She blames it on quitting smoking.  But I have a completely different theory.  And if you've been here for a few years, you'd know exactly what's up.  

Thanksgiving is coming, and Ol' Smokey can't pass up an opportunity to go crazy.  

She missed last year, so this seems like a build up, since she's extra cranky.  Two years ago at Thanksgiving time she slammed a door into my back and went insane (I should have called the cops, I don't know why I didn't).  And now she's going bashit because I haven't turned on her access to her MyChart (they require you to get a code to your email every few months, which is SOOOOOOOOO annoying).  Every time she asks me to do it, I am in the middle of either cooking or doing something else.  And she's not been asking me, she's been demanding me to do it.  

She comes into the room the other, after asking me a few times beforehand and says "Okay, I set it all up and it's ready, go sign me in."  

I was in the middle of stirring a pot of food.  "Ma, I am cooking dinner."  

"Yeah, so?  You can pause that and come back."  

I laughed and ignored her.  I don't do well with silly demands (and all of her demands in my entire life have been silly AF).  And on Saturday, she demanded I do it SIX times.  SIX.  

I was in the car and she called me on the on the phone to come do it.  And she was pissed.  "Are you coming in here to set up this or not???!!"  

"I am not at home."  

"Well, are you going to get me bread then?"  

"Are you out of bread?"  

"Well, yes!"  

"How would I know that?"  

"I don't know, I thought you took the bread and put it somewhere I can't find it."  

"I don't eat your bread, ma, why would I do that?"  

"Just get me bread."  

That's what I've been dealing with.  I would blame the dementia, but this is how she is.  Come holiday time and she turns into a raging bitch and she's mean to me.  

So I go home and she corners me, yet again and boy was she in a ripe mood.  

"Why haven't you done this yet??!!"  

"Ma, every time you ask me, I am in the middle of doing something else.  Why is this so important?  It's not like you have an appointment coming up or like the information is going anywhere.  It will be exactly the same when you get on as it would be today.  It doesn't matter."  

"I've asked you lots of times!!"  

"I know you have, and I've been busy".  

"*scoffs*  Well, I will just call and have it done myself tomorrow".

"You know you can't do that.  And even if you did do it, you will still have to ask me to do it for you when this happens, because you'll have no idea how to do it yourself."

"I'VE DONE IT BEFORE BY  MYSELF!!!" 

"Yes, and you also used to be able to watch TV by yourself, too, but you don't remember how to do that anymore, do you now?  Do not threaten me.  Just be patient and stop asking me a billion times to do something for you."    

"Well, you need to do it!!"  

"Geezus, just stop.  I will get it done as soon as I can."  

Up until now, I am annoyed, not angry.  But then she hits me with this fucking bullshit that I will say next, and that's how I know she's being a narcissist, not a dementia patient, because this is her thing she does to you to discredit you in an argument.  

"God, why are you so crabby?"  

Sigh.  That statement right there, I just wanted to scream.  I had forgotten how much she used to say that to you when you'd argue with her.  Then she'd lower her voice to make you supposedly look like the person's who's emotions are out of control, even though she was always the one who both hyped you up to be angry in the first place, but at the same time would be just screaming at you herself.  So I responded:

"*laughs*  I am not crabby at at all, you are annoying me because you keep asking me for something silly, even though it doesn't matter.  It's not any different from the last time you looked at it.  YOU are the crabby one.  YOU are the one who's been crabbing at me for over a week over various things.  So what's YOUR problem?"  

"I can't smoke!  That's what!!  I need my cigarettes!!"  

She's still smoking.  I only cut her down by one, from five to four, several days ago.  And she'd been at five for almost a month.  It's not like she was smoking an entire pack and I cut her down to four, which is how bad she was acting.  

"Well, you have emphysema.  So unless you want to be on oxygen, you need to quit.  I already told you this.  And you knew you'd be quitting."  Plus, she has to quit because eventually she'll be in a home and they don't allow smoking.  

"I am fine."  

"How are you fine?  You have decreased oxygen to your lungs.  How is that fine?"  

"Shay!! I've been smoking for forty years, I've been fine!"  

"No, actually, you're not, you got emphysema from it.  That's not fine."  

"The doctor said it's no big deal, he's not even worried about it!"  

"No, he didn't.  He said you need to quit smoking."  

"NO HE DID NOT!!"  

My husband then walks out of the bathroom and says "Smokey, I was there.  That is not what he said at all.  He said you need to quit smoking now so your emphysema doesn't get worse."  

"Whatever.  I just want my cigarettes!!!"  

Sigh.  At this point, it's just silly.  Granted, it's all been silly.  But now it's just going to be a rotation of her bitching that she has to quit smoking and me telling her why she has to.  And it won't quit until I walk away.  But then she decided to walk away.  

"Well, it's a good thing you're quitting, then you'll live longer that way."

"Well, I wont live too much longer like this if I have to feel this way!!" she yells from her bedroom.  

