You'd think I'd have learned by now to stop seeking her validation.  You'd think I'd be an old pro at this by now, but alas, I am human, and I still expect validation when I do a good job.  Not like "OMG you're so great at this!" or "WOW!  THIS IS AMAZING!"  But I do expect to not be outright disapproved of or rejected.  I don't care if someone didn't notice something cool I did or worked hard on.  I will come out and ask "Hey, I did, this, how do you like it?"  We all do this in my house.  Because we all deserve validation for hard work and effort.  My youngest son cleans their room quite regularly.  I always notice and tell him I'm jealous of how clean he is and I wish his awesome skills would rub off on me LOL 

See, I have ADHD, aspergers, and CPTSD.  So my executive functioning is kind of fucky.  My brain doesn't work the way organized brains work.  So when I do get the bug up my butt to start a project, I work hard to finish it, because if I don't, it may not get finished for weeks.  I do stay on task if something really interests me (like art or writing) but cleaning is not my jam.  But I do it, and since moving into our new house, I've been doing it quite regularly and been better at keeping my brain organized with certain things.  But projects tend to take over my life and will spill out into different areas of the house if I let them.  So I don't, because our house is teeny weeny, and it's a total clusterfuck if that happens.  So I keep my projects in certain places.  The garage being one of those places.  But at the same time, my kids and hubby are working on a woodworking project, I have all my paper products to burn (we live in the country), we save cans for recycling, the kids have their fishing stuff in there, and we also use it for storage.  So safe to say, it's always a mess.  We also store extra kitchen items out there (because my mother hoards kitchen stuff like pots and pans and bowls and all sorts of crap and I refuse to let her stuff up our cabinets with them all), paper towels/toilet paper, tools, and have two chest freezers.  Yeah.  That's a lot of stuff. 

So, yesterday, I said to my husband "Let's get this crap organized and clean".  And while I knew it had to be done, the only reason I said to do it now was because my mother keeps saying how she's going to go out there and organize everything, even though all the stuff is ours and not hers.  She loves to be the boss of everything, and when she can't boss me around, she likes to boss my stuff around.  It's totally maddening.

Deep down I wonder if she says these things knowing I don't want her to touch my stuff to get me to do it?  Well, if so, it works LOL  So we work all night until midnight and went to bed and about 90% of the stuff was thrown out (we burned all our paper products, like small boxes and the such, and the other ones we ripped up and threw in recycling) and/or organized.  We had a very small pile of stuff right by the door to go down the basement.  But you can not only see the floor, but it's all open and airy now.  Oh yeah, we also have tons of paint cans on the floor because we were putting concrete in them because the previous owner left them all for us to deal with (the jerk).  So there's some paint cans on the floor drying, so there's nothing we can do about that.  But most things have a place now and it's looks soooooo much better.  And we worked our asses off last night to get it to the place it's at now. 

And yes, before, it was a total disaster.  Not hoarding level disaster, but you had to be careful where you walked so you didn't trip.  And of course, since my mother has ODD (oppositional defiant disorder--like an angsty little teenager) and does exactly what she's not supposed to (she's a HUGE fall risk and has broken two bones in the past six months due to falling), she would always be mucking around in the garage to get things she needed.  Never once did she ask me to get things for her unless she had no idea where it was.  Never once did she talk about it being dangerous for her to be in there (even though it was).  And if I told her to be careful, she'd tell me to shush and that I was being "too dramatic" or "over protective" (and yes, I bought locks to keep her out of places that could kill her, like the basement door, where her physical therapist told her to stay out of). 

Yet, we cleaned it and it's mostly safe for her now, so she says to me this morning "If you're going in the garage, let me know, because I need to get my chopper and I need you to watch me so I don't trip on all that shit in there".  *sigh*  She's in there every single day and the moment there's hardly anything to trip on is when she has to say something dumb about it.  She added "Well, since you're up and here to hear me if I scream if I fall, I think it's safe for me to go get my chopper now."  Goodness.  And she says I'm overdramatic.

I knew she'd already either been in there or looked because I heard the door open and close.  I assume she wanted her chopper and waited for me to get up to make a production out of it because she saw that it was cleaned (not completely, we still have stuff by the door to bring downstairs, but that stuff was always there).  And she went in to get her chopper and came out and said absolutely nothing.  Had she not been in there yet, she'd have said "Oh, look, you started cleaning."  But instead she just acted like it was the same as usual. 

