Taking care of your aging parent is hard.  Like, really, really hard.  I know, as my parents and myself took care of my grandparents back in the 90's.  But then you add in them being a narcissist, and that makes it 100x harder (at least until dementia takes away their memories--though for some, it makes it 100x more harder).  Then you add chronic pain and/or other physical or mental illnesses of the caregiver, and it's a recipe for insanity.  

I'm not trying to say my life is harder than anyone else's or that I'm some sort of victim here.  We're all victims of our parents narcissistic abuse (and eventually we'll all be survivors).  So I'm not trying to say "oh poor me" here.  What I'm trying to say is that if you have chronic pain or anything else that makes your life difficult and are taking care of your aging narcissistic parent on top of that?  I feel you.  

I can go through maybe a month with no pain, tops.  No migraines.  No pain that's bad enough that I can't walk properly or want to curl into a ball and sleep for days on end.  About thirty days.  Then other months, I get slight pain, on and off.  Some days are worse than others, but mostly I can be functional.  I can cook dinner every day.  I can go shopping.  But then there's months like this month.  Where any amount of stress I put on my body will send me into days long exhaustion and excruciating pain that seeps into my joints and muscles that turn into migraines that never end.  These months are the months where I need my husband and kids to pitch in making dinner each night.  And they do.  My family is helpful and kind and understanding, even though I feel like a lump of farts and feel massive amounts of guilt for not being able to participate in regular life.  

But mostly, these months, I feel stressed beyond belief.  Because here is how my mother works: 

If I take charge, she backs off and acts sort of nice.  She doesn't give me as much grief, and when she does, it rolls off my back, because I am mentally equipped to handle her shenanigans.  

When I am weak and need to be taken care of, she takes full advantage of the situation and either acts out with trying to control people, yells at people, or manipulates situations to get what she wants, even if what she wants is just a fleeting idea or want.  

Before I got fibromyalgia, I suffered from severe anxiety, which would lead to depressive episodes.  I still have both of these on top of the fibro now, but before, when it was only the severe anxiety, my mother did everything she could to shame me, manipulate me, hurt me, and make everything worse on purpose.  My mother loves to see me hurting because it makes her feel good.  It's not just me though, anyone she's angry at, she loves to see them in pain.  Once, she tried to best friend in prison, just because her best friend didn't take her out to dinner when she said she would.  I am not even kidding here.  The moment she's pissed, is the moment you mean literally nothing to do her, and seeing you hurt is the only thing she cares about.  

My anxiety got so severe many years ago that I got to the point where I didn't get behind the wheel of a car for over three years.  So my mother would take me grocery shopping a couple times a month and force me to go, even on days I was not mentally well enough to do so.  Not only that, I was getting the beginnings of fibro at the time and didn't realize that her marathon shopping trips were making my pain so very much worse.  And if I ever cancelled due to having a migraine, or for whatever reason?  I would be punished and she would refuse to take me again until the next month.  And not to mention, she's be so very, very angry with me. 

At that time, my mother also controlled us with money at the time.  We were flounderingly poor.  My ex had just given up his parental rights, which included his child support payments.  Due to my issues, I've never been able to work (and was always told that I didn't quality for disability...though now after talking to the social security office, that may not have been true).  And our kids were young at the time.  So we were floundering, just trying to keep our heads above water.  And my mother knew this, so she took me each month to the grocery store.  And here's the kicker: it was always under the guise that she'd pay for my groceries, but she always made me ask her to do it.  It was a way to humiliate me.  To make me beg for it.  Because every once in awhile, I'd fill up my cart with the food my family needed, and I'd walk up to get in line and she'd say "Oh, I hope you have money, because I don't have enough to cover any of yours."  She knew damn well I had no money.  Our house payment was one of our twice monthly checks and she knew what date we'd pay our mortgage on and she'd pick that week to take me.  But she wanted me to know that she was in charge if my family had enough food that month.  She wanted to remind me she was in charge.  So I'd say "Oh, excuse me, I forgot something", and I'd go and hide until she was done, and leave my cart in the aisle and head out to her car, stating I left my debit card at home.  She knew I was lying.  But she'd just smugly sit there and knew she'd won.  

So my anxiety didn't get any better during this time. Eventually it did, but not for a long, long time.  And not because of one ounce of help she gave me.  Buying me groceries was not a way for her to help my family when we were in need.  It was a way she could exploit our hour of need and control me (and subsequently, my kids and husband, too).  She made my anxiety so much worse for my entire life, and knew she was doing it then, too.  

