The Mother Load, Part One: Opening This To the Floor

So I have a lot of ... angst (?) surrounding my mother (often referred to as 'The Load'). I need other people's opinions, points of view, etc. There are a couple of different issues, and blogging about them is my way of trying to sort this all out in my head. I apologize in advance if this doesn't flow very smoothly.

Issue #1: This past spring when my father had open-heart surgery, I flew to New York and stayed with my parents for three weeks. My mother currently can't drive, and after my dad's surgery he wasn't allowed to drive. I did everything from driving my mother to the hospital every day my father was there, to cooking dinners, cleaning the house, running errands, to playing secretary to my dad, who was out of work and looking for a job.

Not to brag, but I'm *REALLY* good at playing the role of Nurse Nancy. I know this. My family knows this. I'm the person you want with you when anything medical is going down. While in NY, my brother (who had just moved from SF to LA and started a new job) flew in to spend a week with my dad. My mother acted as if the Great White Hope had arrived. In her eyes, everything I did was wrong, I was useless, I was in the way, I just generally sucked.

At one point my mother had just come home from shopping, and bags of food were on the kitchen island. She asked me to put some things away in the garage, and I promptly did it while she was putting things in the freezer. I then went back to the kitchen and stood there, waiting for her to tell me how I could best help next (taking initiative with my mother is not appreciated like it is in the workforce). When my mother turned around and saw that the bags of things she'd wanted to go in the garage were no longer on the kitchen island, she screamed at me. That's right, I did exactly what she asked me to do right away, and I got screamed at.

The next time my mother went food shopping she bought large packages of chicken that she wanted broken down into smaller packages before being frozen. My brother asked me to help him with this, and my mother said "No, Green will fuck it up, I don't want her to help." My brother gestured to me to continue washing my hands anyway while he told my mother I was more than capable of putting pieces of raw chicken in ziplock bags.

A couple of friends called a few times to check on me. Another friend sent some home-baked goodies to me in New York. My mother asked why these people were checking on ME. Her point was that *I* hadn't had surgery so there was nothing about me to be checked on. The following ideas were lost on her:

a. HER friends and relatives were calling to check on HER, so it shouldn't have been unreasonable to think MY friends would call to check on ME

b. Perhaps it was a little stressful for me, an adult daughter to spend three weeks living with my parents, putting my own life on hold.

Things like this went on the entire time I was in New York. I kept my mouth shut for the most part. I reminded myself that I was there to help my father, and that it would not be conducive to his recovery for me to get in power struggles with my mother. When I finally flew home to SF, I barely talked with my mother at all for the next two months, unless she answered the phone when I was calling to see how my father was doing.

I am really hurt. I am really not interested in being hurt any longer. I saw my parents (mostly my mother) in a way I wasn't able to when I was younger, and some things have been made clear to me. Like the fact that I will ALWAYS be second-best to my brother, Golden Boy. Like the fact that in my mother's eyes, despite what she says, I will never be deserving of friends.

Right now, I am at a point in my life where I don't want to be around people who make me feel badly. I already feel badly enough about myself and really don't need any help. My goal is to bring my self-esteem UP. Not down.

So naturally, you would say, just don't talk to your mother anymore. Should be easy, she's across the country. Simple, right? Ehhhh...not so much. The problem is, I have heard through Golden Boy that my mother has noticed that in the last several months I've become cold and distant, and she doesn't know why. She has already apologized a few times for screaming at me and generally treating me like shit while I was in New York. She blamed it on the stress of worrying about my dad. I told her I forgive her, but I'm not sure I really do. Even if I do, I certainly don't want to put myself in a position to be treated that way again.

My mother's health is not the best. She has no friends, and for a long time while I thought she was doing me a favor by being my friend, the truth was we were our only friends. I'm not in that position anymore, but she still is, and even moreso now than before, especially with her non-driving status.

The question I'm putting out to the floor: do I tell her why I'm being cold and distant or not?

Things to consider:

- I don't need to for myself.
- I don't want to hurt HER, I just want to protect MYSELF.
- Despite whatever my mother says if I DO confront her about this, she will not be able to change. I know this for a fact.
- What I want in the end is to have a normal mother-daughter relationship with my mother, which to me means talking to her every week or less, maybe seeing her once a year, etc.

Opinions, ideas, everything, are welcome. Part Two will come later.