Remember when I said she has stopped doing this?  Turns out, she hasn't.  And this reiterates my point: if you give them an OUNCE of control, they will use it for nefarious purposes. 

Raise your hand if you see a mess in your house and get pissed about it.  Raise your hand if you just cleaned up this room and now it's a mess again.  Raise your hand if you sometimes (or all the time) feel like you're the only person who "cleans up around here".  Now, raise your hand if your mother also says these very same things or said them while you were growing up.  If you raised your hand for most of these things, then you, my friend, like myself, have inherited some fleas.  

Fleas are narcissistic behaviors that have jumped off our parents and now have infected us.  Because the truth is: life is messy, and the mess will never stop and you're not the only person who cleans up (or, if you are, you certainly do not need to bitch about it).  I say this with love, because I do this, too.  It was only after taking away my mother's ability to bitch about having to be so "put upon" to clean things up at our house that I realized just how much I do the same shit.  And that has pushed me to stop.  When I find myself opening my mouth to say these things, I quickly think "Oh shit, would my mother say this?"  And if the answer is yes, I don't say it.  Granted, I do that about a lot of things, which limits what comes out of my mouth, which may or may not be healthy, but at least it's stopped me from being a "Complainy Jane" or a "Bitchy Bertha" or a "Nagging Nelly".  Because I am not my mother and refuse to sound like her.  

So, we've been working our asses off building up our chicken coop and securing the area from predators (namely, my mothers old-ass cat who thinks our chickens are wild birds).  And as we're doing so, I've made a junk pile right outside of the fencing, including various bricks and plastic sand bags, etc.  And so yesterday, she got it up her ass to climb through all this shit while yelling and screaming at my oldest son (WHO, by the way, has taken lately to having conversations with my mother about all our plans for homesteading.....which he quickly realized was a mistake because all she does is down the ideas...he's her scapegoat---except she should feel fucking lucky that ONE person in this house gives her the time of day and instead, she just verbally abuses him instead...ooh she makes me angry!!) about the mess, as though he was the one who made it.  It was me.  It was ALL me.  She's climbing over the bricks and through the WIRE fencing, to get to the empty sandbags yelling "HOW DID YOU LET THIS GET SO BAD!!!  THIS IS SUCH A MESS!!  IF I FALL IN HERE IT'LL BE YOUR FAULT!"  Oh, I wish he'd tell her "Listen, Grandma, get the fuck out of there before you break your goddamned hips and stop yelling at me because this mess NONE OF THIS IS YOUR BUSINESS!"  He will one day.  He used to talk to her like that.  And back then, she fucking deserved in, just as she does now.  Oh boy, though, when he did tell her to shut up when she was being mean to him, she acted like he was satan for doing so.  But then again, she thought the same of me at 17 when I used to mouth off to her.  Though again, she deserved it back then, too.  Because when I was 17, I was her biggest scapegoat and she was extremely cruel to me.

And now, since I took all her power away and she can't be mean to me, she now uses my son for her bitching and rude remarks.  Though, I will say most of that has lessened, too.  But not this day.

So, he told me what happened, and I went right outside and said "You are NOT allowed in the junk pile!  Are you stupid?  Because I don't think you're stupid (a lie, I do think she's stupid, but she needs to understand that she's making stupid decisions).  So why did you choose to do such a stupid thing??  I almost twist my own ankles walking through that, and yet you think YOU can do it?  You can't even walk a straight line on flat ground.  What's wrong with you?"  She just laughed and made jokes.  Oh that just irks me when she does that shit.  So I screamed "Oh, I am so glad you are taking me so seriously!  Get it into your head: you are NOT allowed to touch any garbage or anything that is not generated by you, got that?  And you are not allowed into that area again!"  She put on her baby voice and said "Okay."  I get I made her feel stupid, but why, oh why, she thought she could do such a thing and I'd be okay with it