This is the type stuff we all deal with when it comes to narc parents (or other narcs in our lives).  We do do good things and rather than get validation, we either get insulted or disapproved of.  This happens from early childhood until our parents either die, get sick, or we go no contact.  Then sometimes, they will shower us in approval, just to mess us up and make us wonder if we're the crazy ones who imagined it all. 

As a child, my husband wrote a story (he was like six) and was so excited and showed it to his mother.  She looks at it and makes a face and says "What is this?"  He gets uncomfortable, feeling her disapproval and says "It's a detective story."  She replies with a laugh "That's not a story.  A story has a beginning, middle, and an end.  This is just a bunch of words about a detective."  And from that point on, his writing became about his mother's approval (which he hardly ever got). 

All my art projects I showed my mom, even as an adult, she'd so the same exact thing.  She'd crinkle her nose and say "hmmm, something is so off about this" as though she was an art critic or that I was asking for a critique. 

My therapist says that narcs do this stuff because they are jealous that they cannot do what we do, whether it be writing, art, the type of work we do, or anything.  If we do something well (or at least put a good effort into it), that makes them jealous.  If we do something not so well, it makes them feel good because they can't do it, and to them, neither can we, so they have to make a comment either way to bring us down.  So when my mother wanted to control where my stuff went in the garage (or wherever she wanted to put it--she had a knack for hiding my stuff) and saw that I did it first (well, me and the hubs), she got angry and/or jealous at her lack of control, and lashed out at me about it.  She wanted me to know that she was not going to give me any validation or approval of my actions and instead, put me down for it.  She wanted me to know that it wasn't good enough for her standards, just like every other thing I've done in my life. 

It really pissed me off this morning.  Not so much right now.  My therapist told me to use a scale of 1-10 and to put every situation on that scale and everything below a 5 isn't worth caring about.  And when I do this, I find that most of the situations I get mad at are really 0's.  She wants to make me mad and succeeds every single time.  But now I have a tool I can use to combat these tedious remarks and jabs and ignore them.  And while I didn't need her to say today "Good job on the garage" (because it wasn't done yet), I didn't need her to remind me that nothing I do is good enough for her. 

Now, when it does get done, I have to remember that I do not need her to approve of what I did.  And had this not happened, that's exactly what I would have wanted.  I would have went to her and said "Oh, did you see how good the garage looks?"  And she would have shot me down.  Now I know not to say anything at all. 

Most days, I do things and don't even give them a second thought about anyone even noticing I did something.  I live with three men so I am used to things being overlooked.  I stopped needed validation for the little stuff a long time ago.  But my mother will beg for approval over every tiny little thing she does (once, she moved the recycling bag back an inch and literally asked everyone if we noticed).  It's exhausting.  And it also makes me feel bad for her.  Growing up she probably never got approval from her mother, now she seeks in every single way possible.  I don't want to be like that.  I validate my kids all the time (not that fake praise though, which kids can see through, I actually mean what I say).  I validate my husband.   And I don't always get it back and that's okay.  I've pushed myself to not seek out anymore.  To know I did a good job and be proud of myself is enough most times.  It's the disapproval I can't stand.  But I'm learning to ignore that, too (with the help of my awesome new therapist). 

When your parents refuse to approve of you, learn to approve of yourself.  And know that their disapproval is ONLY a reflection of how they feel about themselves.  Know when they are insulting you, they are insulting themselves, when they are telling you that you're not good enough, they know that deep down inside they aren't good enough, and know when you've done a good job at something and they pick it apart?  They are jealous of your abilities and/or accomplishments because they feel they can't do things as good as you can, or at all (or they feel slighted because you took something away from them).  My father used to call me a freak.  But I know that inside, he felt like a freak because he was made to feel like one his entire life (though I didn't know that at the time he called me that, only now, 20 years after his death). 

When you ask for their validation and don't get it (and you most likely never will), all it does is create this voice inside of you that you'll carry forever that says "I'm not good enough.  I never will be."  Don't let them do that to you.  Because it's not you.  It's them.  It's always been them.  You don't need their approval for anything you do.  You just need your own.  And use that scale I mentioned earlier.  If it the situation is below a 5, just let it wash away back into the dirt where it belongs. 

