I can't cope with my mother

[tiredcat]

This is my first time posting. I'm not a mum so I'm sorry for coming on here, but I'd really like to vent to someone. Nobody ever responds on Reddit and I can't talk to anybody in real life either.

I'm home for Christmas and I can't cope at all with my mother. She has been the same way all my life, but for some reason it's getting harder and harder to deal with her hysterics. I'm 25 now and my mother and I can hardly spend one day together without a screaming fight. I know this makes me sound really melodramatic but knowing I'm going to have to face this every time I come home honestly makes me feel like life's not worth living, and whenever I'm home I feel completely overwhelmed and fantasise about hurting myself just to escape, even though I'm not depressed.

This evening, she became really angry over the fact that my father had asked me to pick up some fresh thyme the last time I was in the supermarket, which was about a week ago. I didn't really think anything of it at the time. My mother said that she had planned all of the dinners that we would be eating as a family over the Christmas period and none of them included fresh thyme, and she was furious that my father was trying to interfere with her plans. She started a huge argument and spent probably over an hour ranting and shouting about thyme, dragging me into the conflict by asking me repeatedly why I had helped my father to undermine her and ignoring whatever I said to try to de-escalate the situation. Her ranting escalated and escalated until I got frustrated and told her that the thyme wasn't a big deal, and she completely lost it. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, calling me a demon and a c-word over and over again until I lost it too and screamed back, telling her I thought she was disgusting.

Then, she went to her bedroom and I followed her and told her to give the Christmas gift that I gave her yesterday back (I regret this now but I was lashing out because I was angry.) She threw it down the stairs and I left. For the past couple of hours she's been intermittently silent and screaming that I'm a demon. She's claiming to my father that I punched her and beat her up (I never touched her) and that she can't hear out of one of her ears. She's also calling me an evil witch and accusing me of taking part in seances when I was at university (I never did), calling me a fat b-word, a demonic little b-word, and threatening to call the police and report me for beating her.

Just now, I went outside without a coat or anything, just to escape her for a minute (her shouting is extremely loud), and she locked me out of the house, then stood in front of the glass door goading me while refusing to let me back inside. She opened the door for one of our cats and when I saw it was open I hurried towards her to try to get back inside because I was freezing and she shouted to the neighborhood at the top of her lungs that I had just assaulted her. I was nowhere near her, I couldn't possibly have touched her. She eventually let me inside the house again, pretending that she was too scared to come near me because I'm a dangerous demon.

I know the hysteria and name calling and false allegations are going to drag on for days because they always do; she has episodes like this all the time. I go through this every single time I come home but I feel like I'm reaching my limit now. My father says I shouldn't be so upset by her calling me a c-word and a demon because that's just the way she talks. It really upsets me, though, especially because she genuinely considers herself a devout catholic. Sorry for how long this post is, I just wanted to rant but I'm genuinely considering calling the police sometime soon and telling them everything. She has a long history of violence and when I was a child she used to throw me around quite a bit whenever she was angry but my father says it wasn't as big of a deal as I think. My brother gets really frustrated with me whenever I fight back, and he and my father both say I need to just shut up and deal with it quietly. They think I've completely overreacted tonight. AIBU to be totally unable to cope..?

There is something you can do: you can leave. You can give her a warning that if she doesn't treat you decently you're going to leave, and follow through.

Stop thinking of her place as "home". You now have your own home - I understand that it isn't great being there at the moment, but that will change. Work towards having your own, peaceful home where nobody abuses you.

Your father and brother are almost as bad as her - they just want you to absorb her crap so they don't have to. Ignore them.

Does your brother live with them? Does he have a partner? If not, probably one day he will - and probably they won't be willing to put up with this nonsense. Maybe he won't either, when he has a partner and maybe kids who he cares about more than them. And the same for you probably - your protective instincts will kick in and you won't be willing to subject them to it. It's going to happen, so why not start now? When she abuses you, leave. She won't change - nothing will change unless you change it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. (Edit: Sorry to hear you were in a similar situation but I'm glad you have escaped!) I've already bought my train ticket but going back sooner might be a good idea... I'm avoiding the flat because I know it's going to be horrible at first - whenever anybody's annoyed at me I start shaking and I can't sleep because I can't deal with it at all.

For clarification re my flat situation (this is all so silly): I objected to being asked to take out the bins when the others were refusing to clean/hoover anything and leaving the kitchen in a disgusting state with food all over the floor, dishes piled up in the sink for days etc. Ordinarily I'm extremely clean and tidy (and quiet)!

If I left every time she insulted me or called me a name I would never last more than five minutes in this house... but it's true that we've all effectively proved to my mother that treating people horribly doesn't have any consequences, which was a big mistake in hindsight.

My brother does live with them, and no, he doesn't have a partner but he's 20 and completely doted on at home so it suits him (my mother calls him her little angel, does all his laundry, cleans his room and cooks all his meals). I think my father has some sort of stockholm sydrome - my mother used to beat him and do all sorts of sadistic things to him but he'll still lie for her and defend her no matter what, even when he knows it's not necessarily going to benefit him... it's bizarre. I think he can't let himself confront the reality of what has happened to him, and he might be holding onto hope that she'll change one day.

@tiredcat Yeah sorry if I gave the impression the chores stuff is your fault... just my brain x

I was trying to express something like 'give your flatmates nothing to moan about - this works whether they are horrible or not'. That removes one source of tension, while you get on with: ignore them as far as you can; head down, make plans, move.

Ok, so leave after five minutes then. It might teach her to behave better, and even if it doesn't, it's still a good result for you, because you're not being abused any more.

You're right about your father, completely. So the next step is to absorb the lesson that him and his dynamic with your mother are teaching you. He's spent what is presumably the bulk of his adult life just accepting abuse and hoping something will change. How has that worked out for him? Don't make the same mistake; don't waste a big part of your life waiting for something that won't happen.

It's understandable that your brother feels the need to appease her - he's dependent on her, and has to be around her all the time. But you don't. You are living the life of an independent adult; are you going to take orders from someone who effectively lives like a kid? If you're worried about your brother, think of yourself as setting a good example to him of how it's possible to break free from her and her nonsense. Don't ask him for his permission or forgiveness for just living like a normal young adult and not giving into abuse. One day he'll see things from your perspective, probably. But for now, you're the big sister - show him that standing up to your parents and being independent from them is reasonable, and realistic.

Sorry to hear it didn’t work for you. I’m a huge believer in it and perhaps you aren’t ready at the moment/ haven’t found the right therapist/ need to get stronger to put some of the work into practice. Either way you will find a resolution to this and you are not at all in the wrong x

Your choice. Visit or don’t.

Mildly interesting update: I've been out all day but I just found out she's been secretly listening in to all the conversations I've had with my father after she has "gone to bed" every night since I got home via a camera in the kitchen that she monitors non stop... this isn't news because we've always known she uses cameras to listen to/spy on us but I'm a bit taken aback because I genuinely thought she was sleeping. She's listened in on some personal conversations that I really wouldn't have wanted her to hear. Also, she woke me up at 6am by jumping up and down above me (her room's directly above mine) and she's been calling me Belzebub all day...

Did she always have the religious delusions or is this a new thing?

She was raised catholic but was non-practicing for most of her adult life until the last couple of years. Apparently, she started to think I might be possessed when I was around 3 but she never really talked to me about it. Recently (well, since the pandemic really) she's become heavily interested in catholicism, she's been listening to lots of podcasts and watching YouTube videos about it almost all day every day, praying and going to mass etc and she's been bringing up demonic possession a lot.