Had a lovely weekend of shopping and fun. Spent Sunday at the pool, did a spot of swimming and got some sun. Enroute to a large urban area about 90 minutes from home with a friend, I starting getting text messages from my hoarding mother's neighbor. Long story short(er), my hoarding mother called her up to the fence and she surreptitiously got a couple of pictures of her. Now my mother is ANTI-PHOTOGRAPH. Even in my wedding she did not allow herself to be photographed, and did all she could to create drama at my reception by hiding in the bathroom and in the kitchen. So... The woman who:
- Tirelessly appearance shames others in every conversation, talking about how much weight they have gained, how wrinkled they are, how much gray hair they have, and the like...
- Complains about how frail she is, how she has to use a cane everywhere she goes, at the grocery or other stores she gets a cart to use as a walker, talks about all the 'wonderful strangers' that offer her help to get things, carry things, and wonder why she has no one that helps her...
Was photographed purposefully striding across the yard, unaided by any cane. She is far heavier than I have ever seen her, and she is extremely gray now, as one would expect someone of 80 years old to be. She is also very wrinkled, and the expression on her face, which I thought little of because that is her normal expression, is grim.
This is not to appearance shame her. She does not look her age, at all. But, she is telling me that she is losing weight because she is unable to shop and cook for herself, and that she is not 'white headed' like everyone she sees and clucks over like it is a character flaw, and talks about how wrinkled and old they look. She gives me hell on a regular basis about my appearance and weight, how short my hair is, how wrinkled around the eyes I am, and that I have been obese in my life, and I am not under 100 pounds anymore like I was when I was so sick in 2013. I am going to have a hard time not rolling my eyes so hard they get stuck in the back of my head the next time she starts her crap. She was going on about how swollen her legs were and how she could wear nothing but flip flops (that she calls TONGS) and that is not true either. So as I suspected, 90-99% of what she tells me is utter bull pucky, and I suspect this is one of the reasons she has avoided my overtures to see her in 2015 and 2016. A bit hard to frame my perception when her reality is so very different.
She also ran into her sister's daughter, who is also a narcissist. She, and her sister disowned this young woman in the early 80's for living a lifestyle they did not approve of, writing bad checks, living with men, and the ultimate piece was her dating <gasp> a black man, bless their little bigoted hearts. Now this woman who is now in her middle 50's is living back in the area, but in the time after her estrangement, stole my mothers estate from the nursing home and absconded with the funds, and stole quite a bit of jewelry when she left our house for the last time. So now my mother is rehashing all that ancient history all over again. LET IT GO. She cannot. So there is that.
She had a tree fall from the neighbor's yard and come down on her garage, allegedly. Of course she went scorched earth on that, the neighbor, and everyone else. She is going to sue him now, for this tree and the 3 others that have fallen over the past 4 years. But that is not the FTMOAH part.
Ready for it? FTMOAH...
She has been making obtuse yet dramatic references about 'what she has been going through' and 'what has happened here' that I have ignored, and after she managed to turn a discussion about me buying chocolate candy for the office to herself and that she has no air conditioning and has not... She has decided that the hated neighbor 'in the turn' jumped her locked fence, pried up the 'outside unit' of her heat pump, removed the good works, and replaced the old works with junk and closed it back up.
SAY WHAT? This is even more paranoid than the gas can incident several weeks ago. She has not called the police because she wants to get estimates for the damage and to back her up because they will not believe her.
Uh huh. They are not the only ones. She also will not leave if she sees 'he' is home unless she has a doctor's visit. She cannot leave the house empty or 'he' will come in. (Reference to the 'snake poop' incident, the loosening the light bulb over her washer incident, and the stealing her stalking log incident...)
She then goes on to tell me that she is sure something awful was done to the little brown cat that she essentially stole from a neighbor. She states that it has the largest butthole that she has ever seen, and she is sure that someone....
At that point I ended that verbal vomit from being spewed on me. REALLY? UGH!
There is much more, but I think you get the idea...
So, final piece. My doctor's visit on July 5th. We have a plan. I will be having surgery soon. I should get the call to schedule this week. The plan is to try to get the softball sized mass and the ovary out laparoscopically, and if they cannot due to endometriosis or scar tissue they will reopen my hysterectomy incision and go in that way to avoid disturbing my mesh midline incision repair. They will have a general surgeon and an oncological gynecologist on standby, and if I get in early, and it is laparoscopic, I will go home the same day. If anything more, I could be in one to 4 days. My doctor reviewed my past mammograms and wants me to have another to ensure the mass on my chest wall they have been watching has not changed, and she wants that done as part of my pre op. Um... YAY. I am sure it is fine. But okay.
Lot of moving parts happening right now. But it all will work out. My mother asks about my surgery, then immediately launches into a story about her medical issues. I think that it may be time to go from very low contact to EXTREMELY low contact. I cannot stand it. She is miserable, and I refuse to let her make me feel miserable.
Hope everyone is having a good week. Thank you for reading, and the support.
Hoarding, no one wins. No one.