So we moved in with my mother this year, right before the covid lockdown hit.  And as soon as we did, my mother took over being "the boss of everything".  She had to tell me where to put the furniture, where to put the tables, and she even took my furniture and used it as her own (even though we hardly had any furniture at all).  She even went as far as to tell me "You can decorate your room, but I get the rest of the house".  She's also famous for constantly saying "When I'm dead, you can do what you want with the house", meaning that I am not allowed to choose anything while she'd still here.  The funny part is that she thinks she'll be living here until she's dead.  The woman has dementia, and the minute I have to change her soiling herself, she will be in a home. 

The issue is that my mother picks dangerous things to do when nobody is looking, which has led to her breaking two bones this past few months.  She can barely stand upright most of the time, yet she constantly walks through our hilly and holey yard when everyone is asleep.  And she does it on purpose because she'll brag about it, as though being oppositional and defiant makes her a badass.  The last time she tried to do something stupid she broke a damn rib.  She was in so much pain that they gave her fentanyl and it didn't even touch it.  Every time she moved, she screamed.  And yet, she will bug me about going in the basement most days or some other stupid thing she wants to hurt herself with. 

She thinks she the boss of everyone and everything around her and we've had a hell of a time trying to keep her safe from herself.  And I can only imagine that as her dementia progresses, it will only get worse.  And know, these actions have nothing to do with her dementia.  This is the way she's always been.  Bossy, defiant, and unruly. 

When we found the house, one of the coolest things I fell in love with was the garden area.  And because I was so happy about it, she decided to be the boss of that, too.  I wasn't allowed to pick the plants to go in the garden.  I'm not even allowed to choose where my garden gnomes go (she made the comment that I should put them out at the cemetery on my father's grave the other day, which goes to show how much she respects my stuff). Every time I put a gnome where I want it, she moves it where she wants it. 

So she tried to head up this year's garden, even though I'm the one who's kept a garden for more than ten years, but for some reason she thinks because she did it when I was growing up, she is way more experienced than me.  My kids and I tilled the garden.  We also made it twice the size by fencing off the rest of the corner in our yard.  And she kept telling me where to plant the plants inside of it.  I said "If you're not going to tend it, I will put them where I want".  And I threw on my headphones so I didn't have to hear her bitching and planted them wherever I wanted.  It felt good to not let her boss me around.  But as it turned out, a fact I found out as I was planting them, she bought almost 10 tomato plants and a few squash.  I was like "What kind of garden are we making here?"  Nobody needs that many damn tomatoes, especially not us.  And they were all the same kind of tomatoes, too.   

So now I have a freaking tomato garden.  All that whining about not letting me plant what I wanted.  All that bossing me around.  All that "We'll, we're certainly not planting seeds from last year!"  All of it.  For what?  And the minute the work got complicated?  My mother washed her hands of the whole thing.  She went from "Don't you remember?  I've kept a garden all your childhood!  I know best!"  to "Ugggh, I kept a garden all those years.  I don't even want to do this ever again.  It's yours."  Thanks.  After you bought all the plants (aka: tomatoes) and it's too late to plant anything else.  Now it's mine.  Great. 

Well, if anyone needs some freaking roma tomatoes, just hit me up.  Soon, we'll have a hundred that will rot because we don't can and freezing them makes them gross. 

I did make a fresh topping for my noodles the other day.  I cut up one tomato, one zucchini and sautéed them with garlic powder and Italian seasoning and put it on top of linguine when the zucchini was soft.  It was quite delicious. 

But I can't eat noodles every damn day, nor will I eat tomatoes every day either. 

What a fun summer this is.  I hope yours is going better. 

So much of my life that I remember either didn't happen, or didn't happen the way I remember it.  Or so mother says.  She tries to convince me I'm always wrong in every conversation, making up lies just so she can "prove me wrong".  Even over stupid things, like whether or not I've ever done this or that, or whether this happened or that happened.  I try to stay out of conversations with her due to this issue, because everything always turns into her disagreeing with me for disagreement's sake.  It's crazy and ridiculous.

