Sorry this is really long, but i don't want to drip feed and need to get this all out.
Maybe i should start here: My parents divorced 20 years ago after a horrible marriage. My dad cheated, she took him back, they hated each other and finally split much to the relief of us kids who were teenagers by then. The divorce was horrible and everyone fell out. I was the only sibling able to maintain a relationship with both parents and siblings but it was horrendous. I grew up in a loveless household and both parents were manipulative. The divorce was the best outcome.
Since then although I don't live nearby or at times even in the same country, I've been my mum's support. She's never gone a day without banging on about how hard done by she was, about how awful my dad was/is and the cheating blah blah blah. I stuck by her. I accepted her new partner as my step dad a few years later, and then helped her through his sudden death a while later. I spoke publicly at his funeral, took her to pray with his body at the morgue. I have been there for her at every turn and defended her to the hilt. There has been a role reversal and I have felt more like her mother than her daughter.
Now she's ill. It's going to be a long drawn out process of mental and physical deterioration. I supported her through a suicide attempt. I have helped her to plan for the future and put support in place to help her keep her independence for as long as possible. I have learned to tolerate her rambling about my cheating father, but it's not easy. Challenged, she flies into a rage, suicide threats, utter devastation. I have learned to manage her in a way by steering the conversation.
Last week she had an old friend from the town we grew up in to visit for a week. Fine. My brother told me is was very cosy and they might be getting together. All very nice.
This week she announces he's moving in to be her carer.
To justify that it's not rushing in, she drops the bomb that they actually had an affair for about a year when she was married to my dad.
So now here I am, feeling very hurt.
How dare she play the victim? How dare she manipulate me in to believing she was the innocent party to my dad's cheating? It's not like the subject of infidelity never came up, she's been banging on about it for years.
I'm so upset I can't speak to her. I feel embarrassed not just that probably people in the town must have known that she was a slut, but that I have defended her to the rest of the family who now get to laugh and point at just what a fool I've been. And believe me they will.
My brother tells me, she wants to ask my opinion on her boyfriend moving in, but that it seems her mind is made up. She is oblivious to the effect her revelation has had, as if it is inconsequential. I haven't spoken to her.
So what do I do now? She's an adult, can do as she pleases, infact if she's found love that's great. I'm happy for her. But how do I move on from the lies and deceit when she's mentally unable to cope with a proper discussion or even to cope with hearing how upset I am without downing a pint of paracetamol tablets. Or what about when he realises she's a complete fruit loop now and changes his mind. Who picks up the pieces?
I'm such an idiot. I want to walk away from all of the family now. This has opened up old wounds about my dad and siblings too and I want out.
Fuuuuuck.
My younger brother said the nicest thing to me yesterday when I said I feel such a fool. He said that nobody will think I'm a fool, just that I am a better daughter than she is a mother. 