I apologise in advance that this is a LONG post... But I need to give you the full facts. Bear with me!
Bit of background first. I'm 41, live with my DP, no DC yet (hoping to adopt in next couple of years), we work FT and are really happy as a couple.
The major fly in the ointment is my mother (I can't bring myself to call her my 'D'M, for which the reason will become clear in this post). She's 62, lives alone in nice sheltered accommodation and she's been an alcoholic since 2003.
I have always had a strained relationship with her, she fell pregnant with my older DB out of wedlock, didn't have a home or a job and ended up having to give him up for adoption. I came along two years later, premature and very sick as a baby, I even had my last rites read to me by a priest as it was so touch and go. Then another two years later my younger DB arrived. Our parents split when I was about 4-5 y/o.
As long as I can remember, my mother has favoured my younger DB over me, I noticed it in part as a child. Like he would do something cheeky and mother would laugh and cuddle him, so I would invariably copy what he did and get a bollocking, I was expected to help round the house whereas he sat there like a little demi-god and didn't have to lift a finger as "he was a boy", Mother used to call him her little prince... that sort of thing. Family have since told me as an adult that they were always pulling her up on the favouritism, especially when we went to stay with our Nan in the holidays and she'd unpack our case to find DB's clothes were all brand new with tags, whereas mine where looking fit for a bin! She always denied it, but it was very obvious my family say.
This favouritism continued throughout childhood and into adulthood, my DB messed about at school, got in to trouble with the police, flitted about from one dead end job to another, got into fights, but could never do anything wrong in mother's eyes. Whereas, I worked hard at school, got decent grades, paid my own way as soon as I started working PT aged 15, bought my own house in my early 20s and paid for my wedding etc. Never asked her for anything, although acknowledgement of my achievements would have been nice.
After she'd split with our Dad, he wasn't about much in our life, he's a nice person, but selfish and feckless. Mother remarried when I was 6 and after a year or so, SD's temper started to show and he started getting violent. He and my mother would have almighty physical ding dongs where they both were violent to each other, then they started to take the violence out on me, with my SD 75% of the time and my mother the other 25% in hurting me.
I was punched, slapped, slammed into doors, thrown about from one end of the room into the opposite wall, thrown out into the garden the rain in my night dress and locked outside for answering back once. SD once grabbed me by the throat and threw me backwards off a breakfast bar stool in front of my friend for questioning him. My mum also regularly beat me with stiletto heels or a belt, my brother who was a little shit would only ever get a telling off.
Another time a local lad told my SD that I had thrown stones at him (I hadn't) and (as it turns out) SD was having an affair with the lad's mum, he came storming out of the house, screamed at me for my supposed violence to this lad and dragged me all the way back home by my hair as I was screaming in pain and humiliation.
The only time my mother would ever step in was when he was close to hospitalising me. She would say "Stop, we don't want the police or social services involved." So self-preservation, rather than preventing me further harm.
Anyway, fast forward, she left him when I was 16 because of the affair, but had a good few months of both of them refusing to leave the house and every night they were up screaming and fighting which each other. I was doing my GCSEs at the time and ended up having a nervous breakdown after finishing them and ended up on Prozac for a decade.
After I moved out in my teens, I had a ton of counselling, managed to kick the pills and reconcile my shitty childhood and useless parents. I still saw my mother, but on a fairly arm's-length basis. And I consider myself well-balanced, successful, popular and kind (and modest!!), but seriously I am proud that I have made myself a good life when it could have gone the other way so easily. My counsellour believed that my mother was actually very jealous of me.
Mother met a really nice man when I was 19 and living in London. and she and my DB moved in with him, I even moved back for a while until I met my now ex-DH.
Also, she'd been bleating on for years about how desperate she was to find her eldest long-lost DS. So I spent two years trying to find him and when I did, she made zero effort with him, effectively rejecting him all again. (He and I have a close relationship to this day).
In 2003, it all kicked off. Mother's DP decided he wanted to end their relationship, it had just run its course, no dramas, violence, or affairs, he had decided to wait until after my wedding to tell her, sadly it was the week we got back from honeymoon and WW3 kicked off. Cut a very long story short, she turned to drink, had to move in with me and my new DH, was getting drunk and abusive every night, threatening suicide and so began the years of misery where we are today.
She's even more vile a person when drunk and takes umbrage to me as I don't pander to her as much as others do and I tell her how it is. She's slowly over the years lost her friends, alienated all her family, lost her job, lost her house, lost her good looks and just become a bitter and more twisted version of herself. She was extremely lucky to get a flat in her sheltered accommodation considering her age.