Then we have the issues where she says something that's wrong (which is often) and I correct her.  I don't have to.  I know this.  But sometimes I really do, like when she tries to tell me that diet soda is worse for you when you have diabetes (which she has) than regular soda, yet, she can't figure out why her blood sugar is so high when she drinks root beer every day.  I will correct her, and she will make up things that make absolutely no sense to argue her point, and then adding in things that have no basis in what we're talking about.  This is also a constant thing.  I think she says this stuff knowing it's wrong just so I look like I'm the one being argumentative with her.

Then we have when mother just wants to make up things for fun's sake.  Like recently, she's been on a kick saying my children's bedroom stinks.  It smells like literally nothing, since their room is spotless and their sheets and blankets are always clean.  They literally own practically nothing.  They are true minimalists.  But she insists their room smells horrible.

She talks about this constantly, which cracks me up, because my mother has absolutely no sense of smell or taste.

I, on the other hand, have an acute sense of smell.  It's one of my best senses.  I can smell things other people can't, which sucks because when something smells gross, I am always the first to smell it and it makes me more sick than others because I smell it worse than they do.  It's a blessing and a curse.  But I go into my children's room and it literally smells like air.

She came home the other day from the store (my husband takes her shopping) and even bought a disgusting air freshener for their room.  I walked into their room and immediately almost gagged.  "What's that awful smell?" I yelled.  "Yeah, can you please throw that away?  Grandma put that nasty thing in here," they replied.  I grabbed the air fresher and chucked it into the garbage outside.  I can't stand air fresheners (or bleach or anything else with a strong scent, unless it's a food related scent, like coffee or cinnamon buns), and apparently neither can my children.  And for once, their room actually did smell awful.

Now, my mother has had dementia for several years.  It's not that bad yet.  But it's getting there.  But I do not believe for one moment she's thinking she's smelling something she isn't there.  I think she's making it up because she wants people to think of the kids as "gross boys".  The funny part is her room stunk so bad when she had her cat that we had to put down recently.  She couldn't even smell how bad her room was (you could smell that shit from outside sometimes), yet my boys' room smelled so awful she needed to buy an air freshener for it?  It makes absolutely no sense.  And she kept saying it every single day as though we were just going to cave and say "You got us, we were lying, their room smells horrible".  But she said it so much that I kept going in there to make sure I wasn't crazy.  And sure enough, I wasn't (and neither were my kids or husband).

She didn't like me throwing her air freshener away.  But she also hasn't said anything about their room since.  I think it's a fun game she was playing, since the quarantine order has been in effect she has had nobody to hang out with besides us.  She can't get her supply from her BFF's anymore, so she has to get it from somewhere.  So she made up a story about "The Stink That Ever Existed".

So much fun.

I have a game I'm going to start playing called "What will mother lie about next?"  That actually sounds like an exhausting game because she tells so many lies daily I can't keep track of them all.  Sigh.

That's gaslighting for ya.  Mother's favorite party game.

When time has gone by and they've been good for a bit, you know they're gearing up for some drama.  That's because they're addicted to chaos, and they can't go without it for too long, otherwise they get too bored.  And god forbid they become bored.  Because the more bored they get, the more drama they want to stir up.

So, how do you combat this nice little feature the narcissists seem to be preprogrammed with?

Well, on their end, there's not much you can do.  They are who they are and you can't really change them.  The only thing you can do is to not let their behavior spin you out of control.  Believe me, I know what it's like to get caught up in their drama.  It's so easy to do (especially since they taught us that from childhood).  Take my ex, for example.  He used to get the kids every Friday night.  It was horrible.  The kids would beg me not to go, but the courts forced me to let him see the kids, so we had to comply.  He would do something stupid every freaking weekend to the kids (like let them watch rated-R movies or leave them in the care of someone else while he went out, etc.) and I would get caught up in his drama every single time.  I would call him and yell at him on the phone for an hour and every single week went like this.  Then one day I realized, he's doing this on purpose to lure me in.  So I quit participating.  He would do something stupid, and I would say "That's not good."  And I stopped calling him about it.  I realized I got angry because I expected him to be better than he was.  I expected him to act like a good father, when he just wasn't.  I stopped particpating in his drama.  The things he did weren't things I could do anything about (if he had put them in real danger, I would have called someone, and when that did happen, I got a restraining order on him).

