The Beginning of "The Purge"...

Ok...then...it's been a bit since the last posting...I've been tired...I'm getting old.

Costa Rica was fun, really FUN! We arrived home to Thanksgiving preparations and "catch up".

My mother is 80. 80 years old...that's..."gettin' up there". I have never doubted that my mother loves me. She does. She just has an extremely obsessive way of showing it.

Mom started life...80 years ago...as an illegitimate child. 80 years ago, that (illegitimacy) was her fault, and if not her fault, her stigma. Her mother married in desperation, five years after my mother's birth. When Mom had bonded with her Aunt and established a place in that household, Mom was "kidnapped" from that familiar home to a creepy stepfather and a neglectful narcissist of a mother. So, it's understandable that my mother "has issues".

Mom married my Dad, a man 19 years her senior. Yes, for all the reasons you might suspect. He WAS a father figure, a provider, a protector. Unfortunately, he died at 61, leaving a 42 year old widow with a 16 year old daughter (me) and a 13 year old son, and all the "old" issues firmly intact....

Mom loves me for all the reasons you see touted out on the "Dr. Phil" shows about 16 year old teenage mothers. They just want so desperately for something to love them, only them, only them, only them. They see that baby as validation. They will correct all the wrongs inflicted on them....I am her victim...

My mother was almost 26 when I was born...she had been married to my father for seven years. But, I think she still carried with her the 16 year old, unwed mother, mindset. Dad was a means to an end. My mother's whole world was (is) her children.

This is not healthy....

And, now I am her caregiver...

Mom is my "difficult person".