LisaAF
04-29-2008, 01:58 PM
This is probably going to sound like teenaged ranting, but my mom's problems are so bad that my father and I have spoken about having her committed to a mental hospital against her will.
I'm twenty-two and living at home. My mother has been having an MLC-type thing for the past fifteen years. She wanted me to take her to the mall today, on my day off, to help her find an outfit for a job interview.
While she's complaining about the shopping, the phone rings. My grandfather needs someone to drive him to the ER in an hour and a half and my grandmother has dementia so she can't. My mom tells me that I have to get her gas.
In my state, you have had to pump your own gas for the last twenty years. I was shown how to do it, once, when I was sixteen, and did it on my own ever since. It is as easy and neccesary as using the telephone.
My mother refuses to pump her own gas. Years ago, I showed her how to do it and told her it would be the last time I ever got gas for her. She still wouldn't do it, and has my father running around early in the morning and late at night to fill up the tank.
My father is a heart attack waiting to happen, and I can just see myself, thirty-something years old, dragging my children down to my childhood home a couple of times a week just to pump gas for my mother. That is absolutely not going to happen. I have no problem caring for her if she actually needs it, but this is something she doesn't want to do, not something she can't do.
So today, she insists that she needs gas because it is an unexpected emergency. Problem is, the mall is the same distance as my grandparents' house, so she was expecting me to get her gas all along. I told her no, in the manner of a parent refusing to do their teenager's laundry, thinking that if she had no choice but to do it herself, she would get over whatever block she has in her mind about it. (If she had still not gotten it when it was time to leave, I would have done it for her.)
It didn't work. Instead of sucking it up like an adult and trying to learn something new, she called my father at work and threw a temper tantrum until he came home and did it for her.
Now, maybe it's just me, but I did not sign up to have a fifty-three year old daughter, and I'm so tired of dealing with her. I've had to call home when I'm at work to make sure she didn't hurt herself. I've been listening to her screaming about how she hates me and everything is my fault for the past fifteen years.
Then, on her way out, she sobbed at me about how I might need to stay the night with my grandmother because my mother can't sleep in their apartment. The familial obligation part of my brain has shorted out from overstimulation. I'll probably stay if she calls and asks me, but I can't help resenting the fact that I'm supposed to take care of both my mother and her mother.
I'm twenty-two and living at home. My mother has been having an MLC-type thing for the past fifteen years. She wanted me to take her to the mall today, on my day off, to help her find an outfit for a job interview.
While she's complaining about the shopping, the phone rings. My grandfather needs someone to drive him to the ER in an hour and a half and my grandmother has dementia so she can't. My mom tells me that I have to get her gas.
In my state, you have had to pump your own gas for the last twenty years. I was shown how to do it, once, when I was sixteen, and did it on my own ever since. It is as easy and neccesary as using the telephone.
My mother refuses to pump her own gas. Years ago, I showed her how to do it and told her it would be the last time I ever got gas for her. She still wouldn't do it, and has my father running around early in the morning and late at night to fill up the tank.
My father is a heart attack waiting to happen, and I can just see myself, thirty-something years old, dragging my children down to my childhood home a couple of times a week just to pump gas for my mother. That is absolutely not going to happen. I have no problem caring for her if she actually needs it, but this is something she doesn't want to do, not something she can't do.
So today, she insists that she needs gas because it is an unexpected emergency. Problem is, the mall is the same distance as my grandparents' house, so she was expecting me to get her gas all along. I told her no, in the manner of a parent refusing to do their teenager's laundry, thinking that if she had no choice but to do it herself, she would get over whatever block she has in her mind about it. (If she had still not gotten it when it was time to leave, I would have done it for her.)
It didn't work. Instead of sucking it up like an adult and trying to learn something new, she called my father at work and threw a temper tantrum until he came home and did it for her.
Now, maybe it's just me, but I did not sign up to have a fifty-three year old daughter, and I'm so tired of dealing with her. I've had to call home when I'm at work to make sure she didn't hurt herself. I've been listening to her screaming about how she hates me and everything is my fault for the past fifteen years.
Then, on her way out, she sobbed at me about how I might need to stay the night with my grandmother because my mother can't sleep in their apartment. The familial obligation part of my brain has shorted out from overstimulation. I'll probably stay if she calls and asks me, but I can't help resenting the fact that I'm supposed to take care of both my mother and her mother.