She’s Homeless

She’s homeless.

It’s been 10 months since I made the incredibly difficult but necessary decision to go no contact with my abusive, narcissistic mother and she is still homeless.

And I feel guilty. I feel so paralyzingly guilty.

I learned in therapy that one of my trauma responses is to change the way I view my reality. So, if I was hurt by the way a situation happened, I would just change the details in my mind and convince myself that it didn’t happen that way. It wasn’t until I was 31 years old that I started to se my childhood for what it was. Filled with abuse, neglect, shame, bullying, grief, loss, depression. I learned that I was raised to be a people pleaser to a fault. I was made to believe my entire life that I was everyone in my family’s favorite but I have learned that I was always just the most easily manipulated. Everyone loves a pushover who will do anything you ask as long as you bombard them with the praise and love that they are lacking. The biggest culprit of this was, you guessed it- my mother.

Coming to this realization was difficult to say the least. I suddenly viewed my childhood, well, my whole life really, completely differently. It was hurtful and I wished that I could close the curtain that had suddenly been pulled back. But I couldn’t, I can’t.

This also meant that I was suddenly hyper aware of all the ways my mother was currently manipulating me. Taking advantage, lying, abusing. It became harder and harder to ignore all of the things she was doing both to me and to my family. Without going into too many details, she put myself and my children in danger. She put my entire identity at risk. Multiple times, not just once. Even after having a lengthy conversation and subsequent fight about what she was doing wrong, she did it yet again. When I confronted her, she lost her mind. She even physically assaulted me so my husband took her to a hotel for the night and we made a plan with my sister to move her out and away from me, back to our home state where 90% of our family lives.

Obviously, she didn’t like the plan. So she threatened suicide and expected me to come running, apologizing. I did not. I called the police for a welfare check and she faked a heart attack, ended up in the hospital, then made all of these accusations against me claiming abuse, theft, and abandonment and tried to have me arrested!

That’s when I realized, I would never see or speak to my mother again. For mine and my family’s protection, we had to cut her off. And, we did. But not without spending hours researching all of the programs, typing up addresses and phone numbers. We gave her a step by step guide on what to do once she landed in Pennsylvania and mind you, she does have an income. It’s not like we sent her on her way with no financials at all. We did our best to get her set up and only asked that she get medical help for her mental health disorders.

She ignored everything we did. She didn’t make any of the phone calls, didn’t visit any of the offices, nothing. Just continued doing what she’s been doing for the past several years which includes giving her bank account information to random men on the internet that she believes are romantically interested in her. I was told by a family member that she was receiving a ton of help from a homeless shelter manager but that the manager realized what she was doing, and even she decided that there was nothing she could do to help her.

Read that again. A homeless shelter kicked her out and told her there was nothing more they could do to help her!

So, here we are, 10 months of no contact later and she is still homeless. And I feel so fucking guilty.

I know that I did everything I possibly could to help her, including nearly sending my own family into debt in order to support her. I provided her a home and I was her personal chauffeur, nurse, accountant, assistant; basically, her bitch. I also know that if anything happens to her, I am going to regret my decision for the rest of my life.

Even more than both of those, though, I know that I made the right decision for myself and my children.

“But she’s your mom!!”

“How can you just cut off your mom!!”

“You can’t do that to family!!”

Well, that’s all bullshit.

Sharing blood doesn’t mean you’re entitled to someone else’s life. Being “family” doesn’t mean you get to use and abuse people and expect to get to stick around.

I love my mother.

But my mother is a monster. And she is incapable of loving me back.