When you participate in their drama, they get high off it.  My mother loves to feel victimized so she'll create situations where I have to either tell her to stop or to say no, so she can feel like I'm the bad guy.  Yesterday, she came home with a brand new pan.  She loves to have 50 of all kitchen items (when she lived alone, it was crazy how much her shelves and cabinets were stuffed full).  So when we moved in together, I did was I had been doing the past two years and only had two pots, two pans, enough plates for each person, same for bowls and had only the essential kitchen tools in my countertop crock for spatulas and whatnot.  She practically went insane about this, but since I am the only person who cooks, I put my foot down.

So when she came home with this pan, I was confused.  All of a sudden while at the grocery store with my husband (he takes her shopping to give me a break) she gets this idea in her head that "I need to eat healthy!"  And buys tons of chicken and gets herself a pan to cook her chicken in.  Never mind I just bought four bags of chicken and had two huge bags of leg quarters also.  I said "What's the pan for?"  She said "So I can cook my chicken."  I said "We have pans."  She says "Well, so when you cook your food, I can cook my chicken at the same time."  I said "So you're no longer eating my dinners?"  She says "Well, your cooking is so good and tastes so delicious that I eat too much.  If I make my bland chicken, I won't eat as much."  My mother is the queen of made up bullshit.  This is what she thinks she's good at.  She's not.  "Ma, for one, just take less portion sizes if you're worried about eating too much.  And you have absolutely no sense of smell or taste.  How does my cooking taste any different from your cooking?" (being that she has no sense of smell or taste, she will salt her food until the cows come home just so she can taste something, and she has high blood pressure, so eating that much salt isn't good).  Then I added "We have two pans up here already.  And more in the basement, so why did you buy this pan?  I'm not storing it in the kitchen.  We don't have a lot of cabinet space."  So she replies "I guess you can just return it then."

It's not that she doesn't like my cooking.  It's the fact she's bored and wants to change things up and create some chaos.  When she's in the kitchen while I cook, all she does is tell me what to do and make constant comments.  This annoys me greatly (as it would anyone).  So I started making a big show about how people are always in my way while I cook, so now she goes somewhere else until dinner is ready.  And some nights, she cooks (and I help when she needs it).  So it's not like she can't cook, I let her cook any time she wants.  She just doesn't want to anymore.  But all of a sudden now she wants to make her own food while I make food for everyone else.  Which makes absolutely no sense, since we all sit together to eat every single night.  And supposedly all that chicken she bought was for herself.

After she told me to return her pan to the store, she went outside.  I went outside to go pick up stuff in the yard before the storm rolled in and she started to tell me about how she was going to start going to church.  She isn't religious.  And she hasn't been to church in over thirty years.  And now, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, she wants to start going to church.  Even though just a month before she called all the people idiots who wanted churches to open so desperately they were protesting in town about it.  *sigh*  First of all, she can't go anywhere alone.  She knows this.  She can't walk that well.  Second, she can't drive, so we'd have to take her.  And third, duh.  If I don't let her go to the store more than once a month due to the pandemic, why on earth would I let her go to a small, enclosed space to sit for an hour or more when she doesn't even believe in it?

She's bored.  Plain and simple.  When she gets bored, she has this obsessive need to do something.  Just any idea that pops into her head, it becomes a huge deal and eventually, yes, it will fizzle out, but until then, she'll press about it until she annoys the ever loving crap out of those around her.

Like she's obsessed with rearranging our living room.  She doesn't even use the living room.  But she won't stop pressing us to move the furniture around.  The issue is, it's the smallest living room in existence and there's no room to put anything any different than what it is.  Well, unless you want half of the furniture put somewhere where you can't see the television (which makes no sense).  We like it the way it is (which we constantly tell her), but for some reason she gets so damn obsessed with the idea of changing it.  And again, that reason is boredom. Plus, she used to constantly rearrange the kitchen cabinets, until I told her to quit because I do all the cooking and can never find anything.

Why is she so bored, you ask?  Right now, it's the pandemic shelter-in-place order.  She can't see her friends (from whom she gets her narcissistic supply).  She can't go shopping (which she's addicted to).  She can't do a lot of things per her doctor's orders (because she's a huge fall risk...her legs do not work right).  So I get it.  There's not much to do.  But even when she could drive and cook and go up and down stairs and do everything she always did, she'd still get bored and create chaos because, like I said, when there's no drama, they have to create drama so they can feel fulfilled.  For them, it's a basic need like food or water.

