what a day (whish I had a better title)

The BBQ Pit
1

Look my emotions are going in 10 different directions so I am not very coherent now. I’m using this to vent and maybe I’ll get some clarity.

Today started out optimistic. I’m in consideration for this really nice job. If I get it I’ll go from taking the bike 20 miles round trip because I didn’t have gas money, picking between wash and pet food, constantly worrying about the electric bill, internet bill poor to lower to mid middle class. It’s doing something I love doing, and something I’m good at.

Last Friday I learned it all hinged on how a certain meeting went today. So this morning I’m doing wash so I’ll smell nice for the meeting, I splurged and spent some money I probably shouldn’t have on a sub. Wanted to be chipper, and confident, you know? I’m already pretty confident.

I probably talked about it for a good hour over at my mom’s Saturday.

Well about the time the dryer isn’t finished yet I get a call. It’s my mom, she had nightmares couldn’t sleep and ate 10 pills. She can’t be trusted to tell the truth so when she says “I’ll call the ambulance”. That means nothing to me. She says what she thinks people want to hear. So I go over there to make sure she actually goes to the hospital. Cussing all the way, my day has just been thrown into turmoil.

I take her to the ER, makes sure she checks in and then go off. I should mention gas is really expensive and I’m down to my last twenty and her little stunt prolly caused me to burn $20 worth of gas.
Did I mention on the way there she revealed she actually took 25 pills.
So I get to the place for the meeting two hours late. My emotions are now in chaos, how could she do this?

She will be fine, they told me when I checked on earlier today. The pills will just make her very tired for awhile. So at least there’s that.

Somehow I manage to put on a veneer of normalcy. However I am not at the top of my game. Instead of being focused at the issue at hand most of my attention is focused on appearing happy and friendly, and not how I really feel. Maybe 25% of my attention was where it needed to be.

I hope I didn’t come off looking like a retard, but who knows?

Well now I have classes and people to tutor so that kept me busy. Somehow I managed to not start ripping keys off the keyboard, and instead was polite, informative, and helpful. It wasn’t my tutee’s fault, and I’d really rather they didn’t know about my business. My job was to help them with the material. I can scream, rant, and cry on my own time.

Well as I am finishing up with the last one, I remember my mom’s cat. I have to go pick the cat up. 40 miles of unnecessary driving, meanwhile I planned to do my trig homework which is due in the morning. Now that trig homework time will be subtracted from my sleep, and my second chance to make a good impression is tomorrow. So I’ll be a tired emotional wreck trying to put on a happy face.

I’m just now getting started on trig and I can’t think straight. I don’t understand why she did this. She knew today was an important day for me. She chose to eat a bunch of pills, and then call me about it.

I’m left remembering my childhood when she did things like make us live on $20 worth of groceries for two weeks while she spent 3 times that on nicotine addict products. I’m left remembering the asshole she got involved with. A brute and bully who thought I should follow his religion, be an architect, and be someone I completely wasn’t, and he tried to enforce these edicts with violence.

I moved in with my grandfather and she followed me, bringing the brute with her. I didn’t need violent suppression. I needed to be who was. I wanted to be a stand up comedian. I wanted to learn about science and computers, other cultures.

Instead my high school years were turmoil and I gave up. She chose that brute over her own kids. I thought I put that behind me, but I see I still carry it with me.

But now I’m an adult. I’ve gotten a GED, an associate degree, I’m making something of myself. I’m so close to escaping the life of frustration I’ve known for too long. So close, and it’s a golden opportunity, especially in this economy. The job would let me save up for four year school.

And I feel like she’s actively trying to sabotage. I feel rage, I feel betrayed, I feel sadness, I feel guilt because I wonder if I’m being selfish. I still feel hope about the job. I just want to cuss and cry.

I don’t know what to feel.

Now if I don’t get this job I’ll wonder if I failed because of her. Every time I peddle through the creepy dark country side because I didn’t have enough gas to make it to my night class, I’ll wonder. Every time I do without, I’ll wonder. And I will never know.
And thinking on the future it’s my understand university will be a lot harder, will I have to balance her crap against that? What about graduate school?

All I really want to do is go to bed, my brain is empty, it has no more for today, but trig remains to be done. I guess I’ll have to squeeze blood from a turnip.

2

You’re not being selfish.

3

I think you answered your own question. There are people that thrive on codependency. If you become successful, what becomes of that relationship?

