I mostly lurk on here, posted about my mother a couple of times, nothing super exciting. Dumb little boundary stomps. Unicorn dying a slow, painful death.
Last summer my dad passed away very unexpectedly. Two days later, my mom asked us (me, DH, DS3, DD1) move in with her and my youngest sister who is still in school and to split the cost of her mortgage and utilities. She was afraid that unless we did, she would lose the house and "that would be so unfair to your sister. She always gets the short straw because she's the youngest." She said she would move to the basement (it's a finished basement, the bedroom down there is the best in the house) and that basically the house would be ours, she would just live there. Despite my gut telling me not to and several serious warning signs, I allowed myself to be duped and we moved in around Labor Day.
From the time we moved in, Mom refused to communicate directly with us. When she was pissed about something she would either start making p/a comments about it and expect us to pick up on it or wait and explode about a bunch of stuff all at once. It was unnerving. She would complain about us to everyone she knew - people came to talk to us about how we left the lights on or how we had doubled her water bill (yes, because the number of people in the house more than doubled AND we're happy to pay our part...) how I had rearranged the kitchen or moved the piano). She sat us down for a couple of CTJ meetings where she chewed DH out because he didn't get up early enough to shovel for her before she had to leave (at 8am) He told her he didn't know she had to leave that early, he'd been sleeping, didn't know it had snowed, he was happy to shovel if she asked him. She shouted back "NO! I WILL NOT ASK! YOU JUST DO IT!"
I like to bake things, make special meals for my family on occasion. She would come in to the kitchen, get herself food, and leave. Stew for days and finally yell at me for not offering her some of what I made. She actually said, "you have to offer me some. I'll say no, but you have to offer." I told her she was welcome to ask if she wanted some, but otherwise, I wouldn't know she was interested. (Who really wants to offer someone something they've worked hard to make just to be turned down? Not me.)
Oh! And she went around telling everyone that I was moving In to take over making all of the meals and doing the housework so that she could "reinvent herself." I was so shocked (and spineless, telling myself I had to do this for my grieving mother) but I didn't know what to say. I actually made all the meals and cleaned the house for three months (while she complained, refused to eat what I made, and told me I didn't clean well enough) before I sat everyone down and told them I was done. By the way, reinventing herself meant she sat in the basement and watched TV. Judge Judy. All day for 4 months. Within days of telling mom I was done making meals, her friends called me up to let me know what a horrible daughter I was and since I was in the kitchen cooking for my kids all day anyway, why couldn't I just make a little extra for her? I felt immense amounts of guilt over my decision, but ultimately stuck to it. (She started trying to lose weight right about that same time and then told everyone it was because she wasn't eating right anymore.)
Each time, everything was swept under the rug within days of her blow ups. I'd get a text with a non committal apology - I'm sorry I yelled, but ... kind of things. And then if I ever brought it up again, she claimed it never happened.
She fawned over my DD everyday, telling her how cute she was, she loved her little personality, mom would hold her all the time, let her go into her room to play. My DS was exactly the opposite. She didn't ever feel like playing with him, though he tried to initiate just about every day, he wasn't allowed in her room ever under any circumstances, and he could never say anything right to her. The favoritism was blatant and part of the reason I'd like a long TO from her.
While we lived there, I didn't dare rock the boat because we gave up everything we had to go live there and apartments in the short term are hard to come by in our area, especially in winter. After a particularly bad blow up in February (she insisted on yelling at me in front of my kids who were crying and afraid, and then sat DH and me down to yell at us some more) we started the process to buy a house, finalized it last week, MOVED OUT (yippee!!!) and now I'd like to be done with her for a long time.
The question is, How? Do I have to wait for another incident? She wants to come over and see our new place. I want to tell her no and fuck off, but she's going to rug sweep. And gaslight. And whine and cry and play the victim and say it was all grief that made her do those things and she'll have a thousand other excuses for why I'm wrong and a bad daughter. And I'll end up believing her. How do I shoot my unicorn once and for all? And how do I give up caring about her telling everyone in town her side of the story - where she's a victim and I'm abusive (she says this. I'm abusive.)
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We moved out! Now what? (Update 5,7,9,16,19,21,23,25)
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