I would appreciate hearing the views of other people on this because I honestly have no idea whether or not I am being unreasonable and feel that other perspective is needed.
Long post, I am sorry. I will be really grateful for any advice or comments that are shared here.
So for context, I have recently finished a postgrad university degree - I am a mature student - age 30. I have moved in with my Mum for 2.5 months, until early Jan when I will move to my new place.
She is 69 and has both memory and concentration issues that sometimes are very bad and other times a lot better. She has pretty much always been this way but things have definitely worsened as of late.
Last night when we were about to sit down to dinner she started behaving strangely and I knew that something was up. She was sort of eyeballing me and shuffling around in the corner of the living room trying (poorly) to disguise whatever it was she was going. I noticed that she put on a pair of kind of fancy shoes that she doesn't ordinarily wear, and then wander off.
A few minutes later I went to go and grab my phone charger and walked in on her (didn't know which room she was in) counting a load of cash. It looked to be around £200. She shrieked when she saw me and tried to cover it up but I had evidently already seen it. I apologised for startling her and left the room.
She then shoved the envelope up her top (thinking I had not seen) and, whilst all of this was going on she was receiving a constant stream of audible text message notifications. Not like her to receive so many texts at once and I could see from afar that they were very short messages of between 1-3 words, so perhaps arranging a time and place to meet?
I then said to her 'if you would rather go and meet whoever you were planning to see then we can eat this later and warm it up -- I really don't mind' (we were having a takeaway and it arrived much earlier than both of us were anticipating).
She got a little flustered and I just asked her straight up 'are you going to meet a dealer?' 'are you off to buy coke or codeine phosphate'? I said I did not judge her but that I would appreciate her honesty.
She got very upset and irritable and told me that she was always careful, and that she did not want to me made to feel accountable to me in her own home.
Fair enough. She is an independent and autonomous adult and I don't wish to encourage on her freedoms or choices. However -- she lives in an area that is not all that safe, particularly at night, and apart from worrying about her safety going out to meet goodness knows who to buy goodness knows what when its dark makes me extremely uncomfortable, especially given her other vulnerabilities. She also demanded to know 'why' I had asked her if she was going to buy drugs and said angrily 'have you been going through my things?!' this is in my view, tantamount to an admission, and I had absolutely not gone through any of her things.
I think she thinks I am puritanical as I don't do drugs or drink or anything like that. She took drugs throughout my childhood but was always very functional and ran her own small and somewhat business. The picture is different now though and she struggles with quite a lot of things due to her memory and concentration issues. She lives in sheltered housing and whilst she is okay financially she certainly does need to keep an eye on things as she is not exactly flush. Another worry there, because I don't see how she can afford to spend £200 on drugs. I don't judge her -- she has had an extremely difficult life. But I evidently don't think this is the answer.
I am really upset to be honest. This is triggering for me because of my childhood experiences with this. But also because she is now a pensioner and still behaving like she is 19 and being (in my view) totally reckless. I understand that she is very afraid of ageing because she has been vocal about it. She also has hypertension and arthritis, as well as a more recent health issue with daily bladder incontinence. I wish she would take more care of her health.
We only have each other -- no other family at all to speak of, so I really feel quite responsible for her in lots of ways and I worry so much about the prospect of losing her.
AIBU in trying to gently and kindly but firmly challenge these choices and behaviours?
Should I just leave her to it (which would make me very sad and also super worried for her health and wellbeing). I don't want to push her away or be infantilising and oppressive, but I am really at a loss as to what to do now.
Thank you for reading and for any advice!