I hate when she threatens to die or say some kind of bullshit to try to make me feel bad.  It never works and I find it funny.  So I retorted back: 

"Don't make me any promises!"  

Then she says some sort of garbled response that I could not hear.

"You know I can't hear you, ma!  I have no idea what you're saying." 

My husband filled me in later.  She said "If I died tomorrow, you'd all dance on my grave."  

Geezus.  All over cigarettes.  Really?  Really? Of course, really.  She's a narcissist.  And she's not getting what she wants so she acts like a four-year-old drama queen.  

So, my husband came to me and said "You know why she's so adamant about this, right?"  

I replied "Yeah, this is weird, even for her, I don't get why she needs to get on that MyChart so badly, it's strange.  It's like she has something up her sleeve."  

He grinned.  "Exactly.  She wants to see the notes from the pulmonologist so if he said anything like what she just said in there, the idea that it's 'no big deal', then she can use that information to supposedly keep smoking."  

I was floored.  Duh.  Of course that's what she was doing.  She never asks me for anything unless she has a motive.  So, today is Monday, I am going to call the doctor's office and see what they say, so I can use that against her silly argument before I turn on her MyChart access again, which I will do during her dinner today (as that's the only time that she's out of her room long enough so she doesn't bother me while I set it up).  But reality, I don't even need to call, I just to repeat what the doctor actually said:

"Right now, you are okay, but if you don't quit now, it will get worse.  So, if you quit now, it won't get worse."  She's trying to manipulate that into "You are okay right now" and that's it.  Yeah, it's not so bad now, but it's going to GET WORSE, but she doesn't care about that.  All she cares about RIGHT NOW.  Which is why she's not allowed to spend money.  Because when we moved in here four years ago, she'd spend ALL her money and give me nothing for repairs and sometimes not even for the mortgage.  She never thought about her bills.  Or savings.  The ONLY reason they had savings?  Was because my dad was in charge of that.  Not Mrs. Moneyfingers over here.  Spending all their cash on everything they wanted and needed in the moment.  Never once thinking about the future or even the next day.  One time she opened a savings account for my son when he was a baby.  And she spent it all within a few months.  She has a shopping addiction, but not only that, she has NO idea what it's like to live without.  

After my dad died, she lived for TEN years without saving a penny.  She couldn't spend it fast enough.  She put at least a hundred thousand in investments and lost it all.  She never fixed anything at the house, even though it would have been cheap to fix.  She just shopped.  And she went on a cruise.  And she shopped.  And shopped.  And shopped.  Every single day for ten years straight.  She lost all the money (which had to be around a million) and didn't give me a penny, even though I had two kids and was struggling and poor as fuck.  She shopped so much, she still got pink bills in the mail because wasn't paying them and never once had car insurance on the car.  She just lived in the moment.  When all of that was gone, she collected social security on my dad and started a job.  The first job she's had since I was a little kid.  She lost all her jobs due to not being able to get along with her managers.  And so she remarried and he died, and she got all of his money, which was more than my dad's.  She even STOLE money from his children, who were literal children (same ages as my kids), just so she could live her "lavish" lifestyle (which meant just buying random shit whenever she wanted).  The VA caught her and punished, but of course I had to be the one to take care of it (I was sooooooooooo hoping they'd put her in jail, but alas, they did not) and this past year she finally had to stop paying them back, after paying back around $50,000 she stole.  Oh yeah, she also stole $34,000 from me, too (she used that money to get out of debt, which is weird, I don't get why she didn't just keep it and use that to buy whatever she liked, too).  She conned me into signing documents that I didn't know I was signing myself out of $34,000 until it was too late (and I was so codependent with her at the time, I just promptly made myself forget about it).  

So to make a long story short, she's an insane person who only cares about the given moment, and so why did I expect her to go quietly into the night?  Nope, dis bitch is raging.  Apparently she's read Dylan Thomas has lived her life by his poetry.  She certainly does think of herself as a rebel, as a fighter, as a badass.  This is her ultimate modus operandi.  Ol' Smokey, always a badass.  

I will read that poem at her funeral, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night".  At my father's I read Christina Rossetti's poem "Remember", which was extremely traumatic for me.  But this poem seems to fit her much better.  Because until the day she dies, she will be raging against anything that she can't choose for herself.  Makes me wonder if she has autistic PDA.  But since she has NPD, maybe it warps it to be just resisting authority?  Or maybe she's just a selfish asshole.  Whatever it is, my mother will rage against it.  And 99% of the time she directs that rage on me.  Always has.  Always will.  

Why did I ever think this would go differently? 

(SIDENOTE: For those of you who think I should just let her smoke, know that her smoking is an issue at our house, as she will smoke by open windows and come in and REEK like a half-smoked smashed up cigarette and then go wander around, stinking up the house...also, she needs to quit so she can go into a home and not give them hell about it.  I have my reasons for wanting her to quit, many reasons.  One being her health, though I know she's in charge of her own health, so that's just one minor reason.  I have hundreds more.)