One Year Later

So here we are, one year later, after moving in with the woman I swore I'd never have anything to do with ever again two years prior to moving in here.  In 2018, my family was forced back into her life after we went no contact with her a year and half prior after we became homeless.  We lived under her rule for the first year, with no car, no jobs, no furniture, or anything of our own.  And it was horrid.  The next year we finally had jobs, a car of our own, and most of our stuff back.  She did ZERO to help us get anything we needed (actually, my ex-husband is the person who gave us things when we were truly in need, go figure).  And that next year it was better.  Not perfect or even great, but better.  And then we started to fear living in the apartment complex we lived in together (she was downstairs, we were up) as our landlord was getting up there in age and since coming back from homelessness, we feared for our safety (meaning we feared becoming homeless again).  Between the two households, we had four dogs and ten cats.  Who would rent to us?  And if mother went into assisted living, how would we deal with all of her cats by ourselves?  So we decided to buy a house together.  We moved in April 1st of 2020 (during the pandemic) and here we are a year later. 

What's changed, what's stayed the same, and what's to come?  

What's Changed

One year ago, things were quite different.    I was told by her that I was not allowed to decorate any of the house myself.  I had my bedroom and the kids' bathroom (I say kids, but they are grown men) and that was it.  We moved all of her stuff into the house ourselves and then we had to move all of our stuff into the house.  It was a lot of work, in which she bitched about it the entire time.  We moved in and she took complete and total charge of everything.  I felt like a visitor in my own home (in which we paid for half of everything) and it never felt like home for those first several months.  Even though a) I did ALL the work to buy this house (and it wasn't easy, let me tell you--I've never done it before, either) and I am in charge of paying all the bills.  At first, I tried to feel comfortable.  Even though I wasn't allowed to put out furniture where I wanted, or do much of anything at all.  She took control of everything and put herself in charge of where everything went, even my stuff.  I have been our main cook since day one (and now our only cook), and she still thought she could come in an rearrange the kitchen every five god damned minutes.  My stuff was always missing, too.  She'd find my stuff and gather it up and stick it in drawers or even went as far to hide many of my things in places I was lucky to even find them.  And no matter how much I asked her to stop, she'd scream at me and still did it anyways.  So much of my life was spent undoing what she did.  She'd rearrange my stuff in cabinets, and I'd put it all right back.  This was constant, and became my entire life for a period of time.  Until eventually she just gave up.  Thank freaking goodness.  

In the beginning, I thought I could sit where I wanted to do things (I started my first memoir when we moved in, and used to write for hours on end).  Like read or write or do my projects.  But as it turns out, I was chased out every single place until I ended up in my room behind a locked door (which is where I am still at right now LOL).  The anger, and seething of her on purpose intrusions and interruptions I felt when we first moved in drove me to keep trying to find places to hide from her.  She'd always, always find me and think she could come interrupt whatever it was I was doing just so she could get attention.  She'd bang stuff around really loudly, make noise (with her mouth), talk to me about things that made no sense to interrupt me for, scream for her cats, come smoke by me (if I was outside) to make me leave, just say random things, etc.  I get that's she's bored now.  But back then, she wasn't bored.  She did that kind of shit to me for my entire life (though back in the olden days, I didn't hide from her and could stand being around her and was around her way too much).  She craves attention (which is why she's depressed now, because we moved away from her friends who gave her all the attention she wanted and then some).  I even would hide in the garage and she'd find me in there and come in with her cigarette, knowing I am allergic to smoke, just to drive me to leave.  If I was in the living room, she'd run through the house screaming just to make enough noise to stop me from writing.  So safe to say, I was going quite a bit insane last year around this time.   I don't even want to remember what it was like.  Yuck.

Luckily, my hubby was laid off in June of last year (his business went under due to the pandemic) and was laid off for six months, otherwise I don't know if I could have survived all that time with her during her "turbulent days".  That's what I'm going to call them.  Because hot damn, she was a fucking handful.  