And the only thing we can do is refuse to participate when it rears it's ugly head.  What that looks like will be different in each situation that comes up, so there's no absolute formula to follow, though a basic one is to pretend you don't care, even if you do.  And another is to stick to your boundaries.  Letting my mother bring that pan into my kitchen, after I explained to her why we can only have what we need rather than an excess of everything, would have just blown my boundaries out the window.  Yes, I participated in her drama.  But what was more important this time was that my boundaries weren't crossed.  If I let her bring that in, it would have opened a doorway to her overfilling our cabinets with all sorts of stuff (which right now our coffee cup situation is getting out of control).  And the other boundary she'd be crossing is creating a complicated situation where dinner would be come "mine" and "hers", rather than ours.  And that would be a whole other situation to deal with later as the idea of washing dishes and storing the food would get more and more complicated.

Some things aren't worth fighting (that's when you pretend it's no big deal and that you don't care) and other things are worth a small confrontation or fight so bigger ones don't happen later.

So prepare yourself, if the narc in your life has been good for awhile.  Know they are getting bored and are gearing up to either start a little chaos or big chaos.  You just never know which will be coming, so prepare for both, and protect your boundaries as best you can.

Good luck.

Sometimes I don't even want to blog about the things she does.  They are so predictable and normal for a narcissist that I find the idea of writing it down tedious.  Sometimes I just want to hide away (and I do) until it blows over and forget it even happened.  Not because I'm like her.  The incident will always be there and become a part of my daily stress.  But mainly because it's exhausting complaining about every damn thing she does.  It's like, duh.  I live with my narcissist mother.  She's going to act up and be a child and act like an asshole more days than not.  What did I expect?  That everyone would be smooth sailing as though she's normal?  Obviously not.  This is our new normal.  This is what it will be like forever until she's in a home or passes away.  So why do I run around sometimes thinking everything is normal when it's not?

The issue is that the opposite sucks big fat butts.  I usually wake up and stay in bed as long as I can do so I don't have to deal with the day (meaning dealing with her).  I know she'll be bitchy.  I know she'll be cruel.  And it will come to a head over a period of days until I get mad enough to say something, and then the cycle restarts with her being as sweet as pie all over again, until she decides to drop the other shoe and start being cruel and mean again.

It's a complete shit show some days.  Others, it's calm.

Take yesterday for example: she was fine all day, in a great mood (other than some jabs at the kids) and then she goes into her room, doesn't shut her door and lights up a cigarette.  She knows she can't smoke in the house (I don't care who's name is on the mortgage).  And even when she tricks me all day into thinking she's doing well, she goes and pulls something that makes me have to confront her about it.

And it's a big deal, confronting her.  She's erratic.  So any time you tell her she's wrong, or more so doing something wrong, she will threaten you or throw a fit.  So I lied to her and told her my son and hubby both have asthma (not exactly a lie, my son does and I think my hubby does, but he's not diagnosed yet).  I've told her a thousand times I'm allergic to smoke.  YET she doesn't give two shits about me.  So I thought I'd take her two golden children and let her know she's hurting THEM.  I am not sure if it worked, but so far, no smoking inside today.  But I am sure this will end with me having to say "DO NOT SMOKE IN THE HOUSE, PERIOD!"  And all hell will either break loose or she will just comply quietly.  You just never know which way it'll go.

So two days ago, my mother got on my case once again for her keys.  I took them away when the quarantine started because she thinks she can do whatever she wants whenever she wants and nobody is going to tell her what to do.  So I am like fuck that, and took her keys.  She wanted them back, promising not to leave, and then she got a really angry look and said "You're not giving them back, are you?"  I said "No.  You're not supposed to be driving."