If you can’t get perspective on this, get some help. There are resources even for those that don’t have many, i.e. church, school, county clinics etc.

4

I think next time, when she says “I’ll call the ambulance”, let her do it.

And you go on with your busy day.

Have you read Friedman’s story about codependence? It changed my life. Seriously. Please let go of the rope.

5

Wow, Tao, that’s one of the best cathartic “howl to the wind” O.P.s I’ve ever read. That’s not sarcasm - I’ve posted a couple similar myself.

Anyway, hang in there. I sympathize.

6

Cut her loose.

7

That’s awful, for real. I’m sorry that your situation is such that your mom can manipulate you like that. I know a lot of people will come in here and say “don’t let your mom manipulate you like that” but if it were that easy, you wouldn’t now, wouldja?

Good luck. If you ever are down to your last penny again, PM me.

Oh also…can you can an ambulance on someone else’s behalf? I’ve never been in that position so I don’t know. But maybe if we find the answer to that, it will give you some tools for when this happens again.

8

That really sucks. What a horribly selfish thing for her to do to you on such an important day.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you get the job. Good luck.

9

Ha, some of the best job interviews are pulled off in a complete state of panic and chaos. Of course others are indeed made into a hellish nightmare. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which!

Best of luck and I feel for you. Hang in there.

10

First off, I’m really sorry to hear you had to put up with this drama today, when all you should have had to deal with was your meeting, and your own issues. I hope that you were able to present yourself well, and that you’ll get the job in spite of your mom’s sabotage. As others have said it’s often hard to tell how one appeared in that situation.

Secondly, you’ve described a chronic toxic relationship with your mother. Worse, one where she seems to be willing to do most anything to make sure she’s at the center of attention. It sounds to me as though you’ve had similar experiences with your mother acting to sabotage you on similar big days. If that’s the case, it seems to me that it’s time to check your feelings and priorities.

You can’t change your mother. You can’t control her. All you can control are the circumstances under which you’re willing to interact with her. Choose your boundaries, communicate them to her, and then enforce them. Don’t waffle on them, don’t offer up exceptions. Stick by them, and establish consequences for her when she violates those boundaries.

There is a large part of me that wants to simply tell you to dump her from your life, as Muffin suggested. It’s not my place to tell you to do that. I think it is something you should consider, especially if your mother continues to inflict her drama upon you after you try to establish boundaries with her. In the end, it’s going to be up to you. If you can find a way to keep yourself healthy and happy while keeping her in (or on the fringes of) your life, that’s great. The key point though is that your first obligation is to keeping yourself well. After you’ve got that, then see what you have left to offer your family and friends.

Lord Ashtar points out that you’re not being selfish. I agree.

I’ll even go one step further: Even if you were being selfish, being selfish is not always wrong. You are allowed to have your own life, your own goals, and own interests. You should feel free to give your own desires as much weight as your mother’s or anyone else’s.

Furthermore, I tend to react very negatively towards suicide attempts and suicidal ideation. IMNSHO only a juvenile and twisted mind is willing to use suicide to try to garner attention or to control people around them. NinetyWt’s suggestion for what to do the next time your mother pulls this shit seems 100% on target from where I’m sitting. For that matter, I’m of the opinion that anyone who manages to take 25 pills without causing concern for kidney or liver damage must have very carefully calculated what to take so that it would appear serious, without actually being a large risk for the person in question. Which is one more reason I would suggest you ignore your mother’s announcement the next time it happens.

Whatever you choose to do, or how you work things out with your mother - hang in there, and take care of yourself. Good luck and I hope we’ll hear you did get the job.

11

Yeah, I think she sabotaged you. Maybe she didn’t “intend” to, per se, but if not she sure did want attention and knew yours needed to be elsewhere.

At the very least, if you still want to keep her in your life to any extent? Stop sharing information about anything important in your life, anything you value. Talk to her enough so she gets attention and doesn’t randomly call you in the middle of the night, but don’t tell her about any important deadlines, your graduation date, anything.

Oh, and if you’d rather not trust her to call the ambulance, call 911 for her and tell them exactly what she did (if they think she’s tried to kill herself, they’re not just going to accept “I’m OK, really”), and then go do whatever important thing she’s trying to interfere with.

