beautymark75 member for 19 weeks 2 days

I am really at a loss. I am smack dab in the middle of yet another inflated, drama filled dispute with my mother. I am so tired of the cycles she and I have gone through over the years, and so tired of her irrational behavior that I have decided to not answer my mother's phone calls or text messages. As of right now, it has been 5 days since I spoke to my mother (4 since I have texted her) and she has since been to her psychiatrist and has convinced my brother that "Danielle (me) has me so low right now that I don't think I'll ever recover." -That was the text message my brother forwarded me today.

I just don't have the strength to go down the same co-dependent circles with her. My mom has put me through so much pain, and she has never gotten to a place where we can sit down and talk about it like two mature adults. I am capable of talking out interpersonal conflicts with others, even when it is very difficult, so I know it is possible for me.

My mom, who suffers from bipolar disorder, alcoholism, anxiety, (all diagnosed) and in my opinion extreme narcissism, is the most irrational person I know. Over the years I have slowly began to understand that she might not have the ability to change that about herself. I sympathize with that, but at the same time, I don't know how to reasonably distance myself from the emotional abuse, manipulation, and dysfunction that comes with her sometimes untreated conditions.

I have decided to ignore her manic voice mails and text messages because if I entertain them, I get caught in a vicious cycle of defending myself, arguing back and forth, and feeling like I am thrown back to my tumultuous days of adolescence when I had no choice but deal with this shit every day.

And as any family systems theorist knows, this hardly involves just my mom and me. Now my brother (who is painstakingly loyal to my mom) has made it his mission to express how horrible I am for "making" my mom have another break down. It is so sick. He keeps justifying her behavior and condemning my choice of distancing myself from her by saying, "but she is your mother."

To me, that is all the more reason to break free from her. Mother's aren't supposed to hit below the belt when they are upset with you-my mom does, and she is damn good at it. She is the master of throwing things in my face when it helps her "make a case" as to why I am such an insensitive, ungrateful, child.

All of this is so difficult because I try to look at the bigger picture, and I try to think to myself, if my mom dies tomorrow, will I be okay with the way I handled things today. I honestly think I would be okay because in my heart of hearts I know I am not being spiteful. I am just trying to protect myself from a hurtful person who just so happened to give birth to me. I feel more guilty that I wouldn't feel guilty! -if that makes any sense.

It also hurts that my brother is pushing me to handle this in a way that is convenient for him, especially knowing that he only gets my mom's side of the story because I refuse to tell him anything, in the hopes of not making a bad situation worse. I know my mom is driving him CRAZY with all of this, but he is a grown man! He has to make his own boundaries too.

Recently I realized that I have spent much of my life being the "fixer" or the "savior" in my dysfunctional family. Since I have started becoming healthier emotionally, those in my family who are still operating in a dysfunctional system, are not taking well to my new boundaries. Part of me is okay with that, but the other part carries their condemning, accusatory voices in the back of my head all the time and I swear, the stress of it resides like a ball of knots right in my lower back.

I wish there was a way to know for sure if I was doing the right thing by distancing myself from my mom, or what the right thing is. I trust myself with most things and think that I have a pretty good sense of how to handle crisis situations in my life. When it comes to issues with my mom though, that strong, healthy, person I have become temporarily dissolves.

As if it could not get any worse, my mom has tried to commit suicide at least 4 times in my lifetime which adds an extra sting to the text message she sent my brother. "Danielle has me so low that I don't know if I'll ever recover." Yeah. Now I have the the looming threat that my mom might kill herself because I have chosen not to enable her biting criticism, manipulation, and mind control. WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?????

The crazy thing is that she is capable of doing it again. Her other attempts were "unsuccessful" because people found her in time. The last time she tried, I went to see her in the hospital and when I told her I was glad she was alive, she said, "I'm not. I can't even kill myself right." She has no idea the kind of impact her actions have had on me over the years. She has no idea how difficult it has been to readjust to her divorces, step families, and men who have no idea what they are in for, and I know that she'll never be in a place to understand. So what do I do? What do I do?