astoldbyginger, it is human nature to develop according to what one is exposed to. What can help you is to think about how human beings are born with the built in desire to navigate. If you think about a map for example, human beings have made maps for hundreds of years. We certainly have a lot of maps drawn out on what once was a blank piece of paper. The human brain works just like a map and if you observe your mother's behavior patterns, she is showing you the map she was taught to follow. She was taught from a map her own mother taught her which she has even admitted to you when she says "my mother did the same". The human brain is designed to create a map in such a fashion that a human being can function in a routine without having to constantly think about every detail when it comes to functioning and navigating through every day life. The human mind is designed where when a person does the same thing over and over again they get so they can do it without having to put a lot of thought into it. Human beings like structure because it's predictable and feels safe and comforting for the most part.

When I was raising my daughter I made time to sit and read to her every day. Most children develop a favorite story and will ask the parent to read that book over and over again. My daughter was no exception and because I read this same book to her so many times, I never forgot the name of that book, "Panda Bear's Paint Box". My daughter who was only about two got so she knew everything that was written on each page. I thought she was actually reading, but she wasn't, instead she got so she memorized each page. I would read other books to her too, but, she always liked me to finish my reading with her by reading that particular book too. What she was displaying in that was how repetition can be comforting, knowing what to expect can be comforting. AND, sitting with me and having companionship at the same time where both were reading and talking about the same story is also "comforting". That alone can be the very basic beginning of a kind of cultural development which is something human beings like to develop.

So I always read pretty much every night to my daughter and what that did for her was it gave her new things to think about that added to her own beginning of developing her own little mental map. I used to go to the library with her and we would pick out new stories to read that became our own way of having a new adventure together. One day I came across a book that I loved as a child called "The Box Car Children". I brought that book home, lit a fire in our fireplace as I had done that a lot (ironically that is something human beings love to do that is part of our human history), and I sat and read this story and to my surprise we sat and read this entire book in one night and my daughter actually was able to pay attention to that entire book, and that is a big deal as children notoriously can have short attention spans. But all that reading taught her how to pay attention for longer periods of time.

This particular book is about two children a boy and a girl who became orphans and they did not want to be separated so they ran away and in their travels ended up finding an old abandoned box car from a train sitting in the woods and forgotten. So, these children began to clean that box car out and make it into their own little home. This box car was near a little stream and they also built a place to have a fire and cook and the other thing they did was they found a dump and would visit that dump to find things they could use for their new home like old dishes and utensils and pots and pans. The boy would go out and do odd jobs so he could make a little money to buy food that he could bring home for meals. And these children slowly got so no one knew they were orphans and had this secret place they made and called "home".

After I read this story to my daughter I watched her play outside and she began "pretending" that she was one of these children and she set up her own little imaginary version of what she listened to in that story. If she had a little friend come over to play, she introduced this friend to playing along with this "adventure" she learned to have too.
What I shared with her by reading that story to her, she learned to do with other children who began to enjoy the adventure "with" her. As she did that, it created a map in her own mind about how to SHARE an adventure and idea with another person and enjoy playing this game "together". This is how the seeds of a culture begins with human beings.

If you really sit and read about human history and religion with an open mind, you will learn how human beings slowly took a story they heard or read and began to slowly use different parts of these stories to gradually form what they began calling "religion". What was important about that one story that I read and shared with my daughter was the element of how these children wanted to stay together and manage even though they were orphans. This desire is the very foundation of how human beings actually are, wanting to design a mental map that includes a way of FEELING loved and nurtured and comforted that can provide a way to have a "togetherness" with others.

When you left and went out on your own to learn more and read more books with new stories and ideas and ways of thinking about things, you actually began to learn MORE ways to add to the map you had developed from where you grew up. What you also learned about yourself while doing this is that you are actually pretty good at learning and adapting yourself and considering this new knowledge you have been exposed to. You also developed (like my daughter did when she heard that story) a desire to use these new ideas to practice creating your own way of playing with these ideas that you can create your own life experience with.

Well, what you are experiencing now that you are back in your mother's world, is that she is still playing by the story and structures she was exposed to and learned how to live her life around. This is something that happens a lot when it comes to a child that leaves home and is exposed to new ways to think about information that can "add" to one's personal mental map. Often, it doesn't really matter where one's origins happens to be in that if a child leaves and is exposed to new things, that can become a kind of threat to the parent or family that used a certain map to navigate their own lifestyle with. However astoldbyginger, as you live your life you will begin to realize this is something that is very much a part of human nature itself and it happens in pretty much all of humanity where ever a "structure" is set up.

The thing about human beings is how once a human being engages in doing something or depending on something that becomes something strong in their mental map, if that is threatened or taken away, it can be VERY upsetting. For example, if a person is given a telephone and that telephone becomes something they use a lot, if that person suddenly loses that telephone they can get very upset and even angry until they get that telephone back. We are learning how this also happens when a person is handed their own cell phone where they begin using it constantly and if it's lost or taken away that individual panics and gets very uncomfortable and angry. Anything a human being becomes "dependent on" where they live a certain way based on a certain kind of structure, they can become very stressed, angry and threatened and even can become very destructive and hateful no matter what color they are or what culture they live in.

What you are experiencing in your mother's behavior where she can have these tantrums and say mean things to you is a reflection of her feeling threatened and what she learned to do in exhibiting behaviors to defend her own personal mental map that she is used to living by. She learned these behaviors from her mother and has even admitted that on a certain level to you.

If you are the last one home and you end up staying for a length of time where your mother becomes dependent on you and gets used to that, she will become more and more dependent on you in a way that will make it much harder for her to live her life without having YOU and whatever you contribute that she LEARNS to depend on. This is how HUMAN BEINGS are designed BY NATURE. So, while you have been considering living with your mother so you can get money saved so you can become more independent you have to sit and consider the consequences of don't that in considering how you may unknowingly get your mother used to depending on you where when you want to actually break away, she will have a very hard time RELEARNING how to actually be independent and live on her own without you. Also, what you are seeing about your mother is what it is like to live with her and how she has grown to believe that she has a right to be the BOSS in her environment simply because that is what she was for many years.