I have been suffering from a sinus infection since about last Monday night. The odd thing was that I had run out of the SinuSoothe natural nasal spray that I have been using for months now (so I wasn’t able to use it for about a week). At first I definitely did feel the congestion coming back. For the last few days before it finally came in the mail I was surprised at how I actually felt like I was OK without it. In the early evening on Monday night though, I noticed that my nose was starting to run. I used my SinuSoothe nasal spray when I got home from work that night, close to midnight. Immediately I had a huge sneeze attack, tons of congestion, but also tons of drainage coming out of my sinuses. I found this odd because I didn’t even have that strong of a reaction the first few days that I ever used it. When I first used it I mostly had weird pain that radiated all the way up both of my sinuses and then went all the way back down my skull on both sides, where the pain settled at the base of my skull on both sides. I figured out that this was me actually feeling this natural nasal spray as it traveled through my lymphatic system and lymph nodes. As much as it hurt I was so happy to have finally found something that seemed to truly be attacking the actual source of the problem. I’m not really sure why my sinus infection came on full blown this time after using it after not having it for about a week, but I can speculate for sure. I think what really caused me to have this full blown infection starting on Monday night was because of the crazy happenings of the day before. My mother had pitched a serious fit and stressed me out to an insane degree.

My mother had been trying to reach me for a few weeks. She has this issue where she claims to literally worry whether or not I’m OK if she doesn’t hear from me. It is beyond clear to me that she has undiagnosed and untreated generalized anxiety disorder, and that she has had this for decades. All the while she has been completely denying that she even has an anxiety issue, when everyone in my family has told her this and she has been made more than aware about it. She is a very ego driven and ego centered person, so god forbid she ever admits that she isn’t perfect or that she has an issue that she needs to work on. My mother had been incessantly calling me, leaving me voicemails, and texting me for what felt like weeks. She was using every type of guilt and manipulation tactic that she could think of to try to force me to talk to her. This is her usual method and typically after a little bit of this I think “jesus christ ok I’ll see or talk to you just so you leave me the fuck alone”. I end up getting back to her and then going out to eat with her, out of what feels like pure obligation to me. I have read a lot about boundaries and about what are healthy and unhealthy boundaries. I have read that if you do something for a person because you feel obligated to, that is an example of an unhealthy boundary coming into play. I totally agree. So this time I did not allow her method to force me into doing what she wanted, and I stood my ground. She took it up another level in response. I had to work all day that Sunday. I got a text from my boyfriend telling me I should contact my mom because she called him, his brother, his workplace, and the main office at the apartment complex we live at. Apparently she was acting as if I had been kidnapped (mind you I’m fucking 25 years old), and she was trying to get people to actually go check to see if my car was parked somewhere. She caused a major scene and my boyfriend said that he felt like she was making him look bad because the way she was acting made it seem like he was being neglectful of me, or something ridiculous like that.

I was beyond embarrassed, but more than anything fucking livid. I texted her saying to keep the problems between her and I, between her and I. I said do not contact the people I live with and that she is causing a major scene. I told her how inappropriate and wrong this was. I told her she needs to see a therapist, because she is out of control. She literally expects me to fulfill her social and emotional needs. She has literally forced this into happening for years on end. Because I never wanted to deal with her ridiculous child-like behavior, I would eventually just give in and do what she wanted. I realize this is totally wrong and unfair to me. This is enabling her to continue to be a control freak, and enabling her to keep me under her thumb. I ended up texting her for about two hours while I was at work. I was very articulately describing to her what her problems are, what she needs to do to work on this herself, how her behavior was negatively affecting me and how it was poor treatment of me, and how exactly she could improve things for herself and for our relationship. As usual, and as she always done over the years, she entirely refused to validate anything that I had said, and continued to blame me for essentially being a bad daughter. She didn’t use those words but she said a few times “I don’t need a therapist, I need a daughter who cares and who will let me know once a week if she’s ok or not”. Round and around we went until I had nothing left.

