her meds.  I make her doctor's appointments.  I fired her from washing dishes because I am constantly eating soap because she doesn't rinse them properly (she was really angry about that the other day).  I pay all the bills (not financially, we pay half, but I am the person who pays them each month).  I am always telling her no to her ideas, because her ideas are either gross or insane (her latest idea is to put a cat litter in her room, which will make the entire house smell like cat piss, and she doesn't care...even though my husband and I clean the cat litters in the basement and buy ALL the litter, even though she has five cats and we have two, and she has no reason to have a cat litter in her room, as they all use the basement litter).  I am basically her mother.  And that's how she treats me.  

Actually, she treats me as though I am a live-in worker.  I am not her family to her.  I am not her daughter.  I am the person in control who she has to ask to do things and throw a fit when I say no.  Today, she was pulling our lawn chairs up from the firepit, where my family sits around the fire, and I caught her and said "What are you doing?"  For one, she's already asked about getting the chairs, and I said leave them, that's where we sit.  And for two, she's not supposed to be walking through the backyard without support (there are lots of holes she can fall in and twist her ankles or break another rib) and she's especially not supposed to be traipsing through the backyard pulling furniture around.  She doesn't listen and does whatever she wants because she doesn't care about her own well-being (never has, never will).  So I have to be the one who catches her making stupid choices and tell her "Stop that."  And today, she screamed "FUCK IT!" after I said to leave it alone (in a nice tone, I do not yell at her) and left the chair in the middle of the yard.  

So yes.  Today is a blustery day.  

I've said it a hundred times, but she treats my husband like her family.  She treats my kids like her family.  But not me.  Never once has she asked me what I'm working on or what I'm up to.  She always asks my husband and kids what they're doing.  She'll go around, ask them, then when she gets to me, it's always a demand that I do something for her.  "Oh, yeah, don't forget, I need (insert something here)".  It's a blatant disregard for me, and she wants everyone to see it and know it.  Especially me.   

Another thing she's taken to doing is interrupting me.  Like mid-sentence.  She claims it's because if she doesn't say what she needs to say she'll forget.  Which is true.  But I'll restart what I'm saying and she'll interrupt again.  And when I look back at my old journals and blogs, I realize she's always done this.  It has nothing to do with her dementia as she claims it does.  And then there's the fact she doesn't interrupt anyone else.  Well, not as much as she does me anyways.  

I am working on changing my perception of her behavior from "Why are you such an asshole me, in particular?" to "What would I say say if this person had dementia?"  Because she does.  More so, I will stop when she says something that irks me and think "Pretend this comment is caused by dementia.  How should I respond?"  Even if the comment clearly isn't coming from that, it's my perception of the comment, remark, or action that matters.  Because right now, I take instant offense and it stresses me out.   So I need to stop letting her make me feel small and ashamed of myself and who I am.  Because that's her goal.  And I need to stop caring.  But it's easier said than done.  But I've changed my thinking many times in the past and eventually, I changed to the point I no longer thought the negative stuff anymore.  So I know I can do it now, too.  

Today's blustery weather is also laced with a slight bit of warmth.  It's a unique feeling, to see Mother Nature try her damnedest to make today suck, but something just isn't letting it completely through.  Something is taking the grossness of it all and making it slightly nice.  Nice enough to enjoy walking around barefoot (which is what I was doing earlier).  And that's what I'm trying to do here.  I can't make her nice to me.  I can't make her love me.  I can't make her treat me with respect or even kindness.  But I can change my attitude towards it all.  I can find compassion for myself enough to change how I take her bullshit.  

If I could only cure my pain and allergies.  But one thing at a time, right?  

UPDATE:  My pain turned into a massive migraine.  I was literally in bed all day.  My mother got upset with me for being sick and tried to guilt me about not being up at 6pm to make dinner for her.  "Can you go get my laundry from the basement?" she asks in a quiet and fake sad voice (really the voice was anger, but she loves to mask her anger and pretend she's sad so we feel bad for her, which never works).  "I'm just going to go to bed."  I said it's 6pm, isn't she going to eat?  She shrugs and says "Meh" and just walks away.  She opened my bedroom door earlier (I have a lock now, but I don't use it when I'm sick so I don't have to get up to open the door for anyone) to see if I was sleeping because her TV went out (she has a Fire Stick and I have a Flex, both our TV's went out at the same time) and this upset her to see I was sleeping because she wanted to watch TV.  The funny part is that five adults live in this house.  But somehow, I am the live-in servant and she can only ask me to do these things for her.  I never take naps (she takes like three a day) so obviously I was sick.  But zero compassion for me at all, per usual.  If it was anyone else she'd be all like "Oh I am so sorry you don't feel well!"  So I got her laundry and put it by her door and went back to bed, because now my head was excruciatingly horrible from climbing stairs during a migraine.  So I tried to do what I said above, to see her as "someone with dementia" and not someone who should have compassion for me, but it did not work and I was pissed as hell, which made my headache worse.  Hubby went to Little Cesear's for dinner, because I could not cook and she was perky and awake when she found out dinner was there.  So sweet.  Then she complained that I got to eat in my room and blah blah blah and I was just trying to stay present and not dwell on her crap so I could feel better.  

Anyways, so the kids (I say kids, but I mean my kids who are adults LOL) restarted the internet, my TV started working, then my youngest son went and fixed her TV (restarted her Fire Stick) and all was well with that.  Then she was happy and not trying to guilt me anymore, but damn if I could just detach from her behavior and not take her shit personally.  Because it's so much easier said than done.  Especially when I am really feeling HORRIBLE and she's being a bitch about not getting what she wants because of it.  Like, how dare I be sick??  She needs shit done!  

If I learned one thing from my therapist, it's to stand up for myself when I have had enough, rather than be quiet.  Because this is my life and I don't have to spend it being pissed or depressed just because she wants to be mean to me.  So next time my hubby has a migraine and she acts all compassionate (which is fake) to him about it, I may speak up to her and say "Oh wow, you sure mother him nicely.  Too bad you don't do the same for me."  Maybe I'll say that.  Maybe.