If I could have looked into the future to see only that time?  I would still be living in our apartment.  We all would.  Because there would have been zero way we would have moved.  ZERO.  Funny though, back then?  I felt better.  I could stand her more.  But after dealing with that for so long, I've become less and less tolerant of her behavior and words.  Anyways, though, little by little, she began to give up her hold on things.  She is GUNG HO about something in the beginning, but has ZERO staying power.    She gets hyped up about control (I guess that interests her? LOL).  And then slowly, it peters out over a period of time.  Like last year, she killed all my plants because she was adamant about being in control of MY veggie garden and then just out of the blue stopped watering it without telling me (I watered it, but she wanted to, so I let her and then she just stopped and I didn't know).

So little by little, she released her grip on everything in the house.  She stopped cooking and had me do all of it.  She stopped trying to get me let her go in the basement (after our stairs literally broke).  She stopped rearranging my stuff (though she still does this outside with my garden gnomes).  She stopped fucking with my stuff and hiding it.  She stopped trying to boss me around about my veggie garden.  She stopped going into the kids' bathroom and rearranging everything (she'd do this daily back then).  She stopped all of the constant rearranging, actually.  Especially after she went into the rehab home in January of this year, because while she was gone, I put all my stuff back that she took down or had me put away when we first moved in (it was like my stuff was good enough "for now" until whatever she chose to put up was better--which was everything).   She finally stopped trying to clean their bathroom, too, for no reason (though I caught her a few months ago using some nasty bleach cleaner in there and screamed at her for it--I am sensitive to harsh cleaners).  She stopped all of it.  I am not sure if it's due to the fact when she went into rehab I literally moved all her stuff into her room (like her cat tower that took up a MASSIVE amount of space in the living room that she insisted on having in there) and replaced everything in the house with new stuff (drapes, couches, blinds, decor, etc.) so her only domain was her room--just like she did to me when we moved in or if it's somewhat due to her depression.  Or maybe both?

Whatever it is, I can finally breathe, for the most part.  She's not the same person we moved in with a year ago.  Thank freaking goodness.  It only took a year to get here.  

Another thing that's changed is how I feed my mother.  Here's the thing: I love to cook.  But I honestly DO NOT like slaving for hours each night in the kitchen.  I don't mind it for a period of time, but then I go stir crazy and need a break.  I am not my mother.  I am not the type of person who can put dinner on the table each night at a same time, sharp.  Growing up, we ate at 6pm every single night, no matter what.  That's so not me.  I am creative.  And I have ADHD.   I am a tad scatterbrained.  I can train myself to do better, but dinner is not a thing I honestly make a big deal about.  Food is fuel.  If I didn't have to eat, I wouldn't.  But mother requires dinner to be made for her early (she used to bitch at me every single day about it) and what, I'm going to make a huge meal to let sit and get cold because the rest of us do not eat at 4:30 every day?  

So, I changed how I feed her.  And I how I cook in general.  I use my instant pot to make enough rice for many days.  I have a slew of meal prep containers I keep buying.  At first, I cooked and froze the meals, but now I just keep a serving of rice, mashed potatoes, or some other base in each one.  Then I buy Smart Ones when they are sale 5 for $10 or 3 for $5 or something like that.  I stock the fuck up on everyone's favorites.  We have two chest freezers, so I just pile them in.  This way Mr. Brooks can take a meal prep container of base food (rice, potatoes, other grains, etc.) and make his microwave meal and pour it on top.  Those are really good, mostly low in sodium and calories.  I feed my mother these things, too.  I also buy frozen potato steamables and whatnot, too to make for her for a side dish with whatever I cook.  These are quick meals I can make in either 5 minutes or up to 20 minutes.  But no hours on end of cooking, just either bake or microwave and bam, done!  I used to make elaborate meals (elaborate because I use many ingredients, not elaborate ingredients...I'm a down-home cooking girl, not a Rachel Ray type and her "stupid crap nobody's ever head of recipes"--the most fancy food I cook is kale, and that's some basic shit).  

