I have been married for 5 years and live about 2000 miles away from my mother. However, I still feel she controls my actions. She is 82 years old and very good for her age. She still mows her own yard, shovels snow does all the outside work on her own. I am going to go visit her in 2 weeks and I dread it because I feel I revert back to my old self. Already she is saying things like "What is the one thing you are going to remember to bring?" She is referring to the hat she always asks me to bring because she doesn't think I should step outside without one or I might get burned. I NEVER wear a hat, in fact I can't stand to have one on my head for more than 10 minutes, but I keep this one on the shelf and bring it out once a year when I go visit her. I can't go and work in the yard in my own clothes when I visit because she doesn't want me to get them dirty so she has me put on these old clothes she keeps in the basement that have holes and are stained so I look homeless when I'm working in the yard.

She is afraid of travelling 5 miles beyond where she lives and she never liked it when I had to drive to like the other side of town. She made it seem like it was totally unnesscessary like it was just an unfathomable distance. And this is when I was 27 years old! I was still living at home with her because she didn't want me to leave because I kept her company. But I mean there were times where I'd tell her on Wednesday that Friday I am going to go and see my boyfriend. Well she'd be all watchful on the weather because she always has to know what it's like. If they were predicting 2" of snow that night she'd start saying "Oh wow, they are talking about snow that night. The roads will probably be bad." I'd shrug it off. The next day she'd mention 2 or 3 times "Oh they say it may snow a lot tomorrow night. Oh and they say it may turn to ice too.". Then it would be the day of and like an hour before I was going to leave and she'd bring up how bad it was going to snow, but yet never say "I want you to stay home" and if I still went out, I could expect the silent treatment for the next couple of days. I hated that so I always broke my plans with some lame excuse and ended up staying home while all my friends would go out. The funny thing is, if one of my friends wanted to travel across town in a snowstorm to pick me up and then take me back across town and then take me home a few hours later, she was perfectly happy with that. But if I had to drive she would do everything in her power to make me not go.

I know when I'm home I will want to go out and see people but even then she gets snobby with me because I am going to meet up with friends at a bar in the evening and then the next morning the first words out of her mouth are "What time did you get home last night?" I'm 43 years old! Why does it matter. Then I tell her 9PM and she has a sigh of relief "Oh I must have been sound asleep I didn't hear you." She's always afraid I'm not going to come home until 2AM. I haven't seen 2AM in at least 10 years! Does she think I'm going ot go out and meet a man and go back to his place or something? I'm married as are all my friends!

She was always telling me what to wear when I'd get ready for school. I'd come out with a skirt on and she'd tell me 'It's too cold to wear that. Go change." She never had a job when I was growing up and was always there. I'd make my lunch the night before and she'd be sitting in the kitchen watching me and I got an onion out to slice for my sandwich and she said "Oh I don't think you need to have an onion on there. It will make your breath smell bad". I have just always been under her watchful eye. It doesn't help that she barely has any friends and never goes anywhere. I f she was fun loving and got out of the house I'm sure she wouldn't care what I did, but I could never even go to the mall by myself in my 20s because she always wanted to come along for something to do. I would literally leave work 30 minutes early just so I could drive around downtown by myself and see what was going on because I could never be in the car without her unless I was going out with friends!