I have a shit awful relationship with my Mum, and have had since my DD was born just over a year ago. It began to deteriorate when my dad died 8 years ago and my mum was forced out of her job (a horrendous double whammy which had a terrible effect on her self-esteem and her sense of who she was). Little by little she withdrew into herself, left the home in London where I still live, and cooped herself up in the countryside in the house where Dad died.
My then boyfriend - now DH - and I tried our best to include her and encourage her to socialise with her friends, who often invited her to dinner, etc, but she found it increasingly hard to leave her seclusion. I went into my final year of university and took my degree, and my life moved on and hers didn't. She was depressed and I didn't know how best to help her - although I did try, and constantly felt guilty that I didn't get anywhere - and when she recovered from her depression she changed, radically.
She's always had a frightening temper and I've always been afraid of her rages. She's always been very bad at dealing with even a hint of implied criticism. But we used to be VERY close - I'm her only child and when my parents' relationship was rocky, early on, she leaned on me a lot. Now, after going through these hideous experiences, she no longer seems to be able to care for or consider anyone but herself. The prospect of typing out some of the stuff that's sent me loopy makes my stomach feel queasy, but I think it can be summed up as "The instant DD entered the world - making me a mother, as well as a child - my mum started acting like a child herself - and quite a spiteful one." This stresses me out no end, not least because she was very keen for us to have a baby before the fact. One not-too-terrible example of what sends me mad is that DD is an awful sleeper and I haven't had an unbroken night - or even 3 hours sleep in one hit - in a year, but mum always, ALWAYS tells me how tired she is because she stayed up late watching TV! She then flies into a rage if I remind her why I find it hard to sympathise.
I am hugely over-sensitive to my mum's displeasure and dread spending any time with her at all. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we live in a house that belongs to her. That was never our long-term intention - we started house-sitting for her when she moved to the country, and then were encouraged, over the next 8 years, to consider it, while not our house, definitely our home. I've lived here since I was 15, and had DD here, and love our neighbours and feel generally deeply rooted in the community. (Am about to turn 30 btw). Mum now spends most of the year travelling with her new partner - of whom we're very fond, and are delighted that she's found someone so lovely - so we don't see a great deal of her, but when she is here I have meltdown after meltdown. Anyway, she says she will need to sell this house to free up capital at some point in the future, and, while that makes me very sad, the house isn't ours and I don't consider it ours, and we need to be somewhere settled so we can think about nursery and schools for DD. I will miss it a lot but c'est la vie.
I have some capital from my dad, enough for a deposit on a home of our own, but it's tied up until 2013. After finishing at university and having a long, dispiriting period of unemployment, DH has a decent new job with salary just above the national average. I am a SAHM who works part-time as a journalist, editor and tutor and earns a grocery-buying pittance. So far so good. But I am also shit-scared of moving out as my mum has always subsidised me to some degree. I'm SO bitterly ashamed of this. In some ways I think she has used money to keep me tied to her without realising it - whenever the possibility of my striking out on my own came up in the past she kindly but firmly discouraged me, and I didn't have the willpower or confidence to cut my close (and at that time very loving) ties with her. I am really bad with confidence - I have bipolar disorder and my mental health history is full of scorched-earth depressive episodes and long arduous recoveries when I was about as employable as a used teabag. The thought that I am a useless failure is never that far away from the surface of my mind.
The upshot of all this rambling is I suppose a snivel to MN at large - please help me grow a backbone and realise I really am a grown-up and can manage without my mother! Most of all - and thank you so much to anyone who waded through this epic to the end - help me to close the chinks which my mother's rages ALWAYS find in my armour, please, please! I can't carry on shaking and getting in a huge tizz after every phonecall, let alone visit - it's not fair to my DD or my DH. Does anything about this ring a bell with anyone else?