Pay the Toll

There is a price to be paid in my house for when I'm happy or I've done something for myself. Because it really pisses off my mother, the person who embodies cutting off anything you enjoy as a form of self-punishment. Or for shits and giggles. Who can really say?

It's taken a long time for me to figure out I do the same damn thing and try to stem the eruptions of guilt that occur when I take 5 minutes to myself once in a while.

And if you think I'm exaggerating or being over-dramatic, the person writing this had to have a psychological professional tell my parents to stop smothering me by requiring my presence in their lives constantly as a teenager. I think they took my teenage leave-me-the-fuck-alone-to-read-or-talk-to-friends as a sign they'd failed to make their home a better one than they'd had growing up. No, just teenage introverting and hard crushing over guys I'd never date, but thanks for making it about you.

Which is sort of the root of the matter with my mother. My life has been melted down to the basic idea that she should be the center of my life. This exists both internal and external of her mental illness, and so I've decided at this point it's really just an issue that exists within her as a person and not specifically because she happens to have a serious mental illness. Sort of moving it into the category of "regular" passive aggressive mothers everywhere. Just spicier.

So when I have friends? She's jealous. When I leave the house? I'm partying on a yacht instead of sweating my ass off lugging groceries into the back of a vehicle in 100% humidity in the blazing sun. When I leave the house to see friends? Guaranteed meltdown. And yesterday was no different. Uncaring hussy that I was, I didn't go out just once yesterday. Oh no. 3 times, once just one-on-one with my husband for an errand, I had the audacity to get in my car and enjoy myself. Nerdy word play, filthy jokes and all. She'd have a stroke if she knew I had a donut with my coffee. Because where was hers?!

And I refused to engage in the reindeer games when I returned.

She announced that she'd been having trouble for days with her mind, but hadn't wanted to tell us. I know my mother's tells. She was bullshitting me. But calmly, I played along and asked for details. After cutting back the underbrush of word games (her favorite way to stall for more ideas) and just plain moose caca, her explanation amounted to whenever I left the house, she got confused and so I shouldn't leave the house anymore without her. As long as she's with me, she doesn't have any trouble.

This is the woman who when she's been committed to psychiatric wards ends up running the asylum by the time she's allowed to leave. She's fucking brilliant at manipulation. One issue she has with me is I know her. Even at her most cunning, she's got patterns. She's got tells. Tells that are on full display when she's up to something. At least to me.

I listened to everything she had to say, asked if she was having trouble sleeping and sent her to bed. Today she has followed me around every inch of the house whenever I'm not in my bedroom or the bathroom. She sat and stared at me for at least 30 minutes as I was at my desk . A little later, she spent an hour in the next room putting a puzzle together and making random comments every 20 minutes.

As always when discussing situations with my mother, I get that she's ill. I get that she's declining. And I get, as I have my entire life, that some of goes on is completely and totally out of her control. Some days are just wilder rides than others.