Dirty Laundry

[Iroscato]

With your current resources, there really is bugger-to-fuck all you can do to help them, much as you might want to. It's a complicated and horrible situation which a young man (assuming you are young, and a male, mea culpa on both counts if not) should NOT be dealing with.
Believe me, I know what it's like to deal with shit from a close family member. Your sister and my mother would get on great, except my mother's a soulless cunt who destroys everyone and everything around her, so they'd probably end up butting heads.

[MTL]

I'm a 39 year old female, lol, but you are right about everything else.

Sorry to hear you've encountered similar trials.

The hardest part is caring more about them than they do about you;

if you cut them out of your life, you're alone, while they still have each other...albeit in a toxic, codependent, manipulative relationship.

[Iroscato]

I'm a 39 year old female, lol, but you are right about everything else.

Sorry to hear you've encountered similar trials.

The hardest part is caring more about them than they do about you;

if you cut them out of your life, you're alone, while they still have each other...albeit in a toxic, codependent, manipulative relationship.

Apologies, though right on the young part

I know, it wasn't easy for me either. I had to constantly force myself to sever contact with Cthulhu-Bitch, but the eventual lifting of the weight that has slowly happened in the last few years has been indescribable. In a way I had to be quite selfish to save myself, but only because I eventually realised there was nothing to be done. Your deal is different, but still comparable in ways.
It's not gonna be easy, but it will become bearable in time.

[KevinM1]

The good thing is that you recognize the situation for what it is. That will allow you to break the cycle and move forward.

But, yeah, it's gonna suck, and it's going to hurt, and those you don't want to hurt in the process will probably get hurt anyway. That shouldn't deter you. Someone needs to get out of that trap because there's no benefit for anyone that stays. It might as well be you.

[Athene]

Yeah, toxic families are a doozy, aren't they? You're situation sounds similar to mine. The church transformed my mother and sister into stone-cold lunatics. Downright scary.  Best course of action is limited exposure.  I still drop by, only because my father isn't well and I don't want him to feel that I've abandoned him. I do love my mother and sister as well, but I had to accept that they are just lost.....so far gone, I can't see them ever coming back .  It's sad and very lonely sometimes, but you can't let yourself go down with the ship. We're all going to have to learn to get by without the ones that we love someday.....sometimes it's sooner than we think.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You get what you settle for. People say you can't choose your family; I say those people are wrong. Your choice seems to be between your mother's misery and yours. You aren't insisting on misery -- she is.

Act accordingly.

I refuse to permit vampires into my life, myself.

[Jenny A]

You're are almost forty. Nothing is going to change unless you change it. Refuse to be trapped. Limit contact to email for a bit.

[Regina]

I think I have to echo what other people are saying here and live your life for you. Your mother is a grown woman, if she can't sort her own shit out it's not always on you to tidy up her mess.

We've just been through a kind of relateable situation. The week we spent in the hospital as my Dad was dying, my Nan was doing too fucking much refusing to eat, snapping at people, waking people up when they got exhausted. Literally an hour before my Dad died (and was very clearly about to go), my one aunt (who I'll call Janina) and my grandmother just started ganging up on my other aunt (who I'll call Maria) and being real nasty. They verbally attacked her in the hospital the morning my Dad was on death's door, and they did it again at the funeral. My Mum is absolutely insulted and refuses to have anything to do with Janina and my Grandmother now, although we've grown closer to Maria because she helped us a lot with the funeral while the others disappeared. We've bonded with Maria a lot over Dad's death, we were never close before. She's cut them off too.

It's only because I have sympathy for her losing her son (every loving parent's worst nightmare, I do ache for her) and because she doesn't have many people in her life that I'm still checking up on my grandmother, but I'm not going out of my way. Janina I haven't spoken to since at all, might again at some point, doubt it. Sometimes you just have to let these people go, if they're being a detriment to you and causing all this drama they have to go. Blood doesn't necessarily make you family, I firmly believe that. Just because we're blood relatives doesn't mean I have to like you, respect everything you do and kiss your ass. Some people might call me a heartless bastard but honestly I don't care, what I've said here about my family is the tip of the ice berg.

If you've genuinely tried to help your mother already and she just won't be helped, give it up. She'll have to go her own way and hopefully one day she'll realise she fucked up big time and change her ways.

[MTL]

In a way I had to be quite selfish to save myself, but only because I eventually realised there was nothing to be done.

You're spot-on about the "selfishness" part.

It again goes back to the Christian upbringing: You are taught to put Christ first, others second, yourself dead last.

Even though I abandoned religion a long time ago, there are vestigial traces, and this is one of them.

It has been a hard lesson for me, but I finally learned that if you give of yourself until you have nothing left,
you actually aren't doing anyone any favours, because you'll eventually burn out completely
...which I did, I had a nervous breakdown, and I didn't even know that was what was happening to me, at the time...
and then someone else has to pick you up, and you're no good to anyone.

So, agreed.....at the very least,
a minimal, self-preservationist-level of selfishness is actually of benefit to those around us, as well as to ourselves, obviously.

[MTL]

those you don't want to hurt in the process will probably get hurt anyway. That shouldn't deter you. Someone needs to get out of that trap because there's no benefit for anyone that stays. It might as well be you.

I agree. I don't like it, but I agree.