This post is long-
I recently had two arguments with my mom about a week apart.
The first one was the Saturday night before Easter. I guess what made it particularly bad was that I had "stood up" for her to my brother. The day before I had gone out with her to get takeout so we could have a meal and cake with him for his birthday. When we got home he called and said he was going to do a side job after work and would be home in a few hours, but he kept pushing it and never came. He has a history of doing this on his birthday (at least the past two years) and just in general of not following through or blowing people off. So, on Saturday, he arrived home for a second attempt and mom was not home at the time. I said to him, "You know mom was really disappointed yesterday. You really should stop doing this kind of stuff." Then, he blew up at me and started cursing me out, etc. saying that he knew and that he felt really bad. And I was just like, whatever, I am not engaging anymore. We ate and then he left.
Later that night I wanted to talk to her about her plans for her week off from work to do things around the house. The shower is really starting to worry me because it had been leaking over the kitchen for years and even though it has pretty much stopped, during that time mold began to grow and small pieces of the ceiling have come down and there is like a bulge/crack that seems to be getting worse. Even though my mom can make a catastrophe out of anything (and she has out of this), I am genuinely concerned that it could suddenly crash through the ceiling. Therefore, I wanted to see if she wanted me to try and work on fixing the other shower that has not been in use for years. She has mentioned many times over the years how I could help her do it. So when I said this, for whatever reason, she started getting into an argument with me saying that she would rather do work in the yard. I can hardly remember much of it anymore because I think I may subconsciously forget as much as possible after these arguments, but I remember saying to her something like, "Only a few hours ago I was thinking of how hurt my brother made you and now I am being yelled at?"
That night I started to research if there was something wrong with her again (which I had done a few times over the years) and this time I didn't feel I could ignore what I was reading. As I mentioned in my first post, my dad was an alcoholic, and a few years before he died I purchased
It Will Never Happen to Me and worked through a lot of my issues concerning my father. I even wrote him a letter of forgiveness. But even after all that, I still felt like there was something missing, something was still unresolved. I think it clicked that my other issues stem from my mother because I wrote down all these horrible things that she had done to me and tried to have a discussion with her hoping that she would account for why she had done it, but all I remember now is that she refused to look at the paper, told me she couldn't fix me, that it was all my dad's fault and left me in tears.
The most recent argument was actually the day after my first post. It was as if it happened to verify one more time that there really is an illness. While I just started my seasonal job for the company I work for last week and am good at saving, I needed a little help getting food for my cats last week. I had actually budgeted just enough money, but gave my brother (who is a mechanic) money to buy a part for my car when it broke down (as it turns out I had already given him this money months ago for exactly this part, but he had never purchased it and never told me). He said he would give me the money back when he got paid and that never happened. And to top it off, I have been letting my mom drive my car because hers needs a huge repair job. So, I needed about $20 to get them food for the week, therefore I went to her and asked her if she could help me out. I always buy everything for myself and my cats because she uses anything she can to manipulate me. Should have taken about a minute, but not for her. She went into a tirade into all this other stuff telling me I should sell my car and insinuating I should get rid of my cats! For me, she knows not to go there. (My sister made bad choices in college which resulted in 13 cats coming into the world. I have five of them and I also took in a stray a few years later. The five that are related are all over 10, I am totally committed to caring for all of them their entire lives and I hope they live for many more years to come. To me they are family). This isn't the first time she has said something like this to me and there have been a few times where I have worried I would come home to find some of them gone. But I totally flipped out the first time she even mentioned it, telling her I would call the cops if anything like that ever happened, and she knew I meant it.
Then she started on about how I won't ever help her clean her house, which is her biggest go to. This is not true, but she acts like I need to be manipulated into helping her. Two times, for appraisals, I have helped her do a major clean and move boxes of what I would like to call crap into and out of storage units and most of it is still around. I said to her that her, my brother, and I all share in the responsibility for the "mess" and she was literally shaking her head no at me. Honestly, the majority of the stuff is hers. And that's when I just couldn't believe it, because she heaps so much blame on me for her mini-horde and I refuse to take it anymore. Her stuff/crap is literally everywhere, but she will point out one cup that I left somewhere and insist that is the problem. I just thought to myself, yep, there is definitely something wrong here she still wants to blame me for her mess. And when I said that to her she responded, "You're just like your father." She hasn't said that to me in a long time, but she used to say it all the time.
I eventually left her presence and a few hours later was pondering if I could make hot dogs or something else for them when she came down and actually gave me the money. I try so hard to keep from having to need her help because of how she acts because I can't take it. After that I went through everything I could and actually found enough in change to get their food the next time I went to the store.
I also grabbed an old pad of paper to take notes on while training for work last week and I found a letter I had written, but never gave, to her from years ago. In it I ask her why she said that if my brother becomes an alcoholic it would be my fault? I had forgotten she ever said that to me.
Thanks for reading if you did, I have had all of this on my mind while falling asleep and this is the only place I have to talk about it.
Also, I was wondering if hoarding type behaviors are prevalent in BPD? While going through my dad's stuff I found a bunch of pictures he had taken of the house when my parents were getting divorced and he had taken pictures of what, at the time, was just a pile of boxes in a few places. It made me wonder if he suspected something. I mean, it's like there is a huge amount of clutter everywhere, but it's not like the houses you see on television. She does have a hard time getting rid of it and seems to hijack/mess up attempts to help her get rid of stuff, which I have read is like one of the four types of BPD moms.
I have just printed off everything for Lesson 1 and will be working through everything. I am so grateful that there is so much available here to help me.