Her behaviour was one of the factors contributing to my marriage breakdown and my DP after that absolutely hated her as she was so incredibly vile towards him and me.
It all came to a head about 8 years ago when younger DB met a decent woman and they decided to get married. DB decided he wanted to invite mother's second husband. Bear in mind I'd had 10 years on anti-depressants and years of counselling to get over the violence I endured as a child, my DB conveniently doesn't recall any of this, ex-SD was only ever lovely to my DB.
Anyway, his DW to be knew about the history and asked DB to put me first and uninvite the ex-SD, which DB did. My mother then calls me up screaming at me (bear in mind it's been me wiping her arse since losing her job and home and helping her out with food and money etc.) calling me every name under the sun for "making DB uninvite his DD", erm our feckless dad was coming to the wedding, ex-SD isn't his DD.
I then pointed out that I never interfered, my SIL to be had been sensitive enough to recognise he shouldn't be there. I lost my shit with her and asked how she can justify how much I was beaten as a child, she replied "All parents hit their kids." I pointed out that this wasn't true and smacking and beating were two different things, especially as I was almost hospitalised regularly. I asked her what she would do if she now saw a 16st 6ft man beating a whip thin 7 year old, she said she would step in. I said you didn't when it was me and she's replied "You were a bitch, you deserved it." I was gobsmacked and replied heartbroken, "No I wasn't, I was a child." and hung up.
Since then, both DBs have moved away and washed their hands off of her as she's getting worse and more vile with every month that passes, none of her siblings speak to her and she probably only had three friends left.
As I am her only family local for 100 miles, I was put down as Next of Kin despite keeping her very much at arm's length and this is where the phone calls started, the warden at the home calling me as mother has been unpleasant to other residents, she even pinned a dear old lady up against the wall and threatened to smash her face in for daring to knock at mother's door while she was trying to have a lie in!
I was getting calls from her all the time, self-pitying, crying, moaning abut nonsensical things, blaming everyone else for er problems and just constant "woe is me" behaviour.
Three years ago she was told she has first stages of cirrhosis, but refuses to quit drinking. She's been in hospital more times than I can count and usually discharges herself as "she's bored", "hates the staff" or simply as she can't drink in hospital.
But what has been the final nail in the coffin is this year, she's started taking to calling for an ambulance about every two weeks, for really minor things, swollen legs for example. Her legs are swollen as her liver is failing and her abdomen and legs are retaining fluid. She lives a £5 taxi from hospital but calls 999 herself or pulls the read cord in her flat and they call one and then call me every time.
When the paramedics arrive, she then refuses to go to hospital, they then spend an hour trying to persuade her, all the time they could be attending people in more need. Half the time when she does go with them, she kicks off in hospital because of the waiting and usually discharges herself, before calling the ambulance again the following week for the same thing. It's never ending and exhausting for all involved.
I finally lost my shit in June thsi year, I was at a festival and got a call from the red cord call centre and the warden, she had asked for an ambulance for her swollen legs again and when it arrived, she asked them to change a light bulb and fix her land line phone!!!!!!
She refused to talk to me when I called from the festival, kept telling me to fuck off, so I told her fried to tall her to change her Next of Kin to some other mug and to stay out of my life. Then blocked her number and on Facebook etc.
I'm ashamed to say that my life has been much nicer and less stressful last 5 months since I told her to fuck off for good. Then last week, I find out she's in hospital again, but nobody can get anything for her as my little DB doesn't ever answer his phone and is now her Next of Kin. She kept trying to contact me too, I refused to speak to her. She's since discharged herself and the warden thinks mother will be dead in next 6 months. Which is hard to hear TBH.
Mother told warden and friend she's been drinking more heavily recently, which put her back in hospital last week "Because of her daughter not talking to her", she takes no responsibility for her actions.
I have a friend who is a strict Christian and she was making me feel like I was BU last week as I wouldn't visit her or take her calls and friend says I should understand my mother has an illness. But my well-meaning friend hasn't had to endure what I have.
I said that I was living this illness with her was making me ill too, I had another mini breakdown through the stress of it all a few years back, but counselling when I was young meant I was better equipped to deal with it.
When she's in my life, she makes me miserable, it affects my work, my relationship and causes me worry. My friend said I should make amends before she dies, but it's not as easy as that.
She's a stranger to me now, I look at her photos and feel nothing for her, she's chipped away at any feelings of love I ever had slowly since I was born, which have been exasperated since she became an alcoholic. Plus she's been given six months to live countless times and keeps on dodging death somehow.
Sorry this post is an essay, truly am. But WWYD?