I know what her problem is. I know that she is having an identity crisis because she lives alone now and because all of her kids have moved out. The only identity she ever had, was the identity of being a mother. She is freaking out because she does not have even a remotely close relationship to either of her two kids who live only a few towns away. The other kid lives in Denmark. She is freaking out and trying to control me because I would be the easiest choice. I am her youngest child, and I’m the only girl. I also live the closest to her. She will never admit this but she is just as much of a control freak as my father is. The fact is though right now I do not feel any resentment towards my father but I feel a whole shit load towards her. I’m only mentioning my father because he called me last Wednesday and I talked to him for about an hour. I hadn’t talked to him in something like a year because of issues we have had. This conversation actually went really well and he sounded like he was doing much better psychologically than he has been in years. He was very caring and he actually asked me a lot of questions for once. He told me that he loved and I told him that I loved him too. For this conversation I actually felt like I had a good, healthy father who treated me well.

My mother on the other hand, could not be treating me any worse at this point in time. She made the huge mistake of bringing up their failed marriage when she decided to text me *again* last night, to add in so more ridiculous behavior. She is now trying to take me off of her phone plan. She didn’t even say this shit directly but I figured it out based on how she’s been acting. She said “please call or text me when you have the time regarding your cell phone”. I KNOW she is trying to threaten to cut off my phone because I’m not meeting her requirements of checking in with her EVEN THOUGH I’M A FUCKING ADULT NOW. I know this is her last resort type method. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t working on me either. Before she could even start up her plan, I replied “I will get my own phone if that’s what you’re getting at, which I’m pretty sure you are”. I then told her she should know just how manipulative and controlling she is being because I won’t meet her requirements. I told her that she is proving the very points that I made before. I also told her how I have been sick essentially since she pulled that drama earlier last week. I have had to call out of work a few different times. I have spent the past few days (my days off mind you), sick because of how much she stressed me out. I think I may have been on the possible verge of a sinus infection again, but I don’t think it was going to fully happen until she created the catalyst for it surface. Basically, she is literally making me sick now. I am feeling the brunt of her tactics because I standing up to them. Emotionally and psychologically, my mother is a child. She’s a little over 60 years old, and she has had a successful job and has been successful with money mostly, but underneath that strong exterior is a weak, dependent child. I used to pity her and so I would allow her to treat me in this way. Now that i’m older I realize that this fact is no excuse for her to treat me like shit. I do not owe her extra psychological help and support merely because she refuses to work on herself at all. It is not my job to do this shit and it never should have been.

Basically what i’m getting at is that I honestly believe that her and my father, and the upbringing that they created for me and my brothers, is what has created my chronic sinus infection issue. I have had this issue for about a decade. It’s no coincidence that this fully started off right around the time that things in my family first started going to shit. My brother had a nervous breakdown when I was 12. My parents had an awful marriage, in which they fought on a regular basis, multiple times a day, for seriously as long as I can remember. I never saw it actually go physical but it *always* felt like it was right on the verge of turning physical. They’d fight a lot really late at night. Being the lucky one that I was, having my bedroom on the same floor as their bedroom, I was woken up on so many different nights, to screaming. I would immediately jump and run down to their room because I seriously thought they were about to kill each other. It’s again no coincidence that I developed severe insomnia later on in my life because of the years and years I had been subjected to this every single night trauma.

My house was also full of mold and dust, as well as dog danger and dirt. I was breathing in this stuff on a regular basis. I believe that I have fungus up in my sinuses from this, which is the physical cause for why I have had chronic sinus infections for over a decade. I have tried so many things to treat this, and only prescribed nasal spray made a *slight* dent in the issue. The SinuSoothe spray I have been using has overall worked a lot more than any other treatment I’ve tried. The trauma and stress that I dealt with for so many years, mostly at the hands of both of my parents, is what has caused this chronic condition. I also believe I have undiagnosed fibromyalgia. This is also caused by the traumatic upbringing that I had. My mother is addicted to drama and thus is still trying to keep the cycle going by acting like this towards me. She is insufferable. I have been reading about spiritual explanations for particular physical illnesses and one article said that the spiritual explanation for chronic sinus infections is “irritation to someone, usually someone close to you”. Hit the nail right on the fucking head!! How many years of my life have I spent stuck living with not just one, but often two to three different people who *all* irritate me because they are toxic people! This had to have had an effect over time. Ok I have a lot more that I wanted to write but once again it’s just too much to put in one post.