I also buy pot pies, because mother loves them, and other frozen stuff I find (other kinds of steamables).  This means I can get dinner on the table quickly and I can go back to doing what I'm doing.  I think this is the BIGGEST change I've made since moving in and I am LOVING it!  It feels great to only cook real meals when my hubby is home to eat with us (1-2x a week).  I no longer feel like a slave to dinnertime (or my mother, who used to REQUIRE use all to eat together at the table each and every single night, after I worked for 2 hours cooking it).  Now, I can eat where the fuck I want to!  Hell yeah!  Yeah, I have to say this is the best thing that's changed this past year, for the most part.  

What's The Same

As for what's the same?  She still gets something up her sleeve about spending massive amounts of money to upgrade the house.  She still tries to go behind my back to hire people for random things (even though she doesn't have access to the money).  She still tries to boss us around, but much less so.  She still fawns over my hubby and treats me like garbage (but in an underhanded way, so to others, it looks like she's doing nothing wrong). 

And she still smokes.  Even more so now.  Gross.  

What's To Come

Okay, so here is an interesting plan for us.  We're going to live here until we can't (either mother goes in a home, or some other way we lose the house).  Or we just decide to leave (and put other in a home).  We are looking for a remote job for Mr. Brooks for human resources.  He'll have his APHR soon, and already has a diploma in HR (thank you to being laid off and a great job beforehand that allowed him to go to school full time while working full time).  He's got an offer, but we're not sure of the pay yet.  So we need to check on that.  When he's working remotely, we're going to buy two RV's and live in them for a bit until we find where we want to put down roots.  We want land in our home city to come back to, but we also want land in various states to park on while we're visiting.  There's an entire RV community out there that pretty fucking awesome.  You can do traveling jobs all over the US and work seasonal jobs (like The Beet Harvest, for one).  And we're headed in that direction, because we really do not want a house payment or bills of that sort anymore.  

And we want to travel.  

And, we never, EVER want to be homeless again.  It's a scary prospect.  And having an RV (most preferably, ones we do not drive, but tow, because repairing an RV that you have to drive means you can be homeless while they repair it).  We want to live like turtles, with our homes on our backs and be nomads for a bit.  We cannot decide where to live (we've looked into almost all of the states) and found that we kind of want to live everywhere.  

And I've been doing TONS of research for the past few years on boondocking, living off-grid (not that I want to live fully off-grid, just in case we are somewhere where we have to), and the such and I created a note book for all my info.  Thank goodness for Pinterest and Youtube!  I hate the internet, but it has done some things right LOL  Anyways, that's where we're headed in the future.  It may take a bit, but we'll get there.  And it may change as opportunities present themselves.  But for now, we're just making plans and doing what we need to do to get to our future lives.  I'm scared, but excited.  And I'm freaking grateful so much of my life has calmed down and changed for the better since last year.  

And all that numb feeling crap I was having I think is gone, too.  I wonder if I have SAD?  I know winters are hard for me.  They have been for years.  But I'm finally feeling better now (though my anxiety isn't better, in fact, it's a tad worse--but that's my brain for ya, been that way my whole life).  

I can't say what the next year will bring, but our lives have changed immensely for the better this past year (one thing is that Mr. Brooks is making the money he's always wanted to make, with opportunities to make even more--which means we're finally, for the first time in our adult lives, off public aid!).  And I grateful for every little thing that's been good this past year (when so much of it was so very, very bad with the pandemic).  This year has made up for our shitty 2018 year from hell.  

Still living with ma, but like I said, it's better in some ways with her, too.  She's not driving me batshit crazy anymore (though, that may change--though with our lives being better in other ways, maybe I'll be able to handle it better in the future? who knows...).  

Also, I've been working with someone to create a healing guided journal/workbook for adult women of narcissistic mothers.  So, I'll post about it when it's ready :)  Very excited about that one, even just to get a copy just for me! LOL  

Till next time.