Eight months ago my mom moved here from Florida. I had lived away from her for almost 25 years and I’ll admit that it was on purpose. To say that it’s been an unpleasant time is putting it mildly and I don’t really know how much of this I can take.
I’ve told her time and again that I cannot and will not be her caretaker. I’ve tried to establish boundaries about what I will and won’t do, but those are just ignored. The retirement place where she lives has transportation to the doctor, grocery store, drugstore, but she refuses to use it for anything but the doctor. I said I wasn’t going to pick up her meds from the store, but ended up doing it. Now she calls me whenever she has a prescription that needs to be picked up. When I said I wasn’t going over to her place to open the flowers my brother sent for Mother’s Day, she said, “then I guess they’ll die”. That’s the kind of stuff I deal with. She’s even gone as far to tell all of her friends that moving her here was a ploy so I wouldn’t have to travel to Florida if she got sick.
When she was in the hospital for two weeks she was diagnosed with acute anxiety attacks and given medication, which worked while she was in the hospital. Today she left a voicemail saying she’d already taken several Xanax, something else, and felt like taking the rest. Since I didn’t answer, she called my Dad and Stepmom and told them the same thing. Fortunately, my Dad got the phone and laid out her options…assisted living, moving back to Florida, or counseling. Problem is, this has been suggested over and over and over, but she does nothing to help herself.
The bottom line is it is driving me crazy. I started taking anxiety meds, I lost weight while she was in the hospital because of stress (she told me congrats on the weight loss), and I constantly have conversations with her in my head about her issues. I cannot keep going around and around and around with her. She does nothing to help herself, yet expects the rest of us to deal with her and her issues. Nothing I do is good enough. Of the 100 things I do for her, she remembers the one I didn’t do. I’m just not wired to put up with this kind of crap and don’t know where to turn.
3leggeddog 