Ok so this is probably going to be a rather rant-based post but what the fuck if I don’t vent here I’m going to vent to somebody else and probably end up draining them too, so here goes nothing. (I don’t really understand that phrase haha, wouldn’t it be here goes something?).

Basically my mother is better than pretty much anyone else (except maybe my father), at sending me into a rage pretty quickly. Here and I got in a ridiculous text war like last week when I had shit tons of school stuff to do. She was asking me to do shit for her/to be around the house at random hours for IN CASE type situations. Like, “will you be here at 4 pm? I might need your help to pick up the MG.” And then other shit was more like asking me to do tasks in fucking 4 different mediums as in for one task she (1) wrote me a note (2) sent me a text (3) called me/left a voicemail (4) asks me in person. What the fuck is that shit?!!! And my god she literally goes through that method EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME she has a new task. Which is all the fucking time. Because she’s a busy body who creates tasks and work that are not imperative and acts as if they are urgent at that very moment. She’s so contradictory- she complains about working too much, yet whenever she is home or off she is constantly doing tasks or inventing some to be done (and seriously, they are not things that HAVE to happen). So, she complains about being too busy but then creates probably half of the things that make her busy.

Another thing she does is make a shit ton of assumptions about things in general and about me. She also makes a lot of judgments about pretty much everything. An example- she finds out I have a few days off from classes due to the holiday and schedule changes, she then decides that means I will be doing nothing at all and thus I should now do a bunch of tasks for her, at any time she wants. She also assumes that because i’m her daughter and because I’m the only one that is still at home, that I should now do all of the things that she would’ve spread between all of us before. And again, many of these things don’t even NEED to be done!

Another assumption is that if I don’t immediately agree to these demands, then I’m doing so simply to spite her and because I “hate her”. Never does she consider that maybe it’s because she’s an energy vampire that constantly demands things or finds ways to force things on to me (i.e., making it so that I have to talk to her every time I go downstairs/in the kitchen, trying to hand me something or have me do something for her when I am in the middle of doing something else already, by literally standing right in my space and basically trying to force it).

The judgments she makes are things like “if a person isn’t a busy body and isn’t able to work a lot, take classes at college, and still have a social life, then their life must be easy” or “they must be lazy”. Also, “if a person doesn’t have a job then they are useless”, “if a person works a non-traditional job, then it doesn’t count as a real job.”

I could write a book of the lists of judgments and assumptions she makes, but I think you get the gist of what I’m saying.

She doesn’t believe that she needs to change, ever. She doesn’t believe that she’s ever really wrong, and she constantly claims people don’t appreciate all that she does for them. She is stubborn and impatient and very inflexible but doesn’t lack the ever-present traits of being demanding, manipulative, and invasive. Essentially her ego is so large that she believes others are below her and should be subservient to her, and that if anything goes wrong in an interaction between her and anybody else, it’s always THEM that’s wrong. I mean damn, she is excellent at taking financial responsibility and responsibility in the most traditional meaning of the word, but she takes next to no emotional or relational responsibility.

When I’m home for a few days or even less, I can already feel her draining me. I can already feel myself bordering total rage and just spewing it all over her if she pushes my buttons one more time (and she always does). The most absurd thing about all of this is that most of her behavior stems from IMAGINED PRESSURE. I mean, of course not with financial or job based stuff but outside of the pressure she deals with at work, she puts pressure on herself and on me all of the time. She is unable to relax or to just fucking stop! I swear she is an undiagnosed case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And she’s an alcoholic, which may at particular times mellow her out, but overall increases her levels of anxiety and depression.