See, I took her keys away years ago.  She drives so badly I fear not only for her life, but for the lives of those she either hits or causes to hit her.  She take risks, like turning out in front of speeding cars, driving 65 in a 40 quite regularly, swerves around cars without a blinker or without even looking really, and most of all, she can't stay in her lane.  She drifts into the left lane, whether it's oncoming traffic or a four lane and she's in the right lane.  She causes cars to either have to slam on their brakes or causes them to swerve into oncoming traffic.  She's going to kill someone (if not herself).  Years ago, she had a fit, over and over and over again about driving.  She told all our neighbors I stole her car and they all hated me for years (and still do) because of it.  Her doctor refused to take her license away.  They also refused to diagnose her with dementia, even though I knew she had it (turns out, had the docs just looked at her cat scan, it would have shown her vascular dementia).  And it all came to a head one day (you can read about this here) on the day I decided to go no contact.  I was done with it all.  I was going insane from her treatment of me (and of my oldest son), and I had to walk away before I ended up in the hospital.

But here's the deal: I shouldn't have given her keys back.  I washed my hands of it, mostly because I had zero support from her doctors.  But now?  Her neurologist said she's not supposed to drive (after I told her how badly she drives).  But she bothered me and bothered me, until I said fine, she could drive up to a mile away.  We lived on a small area, with WIDE lanes on our streets, so I let her.  To find out, she was going all over town!  So she's wondering why I don't believe her when she said "I just want to hold my keys, I promise I won't leave the house!"  She's like an ODD teenager who will say anything to get mommy and daddy to let her drive.  I said no.  I put my foot down.  I was being irresponsible by letting her drive both times before.  I was putting other people's lives in danger.  But this time, I refused to give into her whining.

She snapped a look at me and said "Do you want to drive my car?"  I said "Look."  She cut me off and repeated.  "I said let's be adults about this."  She said "Answer my question."  I was getting frustrated.  She repeated this line over and over and over until I said "Doesn't matter.  You aren't going to drive it."  She said "I'll stop paying on it."  I said "Okay.  I'll pay it."  She said, "No, they'll take my car back."  I said "Not if someone is paying on it."  I SHOULD have said "Oh, like you stopped paying on your life insurance and car insurance?"  But I didn't think of it.  Opportunity missed!  Oh well.  She started with the water works then and started screaming "EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS BEING TAKEN AWAY!  I HAVE NOTHING!  NOOOOTTTHHHIINNNNGGG!" and ran into her room and slammed the door.

Can we say a fourteen-year-old with emotional issues?  

Now, if she were normal in every other way, I'd feel bad for her.  But her reaction was out of pure selfishness and greed.  She doesn't care other people could get hurt (as I explained to her during this conversation).  She doesn't care if she crashes the only car we have right now.  She doesn't care if they take the car back and my hubby has no way to get to work.  She doesn't care about anything other than precious ability to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants.  During this entire quarantine she's been acting like a baby and saying she's a prisoner and begging me to let her go to the store.  She's 73.  Has dementia.  Has a pacemaker and bad heart.  Has breathing issues.  Has diabetes.  Has all sorts of issues and thinks she's invincible.  Not only that, she could care less if she got sick and then got everyone in the house sick.  It's all about HER freedom.

She is the most selfish person I know and acts like a gigantic baby when she can't get what she wants (like literally stomps on the floor).  And this is what I chose to live with.

My apartment is still open with nobody living in it.  Hmmmm LMAO  Just kidding.  I'd never move back there unless we absolutely had to.  I will tough this out.  Because it's either that or ma goes in a home.  And she's not quite "home" material yet.  I want to love my mother and I do love her, but not as a mother.  I love her as a human who needs help.  I need to start seeing this as my job, not as my family, because she's never been my family.  Just my overlord.

*sigh*  Well, time to go get stuff done around the house.  And yell at her for smoking in the house, because god knows she'll try it again to see what she can get away with.  I just need to stop fearing getting into an argument with her.  I am not 17 anymore.  If she hits me again (like she did 15 years ago) for disagreeing with her, she'll go straight into a home and be labeled as violent.  So I don't need to fear her.  Even though deep down, I do.  But eventually I won't.  I just need to work on it.

If you're wondering why we moved in together, it was a necessity.  If our landlord (who's 85 and frail) died, we'd all be out on our asses.  So it was smarter to buy a house now before that happened.  It was her idea (though ours to begin with, but then we decided not to) and now she's acting like she'd being held hostage.

Oh the joys of quarantining with a narcissist.  I feel for you all out there who have to deal with your own narcs during this stay at home order.  I hope you're all finding ways to keep yourselves safe.