She regularly shamed me in front of others for having panic attacks.  This happened up until the middle 2000's, when she still had most of her faculties about her.  The only reason she's stopped is because she has dementia.  Though as time goes on, she may revert back to it, as her mind goes.  

So now, I have my anxiety (which meds don't work for), on and off depression, fibromyalgia, and migraines, all the while trying to deal with the stress of a 70 year old obstinate child who doesn't like the rules and tries to break them any chance she gets.  Not to mention that when I have a flare-up, she thinks she's in charge again and thinks she can do whatever she likes.  She thinks she can do things her doctors tell her she can't do and she thinks she can tell everyone else what to do, too.  She has bouts of rage, that can switch on and off like a light, and I have to listen to her doing this to my kids (I say kids, but it's only my oldest son she does it to).  It's like short bursts of screaming, then coupled with "joking around" as though she didn't mean it.  She doesn't do these things when I am not sick.  So I know she can control it.  It's a horrible yo-yo effect that narcs do to us to freak us out, and then make us feel like our fear is us overreacting.  Like "Oh, I was just kidding! God, don't be so silly about it!"  

When I can't cook, she will guilt me.  She will walk around and sigh and drag her feet and say in an exasperated way "I'm too tired to eat" or "I can't wait all night!".  It will be around 3:30 pm when she'll say this.  Sometimes she'll make her own food.  Sometimes my kids make dinner.  And other times, when she wants me to feel super guilty, she will grab an Ensure and say "I'll just have this, I guess."  So what I did do?  I prepacked a whole load of meals for her, her favorite garlic chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies, and froze them in single serving meals for her to microwave and what did she do?  She refused to eat them.  And when I warmed her up one the other day, she wrinkled her nose and said "Oh, I guess I'm eating that tonight."  Then she had go to the store and buy her prepacked meals, pretty much the same way I made hers.  So I gave all the ones I made to my husband for work.  And he loves them, so it worked out.  Except for the fact she still wants me to go buy her the bags of garlic chicken, even though she refused to eat them when I made them.  

Know why? Because I'm not eating with her.  It's a punishment.  Everything that's my idea is stupid.  Everything that's my choice is dumb.  Everything I do is wrong.  She used to complain about my dinners I'd make until I told her she didn't have to eat them.  And ever since, she overdoes the praise after every single dinner.  It's not real praise, not always, and it always makes me feel uncomfortable.  

I'm lucky to be able to cook most nights.  I'm lucky my pain issues don't stop me from cooking all together.   My mother cannot cook much anymore.  She forgets ingredients, and can't taste or smell anything.  So it's all on me, which I'm fine with.  My kids are amazing cooks, so I trust them when I can't do it.  But unless I'm cooking, my mother has to complain about where I am, or why I'm not cooking.  It's tedious.  

And when you mix narcissism and dementia, you can't tell which is which most days, so you don't know whether to be annoyed or just ignore it.  I know what the answer is: just ignore it, because it doesn't matter if it's dementia or narcissism.  Both don't matter when you're a caretaker, because they are not the one in charge anymore, you are.  But since they are your parent, it's hard to not take what they do or say personally, because no matter just how much you distance yourself from your childhood, it's still there and your parent is never going to admit to it or apologize.  No matter how much we want to detach from all of that, it's still there, lurking and waiting to resurface every single time they make a mean comment, a snide remark, or go behind your back and talk shit about you (though good thing that part of her life has stopped, as she knows better than to attack the person who makes her life easy).  

I feel like I can't heal my body's aches and pains because I'm too busy either dealing with her craziness or tending to her fragile ego (and her actual needs, because that part is my job, something I agreed to do a year ago).  And while you may say "Why did you agree with it, when you knew all this was possible?".  Again, it's symbiotic.  Mutually beneficial.  We both could not afford living on our own back then, and we were both scared our landlord was going to die and we'd be out on our asses from our home (I lived upstairs, she lived downstairs).  I did know what I was getting into when I chose this life.  I didn't think it would be this hard at times, though.  But deep down, I knew it was not going to be easy.  It's definitely WAY more easy than it was when we first moved in.  Her dementia has worsened since then.  But it's still hard on days like these, when my pain overcomes everything else, and all I can do is just rest.  I wish I didn't feel guilty.  I have no reason to feel guilty.  But I do.  And that stresses me out.  But I still just rest, even if it makes her annoyed or angry.   