She has passed these GAD type behaviors/thoughts on to me through genetics and environment, and so I really can’t stand having her continuing to do so when I’m actually aware of being the same way and of wanting to not let it control me. She may be aware of the ridiculous levels of anxiety she has like all of the time, but she does nothing to work on it. She never chooses healthy reactions, and simply continues to go about her life being the same exact way no matter how much it hurts her or anybody else.

I feel paranoid a lot of the time, thinking I’m seeing things or people out of the corner of my eyes, thinking I’m seeing the shapes of some sort of ghosts between the trees/leaves when the wind blows on them at night. I feel anxious a lot too, and that it doesn’t take much at all to send me into a very long cycle of anxious and panic based thoughts. I used to suffer from panic attacks like every day a few years ago. Now I occasionally get the beginnings of one, but I don’t allow it to get to the point of sending me running to the bathroom to puke, think i’m dying, and look at myself in the mirror only to feel totally depersonalized. It used to control my life, until I decided I wasn’t going to let it anymore and I started meditating every day and getting really into spiritual thought/practices. It worked, very well.

The problem with my mother is that she is so incredibly over-grounded in the materialistic world that she thinks that everything is a cause for absolutely freaking out. She doesn’t try very hard to think beyond herself or the earthly realm, and she’s so close-minded that she wouldn’t be able to maintain the possibility in thought that everything she is freaking out about is an illusion. She wouldn’t be able to (or wouldn’t want to try very hard to) think about spiritual ideas and she certainly doesn’t believe in anything that she can’t visibly see with her eyes or hold in her hands.

Essentially, her and I are opposite people and not the kind of opposite people that can get along because they complement one another’s traits, but the type of opposite people that clash because they cannot stand the habits and lifestyle choices/preferences of the other person. The thing is, I feel like I understand why she is the way she is, I mean I’ve surely learned a lot about Psychology through real life experience and through many years at college. I know this kind of shit like the back of my hand. So for me it’s not that I don’t understand why she does what she does or what caused her to become this way, and it’s not that I’m trying to make her become like me, it’s just that I can’t understand why she doesn’t give a shit about how much she ruins the quality of my life by not listening to ANYTHING that I’ve so clearly explained to her about how I feel. And on top of that, she simply does not respect what I say either- obviously if she did she’d actually make an effort to adapt the way she acts towards me for longer than like a few days.

I don’t want to have to feel like the only way I can stay sane or not have to deal with this shit all of the time is to just never be home. Believe me, I try to not be home as much as possible and I would’ve/would move out if I all of the sudden had the finances to do so and all of the sudden had a good job that I could maintain. I just can’t believe that it’s come to this point where she simply refuses to adjust to anything and at the same time randomly uses manipulative tactics to try to scare me into doing whatever she wants. What kind of selfish parent thinks it’s ok to do that sort of shit? Every time I actually stand up for myself and every time I disagree with or “disobey” what she says, she says or does something to try to scare me into complying. She uses the fact that I live with her and that I cannot financially support myself as leverage for why I should just do what she says and never once have my own opinion. How fucked up is that?? I don’t feel I drain her of resources very much because the only thing that I use often is a fair amount of electricity. And if I were to move out, we still have two dogs and I take care of them much more than she does and in a much more caring way than she does. If I moved out, she’d then have to find someone to pay to take care of them and then she’d also have to actually start hiring tons of people to do all of her fucking tasks. And she’d be totally alone in this house (which I know she doesn’t want, she is a very emotionally dependent person and needs people around to drain energy from).

So it’s definitely not that she wants me out of the house because she so obviously makes the point that she wants to spend more time with me, says she never sees me, says she misses me when she doesn’t see me for like a few days,  says she’s happy I’m here with her, etc. I just cannot believe that someone who’s around 60 years old is so completely emotionally immature. And I don’t know how she could go so long never thinking much about why she has fucked up relationships and why she doesn’t have any successful ones or why a lot of people can’t stand to be around her for very long. It’s just pathetic. Trying to be a better person is something that is extremely important and I just can’t even understand how someone could spend so much of their life avoiding such a thing.