12

I would call her bluff and tell her she may end up in a mental hospital if she continues this way of manunipulating you! She sounds like she does have mental problems, and if she is taking the pills, I would call an ambulance and then the doctor may have her commited!

13

Ack!

If my aunt weren’t already dead I’d be wondering if we’re cousins! She used the same exact kind of shit to manipulate my uncle. Every time he’d muster up the stones to leave her she’d overdose, throw herself down the cellar stairs, go on a shoplifting spree, and one time got into a serious accident on a busy highway overpass (possibly on purpose.) So he’d be at work and get a phone call from the hospital/police.

He finally did leave her, after she blew through their life savings, caused them to default on their mortgage, and alienate my cousins. She tried the overdose trick one LAST time and went too far. He ended up in the psych ward for two weeks (and has been in and out ever since) and he was just never quite the same afterwards.

It’s sucky beyond the defininition of suckitude that she pulled her shit right before something that she knew was so important to you. For your own sanity, pul-leez take the advice in this thread to heart before she pulls you down with her.

Don’t feel guilty about it. she’s a grown woman acting like a toddler throwing a bigger and better “pay attention to me!” tantrum. She’s making bad choices, and sounds like she has been for decades. You’re not responsible for the choices she makes, and if you don’t take a stand now you’ll be getting The Dreaded Phone Call every time something that matters to you is going on.

14

Yup. Been there, divorced her.

Your situation is different, though - she’s your mom, and you can’t exactly divorce your parents.

It sounds like you need to set some boundaries. No more emergency phone calls - send her to voice mail. No more trips out to take care of her cat or whatever. She’s an adult, she can handle it. If she calls you in a drug-induced haze, hang up, and call 911. Sometimes you just have to call their bluff.

15

The hard part is admitting that you can’t help her. She has trained you since infancy to believe that if you will just give enough, do enough, do the exact right thing at the exact right time, every time, she’ll be just fine. This is a lie.

She will never be fine, can not be fine, and it is not your fault. As long as she is the one coming up with a solution, nothing will change. You have to turn her over to professionals.

If you can not bring yourself to walk away entirely, then make appointments with yourself/her in advance. On X date, for X number of minutes (you’ll notice I don’t say hours) I will spend time with/talking to , my Mother. It will stop at y time.

Decide what your boundaries are. I will do a, b, and c for my Mother, but nothing else. She must find a way to meet her other needs. Good examples of things to do are makign doctors appointments, and writing them down for her. Bad examples are grocery shopping, or carrying messages to other people, or anything which requires you to expend yoru own scarce resources, or anythign which may be open-ended. (i.e. if she agrees to a weekly counseling appointment, agree to take her to the first one, not to ‘take her to appointments’.)

And the above recommendation for voicemail is a great one.

And whatever happens, whatever has happend, whatever is happening, and whatever will happen: It. is. not. your. fault.

16

You aren’t doing your mother any favors, you know. She took the pills because she knew it would make you pay attention to her. She would become your primary focus. As long as she knows she can do it, she will continue to do so.

I’m not saying you need to cut her out of your life, but maybe you should ignore calls from her for awhile and delete her messages unheard, until you have calmed down enough that you won’t explode on her. It’ll do you both some good, I think.

17

She can only get away with what you allow her to.

Stop feeling guilty. Would you feel this guilty if it was a stranger? If not, then that’s how you have to treat her until she apologizes by leading a better life.

18

The other approach is to simply not let her know about anything important in your life. It worked for me. If she doesn’t know about your big interview, odds are she won’t “coincidentally have a crisis.”

Voicemail is a good thing too. There’s no eleventh commandment spelling out “thou shalt be a slave to your phone and answer when it rings.” I think one of mankinds greatest inventions is the phone, closely followed by the answering machine.

19

Wow, great read there, NinetyWt…thanks so much for sharing.

As to the OP, I am sure others have more useful advice, but I offer this. You’ve already gone above and beyond. You have to live life for yourself, and if that relationship (or any for that matter) is keeping you from that, it may be best to just give the responsibility BACK to the person for their own life, as in the linked story.

Good luck, it sounds like you have overcome a lot of obstacles, I doubt that this or anything else will stop you.

20

A lot of good suggestions about calling the ambulance for her and letting her find someone else to look after her cat. I would go one step further and let her calls go to voice mail and answer them when you have time for drama.

It’s amazing how people like this start taking care of their own shit when you stop taking care of it for them.