Anyone with the patience to read this is MUCH appreciated, regardless of your comments. I have my bgp on. i'm a longtime lurker, I just went anon for this. I'm just at a loss here and very, very sad tbh.
BG: I'm married, late 30s, and SAH with our son who is 2. My parents divorced when I was 6, it was messy and awful, and I would call both of them fairly narcissistic. I moved across the country after college and never looked back. I have a pretty breezy, superficial relationship with both of my parents- talk to dad for a few minutes once in a blue moon; once a week or two I put mom on speakerphone so LO can chatter at grandma, I might see both of them twice a year with other family/friends, and that's it. That has "worked" for a long time although it's sad. But my mom is changing, and becoming more unpleasant.
My mom never remarried, lives alone, is in her 70s, is very religious, and has a history of rude/rollercoaster-ish behavior. She's critical and completely unhelpful and downright mean and stubborn like a child - but then sometimes is cheery and fine like nothing happened, and obviously in front of other people everything is great. Or she's a big victim, or it's my fault - like she'll randomly bring up how I was such a bad teenager and she's so glad we all got through it. Riiiiight. The divorce was truthfully very hard on her, and I have compassion for that, but as I have become a parent, it has reset my normal-meter so to speak, b/c I know that no matter what I wouldn't ever treat my son the way she often treated/treats us.
The added layer is that she's always been forgetful and very defensive about it. I think she has some kind of learning disability to be honest, and I think she has some early signs of dementia, which makes me concerned for her and makes me want to show a bit more patience than I otherwise would. But I have limits and boundaries, and I'm getting close to having had enough.
Now IDK if it's age, or dementia, or if she just DGAF or what, but she says nasty and critical shit a lot more often. It's like whatever social filter she did have to try and behave normally is wearing away. I usually handle it by calmly telling her that I am going to end the conversation, and I hang up, and then a week or so goes by and she calls me and pretends it didn't happen. When I have tried to bring it up to her, she acts as though she has no idea it's rude or hurtful to say whatever she said, and does this poor me thing. It's just not worth it. I just enforce my limits in the moment and forget about it. I know she's never going to change. I've been okay with this, it's the best it's going to get. And sometimes she behaves just fine.
She's getting so much more dramatic though. Last week I had to end a conversation with her, then a week went by and instead of her just calling and saying hi, she started leaving daily messages, "I'm so concerned, please call me." Concerned about what? Obviously not actually concerned about me, b/c the trigger conversation happened when LO and I both had the flu and I was waiting for a call back from the ped about taking him to the hospital.....so if you didn't call me for a week after hearing that, I'm not sure what you think you're concerned about. Is that a control thing? Like, for example, she knows that I spoke to my aunt (her sister), maybe she's freaking out b/c she's losing whatever grip she thinks she has on me? Idk. I haven't called her back, and her messages are getting increasingly drama-queen-ish. For the first time in my life I honestly don't quite care, although I don't feel like it's a super adult response to just ignore her either.
Anyway. The dynamic is shifting a bit and I just don't know how to handle this anymore. And I am very confused by this added layer of increasing forgetfulness and agitation. I don't want to be cold or unkind, or turn away from her if this is a medical problem, but at the same time I have limits on the way another person speaks to me, no matter who they are, and I think that's healthy for my son to see. I honestly just have no desire to speak to her right now, at all, about much of anything. Her comments when we had the flu went like this, "Oh my, YOU were never sick, but then I never took you out so much...and maybe you didn't dress him right for the weather too. Ah well, it's a learning experience isn't it?" Im sorry, NO. So much no. First off, she's full of shit, and I was sick all the time, she just ignored me. And aside from that little memory lapse - why would I want to talk to a person who speaks to me like that?
I do have a therapist I've been seeing off and on to manage anxiety. I haven't explicitly tackled this with her, although I brought it up at our last session. So I am open to this being a 'me' problem in changing boundaries or expectations. It just makes me very, very sad, and I get sadder about it by the day, especially as she seems to be escalating. I see so many of my mom friends with THEIR moms offering help, support, love to their children, and I know I just won't ever have that, and it feels so lonely - which makes it even harder to enforce those boundaries with her. And I'm not really interested in completely cutting her off. I really just don't know what to do. Does this sound like a pattern that naturally occurs with an aging narcissistic parent? Or is it me? I'm just truly at a loss. Any insights would be extremely helpful.
Thanks again.