I just yelled at my mother yesterday.  I can't say I shouldn't have, because I cannot fathom in what way I could let her do what she did and pretend like it was okay.  A normal person, yes, but then again, a normal person would not have done that.  But if I let my mother get away with something like this, she'd never stop.  She'd use it as an excuse to do it again.  And fucking shit, did it trigger the holy hell out of me.  

So, if you've been reading, you know that I have issues with her opening my door without permission.  As a child, she had ZERO respect for privacy and there were no locks in the house other than the bathroom.  I wasn't even allowed one on my bedroom door as a teen, as when I did get one, they removed my door entirely.  

The bathroom had this hole you could stick things into it and it would open, and she would shove metal skewers in there if she wanted to come on, thinking that all space was owned by her and she'll be damned if anyone had locks in her house!!  Once, as an adult, when I lived with her, she tried to get into my room and had a FUCKING FIT because it was locked and she ran around the house screaming like a lunatic about it.  I was almost 30.  WTF?  

Anyways, when we moved in here, she'd come into my room all the time constantly, even though I'm in my 40s.  Today, she said after knocking "I just need to open your door and show you something." I said "Just a minute!"  and she said "I won't look, I just want to show you this."  I said "NO, do not open my door, just a minute!"  She replied "Oh, I'm not looking.  Here, look at this!"  She shoved her plant into my room through the open door.  So I jumped up and shoved her plant back out the door and slammed the door shut.  I yelled "DO NOT OPEN MY DOOR!  I told you just a minute!  What on earth are you doing??!!"  She said "Well sorry," in her haughty voice.  "Everyone else opens your door."  I said "THEY DO NOT IF I TELL THEM JUST A MINUTE!  Everyone respects my privacy but you!!"  "Well sorry," she said in her stupid voice again.  And no, I was not going to let her get away with it.  "No, mom, you cannot do that.  If I say no, you have to listen to me.  Why can't you listen???"  "Sorry, mother!"  She yells back at me.  And there you go.  She thinks she has the right to do whatever she likes, whenever she likes. And when I ask her not to, then I am acting like someone who's bossing her around.  Nobody tells my mother what to do.  NOBODY.  Not her doctors.  Not her husband.  Not her parents.  And certainly not me.  

I am nothing more than an object to her.  I am not a person.  I am an extension of her.  Everyone is.  Now, she'd have never done that to my husband.  Never.  But see, she wants me to know she has a favorite and it's not me.  It never has been, even though I am her only child. But still, he's an object to her, too.  She uses him to get what she wants in life.  Which is to play her little games of "favorites and discardeds".  Nobody cares anymore.  Nobody wants to be her favorite.  Nobody cares who she likes or doesn't like them.  It's all moot.  How she feels about us has no relevance anymore.  So she can play her games, or not, it is of little consequence.  She's burned her bridges too many times over for anyone to be captured by her niceness when she's actually nice.  All of her compliments are fake.  All of her happy times are laced with an undercurrent of rage.  There is nothing left for her to do to do us.  Other than invade our god damned privacy.  

But I had to yell at her to let her know that it was NOT okay she did that, because if I didn't, it would go right back to how it used to be again.  

Now, if she just had opened my door to let a dog in?  I would not have been so mad.  I would have said nothing at all, but instead, would have locked the door for a bit until she let up again.  Just like before.  But this?  What in the holy hell?  This was right back to when we first moved in and she didn't just invade my privacy by coming into my room all the time, she blasted right through it like a fucking tornado.  To hear me yelling "Just a minute!" and "NO!" over and over again and still open my door and say it was okay she did it???  Goodness griefess.  That was some old school shit.  

Can I remind you (if you've read this before) that I literally had nightmares as a child about monsters busting through the doors to get me?  Which was due to both my mother, who busted through all locked and unlocked doors like the Kool-Aid man, and my father, who used to chase me around the house screaming "IF I COULD JUST GET MY HANDS ON YOU!" to beat my ass and I'd run to the bathroom to hide, because it was the only door that locked in the house.  I never had privacy in showers or getting dressed or really, anything, ever.  If I did try to get more privacy in the shower, my mother would tell me how stupid I was and how dumb it was I hung towels on our sliding glass doors, because you could see right through them.  So I had to be shamed for not wanting my parents to see my naked body.  And living here, she did the same thing.  Shamed us for putting locks on the bathroom doors, and then coming into my room while I was getting dressed, telling me as I was screaming for her to get out "You don't have anything I haven't seen before!!", as though she still owned my body at age 43, just as she did when I was 13 (or rather, always).  She never owned my body.  But she always made me feel like she did.  

I can't believe this is still happening.  I mean, I can.  She is who she is.  And nothing will ever change that.  She is a potato.  Plain and simple.  And I can't be surprised when a potato acts like a potato.  She will always, and forever, be that fucking potato she's always been, no matter how long she's been pretending otherwise.  I can't forget that.  Because when I do, it stresses me out.  But if I can just remember my #potatotheory, then it makes me feel better and less angry and/or shocked when she acts like one again.  

Potatoes, folks.  It's who they are.  Don't ever forget it.