When I went no contact the last time,  I was going through a flare-up.  And she was stressing me out so badly that my anxiety was getting severely out of control.  So I just gave up and said that's it, I was done.  I had to choose my own mental health over her inability to get what she wanted over me.  I just couldn't stand up to her back then.  I couldn't deal with it.  So I went no contact.  I can't choose that now, so I've had to learn to stick up for myself and not let her run over me or my family.  It's not easy and not fun, but I do it.  

Eventually she'll have to be put in a home, once her dementia progresses beyond the scope of our care.  My goal is to learn how to deal with her behavior before that point.  I want to learn how to be calm and serene in the face of her childishness and lies (she loves to lie to me every single day to make points that everyone knows aren't true, but she wants to pretend she's right...it's tedious).  I want to learn to stand up to her without getting annoyed.  I want to learn to be able to tell her no without getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, for fear of her reaction.  I want to be able to wake up happy and not care what her mood is that day.  I want to find a way to fit my life into the time I have on this earth, whether it be one day or a sixty years, rather than trying to hide it for fear of what she'll say to me.  I eat in my room because if I eat in the kitchen or she sees me making food, she makes comments about me eating, as though eating during the day is shameful (she treated her stepdaughters the same way back in the day when they lived with her).  I hate her comments, so I hide from her while I eat.  It's ridiculous.  Instead, I need to make my food and tell her to be quiet if she says anything to me and stop caring what she thinks.  

I can't live like a prisoner in my own home.  I just can't.  If you read my last post, you'll see what is lighting a fire under my ass to change how I've lived my life since moving in here.  I can't be afraid to open my mouth.  I can't help I have anxiety.  I was born with it (and it was made a billion times worse because of my parents' abuse).  I can't help I have chronic pain.  If I could choose to feel great every single day, I certainly would.  I would love to be normal.  I would love to feel good most days.  I have no idea what that would even look like.  But I would love it.  So I can't let her make me feel bad for things I cannot help.  And I can't let her make me feel bad for normal things like eating breakfast or lunch.  I just have to stop letting her make me feel bad, period.  It's insanity.  On my part.  

See, you can't blame a dog for licking his own ass in front of company.  That's what dogs do.  If I let that dog in to hang out with company, I have to know there will be a chance of him whipping out his butthole in front of everyone and him taking a stab at it.  There's a good chance it will happen.  So do I yell at the dog?  Or do I just choose to ignore it or maybe not let the dog in with company to begin with?  I mean, I am a dog lover and if you come to my house, know that my dog will be there, and most likely tonguing his butthole at some point.  And I will not care.  But my point is, I knew my mother was going to be difficult.  She can't help it.  I mean, I do hold her responsible for her actions, of course.  But I can't change her.  I can only change my reactions to her.  And I can change how I let her actions make me feel. I've said it a hundred times, I know, but detaching is the only way to do this.  

I've been studying Buddhism for years, and one practice is called non-attachment.  Regain.us says that non-attachment is "In simple terms, non-attachment is the ability to detach yourself from things that control or affect you in a way that's maladaptive to your wellbeing. You don't have to engage in a spiritual practice to utilize non-attachment or to benefit from it." 

You don't have to be angry to detach.  You just have to be able to let go of the outcome of a certain situation and not internalize that outcome.  Meaning to realize that the person or their behavior or thoughts really have nothing to do with you at all, it has to do with what's inside of them.  You are just scapegoat for those feelings.  It may feel directed at you, but you don't have to internalize it.  

If I could just remember this on a daily basis, I could deal with my own issues without having to place emphasis on how my mother's going to react to how I choose to deal with my issues.  It's all about the planning in advance, right?  Plan for when I can't make dinner.  Plan for all of it.  That way, when it happens, there's a plan in place, and even if she reacts badly to my plan, who cares?  Stick to the plan, no anxiety or stress.  

Uggh, I've been rambling.  But it's because I'm trying to work out how to work this all out as I write.  

Anyways, I need more tylenol.  So I should go take some and get myself some dinner. 

I hope if you're dealing with the same stuff that you're providing yourself with a lot of self care and keeping yourself safe this holiday season.  And just know, I feel you.  

Happy Holidays fellow ACoNS 💗🎄🎅🤶🦌  And keep on keepin' on.