Then she came into the house while I was washing dishes (oh, and the day before, Mr. Brooks was washing dishes and she kept bothering him about how "he does so much that he doesn't need to be washing dishes!" and I yelled at her to stop that shit, too, but she sees me washing dishes and says nothing, yet I also work my my ass off all day long around here-oh, it must be my job do them, then) and said "I get it.  I know what you mean now about what you said."  I looked at her and said "Okay, but you were bitching the entire time you were doing it."  She said "Out there?"  I said "while you were climbing around in that shit, you were yelling at my son about it, as though it was his fault, when I am the one who made the mess".  "Oh, I am always like that when I clean".  So, I replied "Well, that's stupid" in a really angry voice.  Because her anger about cleaning up pisses me off soooooooooo much, because there is ZERO reason to be angry about cleaning up.  ZERO.  See, for so long, I learned from her and would get so angry and mad when I'd have to clean up, yelling and screaming about how nobody else cleans up and blah blah blah and my kids would always get mad right back.  I never understood why.  They made the mess.  They expected me to clean it up.  I had every right to get mad.  Right?

But I eventually stood back and realized that most of the most wasn't always just them.  It was everyone in the house.  And even if it was them, they never once told me to clean it up.  I was the one who wanted to clean it.  And if I didn't clean it up, nobody was going to bitch that I didn't.  So, what was I mad about?  Also, something all parents should remember: I asked myself "Would I treat a neighbor child like this?  Would I yell if my neighbor kids came to my house and used dishes and didn't wash them?"  I know, a neighbor kid doesn't live at my house, but still.  We all treat those we live with worse than strangers because we're so comfortable with those we live with.  But do they deserve that?  The people we live with are most likely our family and most likely those we love the most.  Does our family deserve to be treated worse than those we know less?  That's something I learned to keep in my mind because treating our family badly is how we create issues in our kids.  It's how we give our kids wounds to heal later in life.  So I've taken to asking myself how I'd treat neighbor kids or how I want to look back in my life and be proud of how I treated my husband and my kids and do that, instead of flying off the handle reactively out of bad habits.  I do not want to be my mother.  AND, I do not want my children to pick up on the bad behavior I learned from my mother, who learned it from hers, etc. and have them give it to their kids, too.  Stop generational behaviors by treating your family in a way that you'll be proud of on your death bed.  

Ever heard of Swedish Death Cleaning?  Well, this is Swedish Death Parenting/Spousing.  When you're dead, what kind of trauma do you want to leave behind in your kids?  Oh, you say none?  Good.  Then try your best not to be your mother by choosing to treat your kids like neighbor kids when they do something you don't like.  And try to treat your spouse (if they are good spouses, like mine is) in a way that also doesn't damage them.  We have learned for so long, generations upon generations upon generations to be a bitch when the people we love the most do things we don't like.  It's normal.  It's expected.  It's the way things have always been.  And it's WRONG.  If you love someone, and do not want to leave this world with them having trauma and damage they have to heal from (from you), then start changing your mindset.  Start changing how you act when something happens that you don't like.  Yelling and screaming and calling everyone lazy and spewing blame and rudeness and whatever else we do, it's not okay.  Yes, sometimes we'll revert and do it, but if we apologize and say "It's just me, not you, why I act this way", we can heal some of the damage we've already done.  

Let's not be my mother laying on the bathroom floor scrubbing behind the toilet, screaming about how disgusting it is and how disgusting the people are in the house becuase they let it get so bad (it wasn't even bad, she was being a drama queen, per usual).  Let's not pick up our kids toys and scream about it.  Let's just stop fucking complaining right here, right now, today, in this moment.  I am making a pact with you: if I stop this behavior, and you stop this behavior, together we can create a new world where are not entitled to be angry that we have to do the things that we choose to do.  You don't have to clean.  Even if you feel like you do.  Neither does anyone else.  The fact we all expect everyone (and ourselves) to clean up is choice we are making.  We can get our kids and spouses to help clean up without screaming and yelling.  What on earth is there even to be mad about in the first place?  The expectation it should already be done?  That's something we learned from our mothers.  Even if we've asked a hundred times for someone do to something and they didn't do it, again, we're expecting them to do something they don't want to do.  It's not up to us who cleans up what.  But we deem ourselves the boss, so therefore all must listen to the boss, right?  

