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The Battle
The battle for ownership was on! Although I own my house, my mother wanted to desperately be a part of it. I just foolishly assumed that she accepted my “No, you cannot visit me” as the final answer in the matter of ever setting foot on my property. I was so wrong.
My mother led me to foolishly believe that she would just sadly settle for not crossing the boundary line that I had prescribed for her. I never knew that she was actually plotting to get her hands on a set of my house keys so that she could move in with me. It all first began with her own home issues.
Strangely, one of my siblings (brother) and I became quite close during this home battle. We talked frequently, and he shared with me much of what he had never known about the life we all had back when we were children. It was at this time that my brother was experiencing the narcissistic craziness that involved our mother.
My brother was shocked by the devaluing behavior he was experiencing from our mother towards him, and for the first time, I felt satisfyingly vindicated in knowing that he was could finally identify with me. For so long, my brother was pitted against me by our shared mother. He did not experience the same abuses that I experienced as a child. In fact, my brother was the golden child and could do no wrong, and in his eyes, our mother could do no wrong either.
Anyway, on a whim it seemed that my mother decided to sell her home and move out it. Neither my siblings nor I knew of her relocation plans, but I was already set to protect myself from her presence. I was not going to allow her to just show up to move in with me. That was not happening. I was seriously prepared to reject her and involve the law if I was pushed to that space. I had fought to hard and long to have the freedom that I enjoyed without being controlled and manipulated by a parent.
My Mother’s Sudden Move
My mother had lived in her home since she moved out from the home she shared with my dad after they divorced almost 25 years ago. So, imagine my surprise when she decided to actually sell her home. There was really no rhyme or reason to the her decision. It was madness, and madness was exactly what it became … at least for my brother.
My mother moved in with my brother! She had somehow manipulated him into allowing her to live with him and his family under the pretense that she would help him and his wife with their children and their monetary expenses. Although I felt sorry for him and the new experiences of living with a narcissistic mother, I was relieved for me. A battle with her was no longer mine … so I thought.
All I could think was that if my brother did not know the narcissistic craziness that involved our mother, he was going to become well-acquainted with it after actually living with her as an adult. Despite us growing up in the same household, he was always somehow shielded from having the same experiences that I had growing up. He was not abused in the same way that I was abused by our parents. He was the golden child. He was my mother’s favorite child.
My brother actually received special treatment when we were children and everyone in the house was aware that he was the special one. He never had a reason to fight for his right to be an individual in the same way that I had to fight. He was catered to in ways that placed him on a pedestal. Surely as an adult, my mother was now going to knock him off of the pedestal leveled him up on now that they would be living together. My brother was going to find out how much he had not grown into adulthood after spending time with my mother under the same roof.
Once my mother moved in with my brother, she played it cool for a while. She had nowhere else to go, and she was basically living with my brother and his family at the fraction of what it cost her to pay expenses in the home she sold. Life for my mother and brother seemed quite nice and pleasant on the surface, and for a time, my brother took opportunities to rub in my face how great his relationship with our mother was for him. Of course, I knew the truth.
I knew that the great relationship my brother thought he had with my mother was nothing more than a ruse my mother used to triangulate my brother and me as she had always done when my siblings and me were children. In fact, my brother and mother always shared a strange symbiotic relationship since I can remember. They are close even when they do not get along. This is a great contrast to the relationship my mother and I have together. We actually do not have a relationship. We never connected when I was a child. We never connected in a true relatable way at all.
The House Of Antics That My Mother Built
Needless to say, my mother moved in with my brother. For a time, life was grand for them, and she somewhat left me alone. My brother did not leave me alone, however. He reached out to me constantly as the pressure of living with our mother became almost unbearable for him. My brother said that our mother was a hard person to live with now that he is an adult. He said that her subtle insults, provocations, and grand entitlement was really getting to him in a major way.
My mother provoked my brother a lot with her toxic behavior but would flip things around by gaslighting him. He nearly cried in a rage trying to explain to me how she had begun to torment his life and the lives of his wife and children. He felt powerless to do anything about it. He felt embarrassed as well because he is an adult, but he did not want to be seen as cruel towards his mother since she had already begun a smear campaign to destroy his reputation as a good son now that she was living with him.
My mother lied about my brother and his wife’s treatment of her while living with his family. She berated him in ways that he had not ever experienced from her. She called him names. She disrespected him as the man of his house. She also did things to bring dissention amongst his children against him. She also withdrew her financial contributions to the household while also attempting to receive monetary help from him with the promise of payback that always fell through from her. To say the least, my mother was not the ideal tenant.
After continuous calls from my brother that often disrupted my peace, though, I eventually told him to kick our mother out of his house. Surprisingly, he did not have to tell her to leave his home. In the middle of one night she packed her backs and left his house without telling anyone about her destination. Although my brother was partially relieved by my mother’s sudden departure, he was bothered by her actions as well.
My brother called me in a frantic sounding voice to let me know of the news, but he assured me that he was not even worried about her. He was worried about me. He said that our mother was planning to find me and “crash” my space. He said that our mother believed that as our mother she deserved to be taken care of by her children. She had complained that my brother was not doing a good job of taking care of her. He said that she constantly referred to me and what she could do living in my home. My brother said that she imagined herself in my home all of the time to the point that she became obsessive about it.
My brother told me emphatically that our mother’s plan had been all along to get to my home. She had sold her home for the purpose of getting closer to me. By selling her home, she would become “homeless”. In her mind, her children would have no choice but to take her. She believed that we would be obligated to have her live with one of us. She had manipulated my brother with her plan, and now, my brother feared that she had vanished to set her sights on me. My mother had mysteriously left my brother’s home so that she could make her way to me. She was coming for me.
Does she make it?
Find out in my next post. Stay tuned …
My Voice Unchained 