Growing up, my mother didn't allow me to choose anything.  If it was my turn, my item, she would stand over me and choose for me.  Playing Yahtzee, she would choose all my turns for me and what to do with my dice.  We played it regularly, most likely because I had a hard time with math.  Aww, right?  You'd think that would bring to mind the idea that when your daughter has a learning disability, you turn what they have hard time with into a game and work on it with her, right?  Not my mom.  She saw my weakness and decided to use it as a way to make her VERY limited knowledge of math look like she was a genius.  Plus, she didn't just get to lord her her second grade math knowledge (I am for real, her knowledge stops at that age, because third grade you learned multiplication and she didn't know that, much less spell it), she got to shame me for my learning disability at the same time, which made her feel good. 

She tried doing it again when we moved in here five years ago, and I put a stop to it immediately.  But then I made this huge sign that looked beautiful for once (I make pretty shitty signs) that said "meals and memories made here" for the kitchen.  And she grabbed it from me and immediately tried to decide where it would look good in the kitchen, rather than let me decide, the person who made it.  It's been five years it's been sitting in my garage and now I am going to sell it because I can't even bring myself to want to put it up because it makes me angry AF to look at it.  It's just a reminder of all the choices that were stolen from me by her.  She chose to cut my oldest son's hair for the first time.  She chose how my birthday parties would go and who I would invite (one time, in sixth grade, she chose to invite my entire girl half of my class for a sleepover, even girls I HATED...she also chose for my sixteenth we'd do absolutely nothing).  She even chose how my entire wedding was going to go to my ex-husband.  Anything in my life that was important, or even minor, she chose for me.  

When we moved in here, she told me "I get to decorate the entire house, even outside.  You get your bedroom.  When I die, you can do what you like with it all."  I was going to get no choices once again.  It's funny, I am the only child.  She has a brother and a sister.  Yet, I know how to share.  She doesn't.  Because with her, it's all or nothing.  And so when she went into rehab back in 2021 (less than a year after moving in) after surgery, I decided "Well, if it's all or nothing, it's either me or her.  And I can't do this, I need to take my power back".  And so I did.  I redecorated the entire house and put everything that was hers in her room, including the cat tower that was taking up all the space in the living room.  I moved the cat litter to her bedroom as well, as the cats were no longer allowed in the basement (I had all sorts of things I had made for my store that her cat went downstairs and pissed on).  I also went through all her stuff in the basement that she's been holding onto for years that she never touched and donated it (my stuff too).  I took her old wedding dress (which was my old wedding dress too....remember when I said she made all the choices for my first wedding?...well, she forced me to wear her old wedding dress rather than let met buy my a new one) and my grandmother's wedding dress, both preserved in boxes for no reason.  And my shitty narcissistic cousin at one point asked my mother to have my grandmother's wedding dress.  And that wasn't going to happen on my watch, so I donated them both.  My cousin is the reason I started this blog...she's the catalyst for all of this, so yeah, no, my cousin hated my grandma and her child who she wanted the dress for didn't even know my grandma.  So yeah, no.  Let strangers have them both.  

When she got home, it took her YEARS to get over it.  Only dementia stole her memories of what happened and now she acts like this the way it's always been.  Or she just accepted it and moved on.  Who knows.  I hated having to choose me over her...not that I wanted to choose her, I just wanted a mother who could share with me.  Who would allow me to be my own person.  I am drowning in my own bullshit because of making that choice because I have hard time keeping things organized.  My mother used to call me  "packrat".  Which I find horribly derogatory.  But that was what she called me.  I just have horrible executive dysfunction due to my ADHD/ASD and I get overwhelmed and everything turns to shit.  My mother is better at keeping things straight.  We'd make a great team, if only she knew how to work on a team.  I think most of her jobs she lost due to the fact she had to be the boss or nothing.  Just like at home.  

And now I get to make all the decisions again.  Well, not all.  I let my kids and hubby make decisions, too, but mostly it's me.  And I am bad at it.  But what I can do?  It was either me or her and I had to choose me, because my entire life I was drowning a sea of her.  And here I am 48, trying to find out to be an adult because I was never allowed to be one before.  Funny, neither was she, but she pretended to be one.  She was and is just a five-year-old kid in an seventy-eight year old body pretending to be her age.  Maybe her mom didn't allow her to be an adult either?  I would have to say that's most likely the answer.  My grandmother hardly ever visited our house growing up, we had to go see her.  When I grew up, my mother hardly ever visited our houses, we had to go see her.  And my mother wanted keys to my house so she could come and go as she liked, which I didn't give her.  But visiting? Never.  She only came over to tell me what to do with my own house.  Which I am sure my grandmother did to her.  But unlike my mother and her mother before her and so on, I eventually became wiser.  Maybe they didn't have the ability to?  I do know it takes a certain level of IQ and EQ to do so.  My grandmother had zero EQ, but had a high IQ and my mother has a certain level of EQ....though in a warped way, but a very low IQ.  I have both intelligence (130), and a very high EQ (almost too high, it's called "hyper empathy").  So I have the skills to be able to break generational curses. Plus, I don't have their DNA, though I do have my own dumbass DNA I inherited from narcissists and assholes and weirdos, so in a way, my DNA doesn't really matter.  I was just born lucky, with the abilities they didn't and don't have.  

So I get it.  They can't help but be narcissists.  They can't help that they don't know how to love.  That they don't see us any different from a stranger.  Though since they know us so well, we are different, but not in the ways it counts...we're just easier to manipulate and they feel more comfortable with us.  And if they feel comfortable, that means they will use us to get what they want in life.  But they don't see us any different than a stranger when we do something wrong.  They will just drop us like a hot potato, because what we mean to them is no different than a stranger.  And they can't help that.  I just wish that we, the non-narcissists, didn't have to be subjected to their abuse and bullshit.  I wish there was a narcissist gene that they could see and test for and if they test positive, they can't adopt or keep their babies.  I know that sounds insane, but because we don't do that, is why we're all so fucked up as humans.  Narcissism is everywhere.  And will always be everywhere.  

We live in a world without choices because all those choices are being made by narcissists.  I want to start a non-narcissist community, to give the choices back to people who deserve to have control over their own lives.  

I got my choices back.  It's not easy to live without a mother's input or help.  But if we want control over our own lives, that's what we have to give up.  I just wish it didn't have to be this way.  Life isn't fair.  But why do we have to learn that lesson from our own parents?