Okay, I'll roll with that.  So, are you a tyrant boss or motivational leader?  My husband is a motivational leader.  His boss is an asshole who yells and screams and points out flaws and mistakes.  So guess what?  Nobody learns from the asshole.  But everyone learns from the motivational leader.  My husband's employees love him.  They thank him for listening to them and for helping them achieve their goals and the goals asked of them.  He's moving positions soon and everyone is so sad to see him go.  Whereas everyone cannot wait until his boss retires.  Do you want your kids and husband to only be happy when you are not around them?  Think about that.  My father's only happiness was when my mother wasn't around.  Sometimes, I think he died to get away from her.  I don't want my kids to be like that with me.  Or my husband.  So I have to stop, and think before I react to something I do not like.  Not just cleaning.  But anything.  Then I respond.  Sure, I still react sometimes, but I always apologize and put the blame for my behavior squarely on me.  My mother never apologizes.  And when she does, it's a manipulation.  Or she takes it back and acts like she had every right to behave the way she did.  She's an asshole.  

I can't tell you how angry I was about this whole thing.  Oh god, I could not calm down.  I didn't show it by yelling and screaming (beyond me yelling at her about it), it was internal.  But I could not understand what it was triggering inside of me that got me so mad.  I mean, I thought she was better, and she had a meltdown again, so that's part of it, but why does it anger me at all??  What part of me was getting so triggered about it?  Part of it was the shame of her having to "clean up after me".  The fact that I knew she was sitting out there and judging me.  When she's quiet, I can forget she does that.  But this makes me realize she's always doing it, she just isn't voicing it.  The shame I feel for "being so messy" in her eyes, even though I grew up in filth, is just beyond anything I can explain.  But now, as an adult, it angers me more than shames me, because the things she's always said about me makes no sense.  "Oh, I could always tell which was your desk, because it would be overflowing with crap falling out of it".  Yet, her drawers and closets were always stuffed to the gills with shit falling out of them.  In fact, don't open the closet door or else you'll get hit with something.  But even if she was clean, to pass judgment on me like that, to think that I lived my childhood just being me.  I didn't think people were judging me based on my messy desk.  She'd also constantly say how I'd take paper out of the recycling box at school and bring it home.  As though I was some kind of trash hoarder.  But I took that paper to use it.  Not just stuff it into my room.  My mother has created so much shame in me for being who I am that any little thing that triggers it by her just gets me all riled up.  

Living with her is bad for healing.  I am not sure I can do it.  I am not sure I am not being more damaged by living with her.  I do think sometimes I have been given a unique opportunity to heal by living with her, by taking the times I am triggered like this and learn how to cope with them and even transform that triggered feeling into a laughable moment.  Because why not laugh at how stupid my mother is?  Why get angry?  She's an idiot who does idiotic things.  And she's always been an idiot, so why would I care if she did judge me as a child?  

As they say, you have to feel it to heal it.  So I've felt it.  Now, it's time to work on healing it.  But the first way to heal myself to stop treating my kids and my husband the way she treated me.  Then, work on being a motivational leader for my family, rather than an asshole boss.  To give my kids the tools to thrive in life, rather than them having to work on healing themselves from the damage I've caused.  And to treat my husband with more respect, rather than taking out my bad moods on him.  And then work on identifying the triggers as they come up and remind that little part of me who's getting triggered "Mother is an idiot.  Don't care what an idiot thinks of you."  And also apologize to my family when I do get triggered and take it out on them (because that will happen to all of us). 

My mother lives with us.  She's not my family.  But I don't want to treat her like crap, either.  I want to treat her like exactly what she is: a lower-functioning neighbor who lives in my home that I have to take care of.  I would never treat someone like that badly.  I would giggle at their stupid antics and treat them like a little kid.  And I wouldn't let them trigger me, either.  Because look...look at who and what they are.  They are nothing to be threatened by.  They are just some old person who acts like a child.  That's it.  I have to keep this in mind at all times.  So if they do something stupid, I shouldn't even yell at them.  Or take offense when they are mean.  They're an idiot.  Just let them be an idiot.  And talk to them as though they are a child.  Because mentally, they are.  Even if a narc doesn't have dementia, they are nothing but a child inside.  And so why get triggered by a child?  They don't know enough yet to be an authority on anything, much less an authority on you.  So why should what they say bother us at all?  

So that's my rambling for today.  I think I feel better now, after working out my thoughts and feelings on paper.  Or on screen.  Whatever.  I hope what I said made some sort of sense.  Okay, off to go wash the dishes and let the chickens out.