What I find strange is the fact that I said myself, when I was a teenager and she was overly strict with me, "She doesn't want me to grow up because she's afraid of getting old." At the time I was venting frustration. But it turns out to be true.

Also significant is that I was never taught to drive, because since I had mental health issues, family assumed I couldn't learn or was too afraid to try. So they didn't bother. There was talk of teaching me, any time I asked, but no one ever followed through on it. This kept me dependent, right where they wanted me to be, so they could feel needed and important by having to cart me around. The last time I had one of my own marriages blow up, and had to move back in with my mother, I was in my late 30's and couldn't go anywhere she didn't take me. She lives in a rural small town. No public transportation. I wanted to go to church, but she didn't believe, so she wouldn't take me, and wouldn't allow me to have someone come and pick me up. Why? Because then the neighbors might get the idea she was "needy."

Ever since, she has practically bragged to family members that I was so helpless she had to take me everywhere. It was that way only because she decreed it that way. But, anything to make me sound incompetent, and herself sound heroic.