So yesterday my son was switching the doorknobs on his room and the bathroom, because his room's doorknob has a lock on it and the bathroom did not.  He just took it upon himself to get some screwdrivers and just do it himself without asking for help.  I thought that was pretty cool.  But of course, my  mother says "What are you even doing?"

He replies that he wants a lock on the bathroom door (this has been something he's wanted since we moved in, but yesterday he walked in on me using the toilet, so it cemented the fact we really need a lock on the door--it didn't bother me, but my son is super private and always has been).

So rather than just responding "Oh, okay" or some other benign normal answer, she says in an incredulous voice "What?  Who needs a lock on a bathroom door?  I mean, I don't need one."  Then she turns to me and asks in an equally annoying voice "Do you need a lock on the bathroom door?"

I didn't answer because inside I was seething.  Moving in with my mother has brought up all sorts of horrible memories from my childhood that she keeps triggering with her comments and actions.  So when she said this to my son and then turned it to me, all I could think about was as a child she had absolutely no respect for my privacy at all.  Growing up, the only door in our entire house that locked was my bathroom door.  I used that lock regularly because for some reason my mother thought it was acceptable to walk in on me taking a shower or going to the bathroom whenever she pleased.  And many times, if I locked the door, my mother would get a skewer and pop it into the lock to open it at her will.

We had glass shower doors with no shower curtain.  So I'd put up towels so I'd have my own makeshift curtain so whenever they'd come in, I'd have some privacy.  So what did my mother do?  She'd pick on me for doing so, as though I was being ridiculous.  She still to this day picks on me for it.  So when she started in on my son, I should have stood up to her and said something, but I didn't.  I just ignored her because my son was busy changing the doorknobs and also ignoring her.  I feel like I have to pick and choose my battles in our new house because otherwise I'll be yelling at her 24/7.
I'm also having trouble accessing my feelings other than this pervasive numbness that has taken over me since we started moving.  My mother is trying to control every little thing and I feel like I'm going crazy most days trying to find my happiness amidst her complaining and bitching and cruel words.

Thing is, she can be amazingly nice some days.  But I'm still numb on those days because I know it's short-lived and momentary.

The biggest issue I had with my mother repeating that she doesn't need a lock on the bathroom door (and let's be clear here, it's the boys' bathroom, she doesn't even use it) is that, like I said, growing up the bathroom door was the only door that locked in our house.  So, other than closets and under beds, that was my hiding place to keep my dad from beating me.  He would chase me around the house, screaming "WAIT TILL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU!!!"  He never did.  I could easily outrun a drunk who could barely stand, much less run.  So I needed that lock on the door for more than just privacy (which is important), I needed it for sheer survival.

And she knows privacy has always been important to me.  That's why she directed the question to me.  She wanted me to answer truthfully so she could pick on me.  That's who she is lately.  Living with her is proving to be a huge ordeal for me.

Here's the funniest part about all of us: her bathroom has a lock!  The door doesn't shut right, but it still has a workable lock for when the door is fixed.  AND she has a shower curtain.  Something I never had growing up.  I should put up a see-thru shower curtain for her and see how she likes it LOL  But I'm not like that.  I don't invade other people's privacy.  I respect it.  I know how it feels to be completely shamed for wanting it.  I don't get it.  I guess it gives her power to take away the privacy of others.  It's disgusting.

But now my kids have a lock on their bathroom door.  So I guess whatever she wanted to bitch about didn't matter, did it?

Whatever she wants to complain about, she can just keep on complaining, as it won't change how we live our lives.  If we want locks on our doors?  We'll have them (speaking of that, I need one on mine too, as she likes to open my door without knocking quite regularly).  If we want privacy in any way, shape or form?  She can say what she likes.  All we need to do is laugh and shake our heads and do what we want anyways.

And if she wants to know why my son wants a lock on his bathroom door?  I should flat out bring up the time she let a scuzzy repairman into the bathroom TO TAKE A PISS while he was taking a bath!  So yeah.  I wonder why feels like his privacy has been violated?  I would never trust her again if I were him.  And I don't trust her.  I never have and never will.  So we all need locks when we have narcs in the house.  On all our bedroom and bathroom doors.  Because if there's one thing a narcissist knows, it's invading our privacy and a need for control.