I preface what I'm about to say with I cannot leave my present environment. Because of the nature of my work, my income is sporadic, I have no friends who will take me in, and no other family. So, until I can create enough of a financial safety net to allow myself to lease an apartment or buy a home, I have to make due with the current situation.

I'm a woman in my thirties, living with her mother and her mother's husband. The relationship has been dysfunctional since the beginning. I had three different "families" by age six, so I have issues as a result of that. When I was six, my mother married her new husband, and I was uprooted into the new home. From this point on, I lived with them, but had no real relationship with them. I never wanted her husband in my life, so I refused to have a relationship with him. The two of them collectively more or less created a life for themselves without me, so although I was physically in the home and physically cared for, I was emotionally on my own and raised myself from that point on.

Because I was also in special school half the day for gifted children, I didn't have much structure or support at school either. So, I grew up being on the one hand very emotionally independent, but I had no relationship skills and never learned how to do basic things, like get a job or do laundry. I had no other family and few friends, so I just muddled through life as best I could on my own. Unfortunately, it meant never adjusting well, and being forced out of what jobs I could get and losing what few close relationships I was able to make. By my early thirties, I gave up on trying to integrate and on the advice of a therapist, went into self-employment in a creative field.

I'm now 37. The self-employment has been a good move emotionally, but it hasn't provided enough money for me to get out of my mother's house. The problem is whereas we used to simply not communicate and more or less avoid each other, she now finds reasons to attack me and then engage her husband in the fight. She started to show serious signs of emotional problems 10 years ago after her father died. They worsened after her sister died - both of cancer. She became a health nut - totally obsessed and became nervous all the time. She would have panic attacks and would start collecting and arranging things in the house in obsessive ways. Now, she's just an unstable emotional basket case. I'm afraid to physically encounter her or have any kind of communication with her. So much as saying, "Good morning" can result in verbal attacks about unrelated subjects.

My mother blames, judges, tells me that she never wanted children, and that I've ruined her life. I try not to let it get to me, but it's hard. Especially when she blames me for things that are her fault. If I call her on those things, then she becomes very dramatic and starts hyperventilating and calls her husband into the fight and uses him like a shield and an attack dog. He's no good for either, because he's a very cowardly man. So, he'll just avoid eye contact with me, and the both of them will talk about me in the third person. If I say anything or try to create a first person conversation with them, they lock themselves in their bedroom and continue to discuss me in the third person.

I know my whole family is nuts. Since the time I was a child, I can't recall any member of my family ever being happy or "normal". In fact, they all would feed on each other in emotional and financial ways. I didn't start to really grasp what "normal" was until late into my twenties. That was only because I was forced by virtue of my work relationships and what few personal relationships I had to be exposed to people who weren't like this and who also weren't like the kids I went to school with. On the one hand, I was the only child in a crazy family. On the other, I was in a special school for highly intelligent kids. Both left me isolated with a perspective on life and the world that just didn't work once I was thrown into the world as an adult. Nothing - and I mean nothing - fit what childhood prepared (or rather didn't prepare) me for.

Now, I'm 37, and at least I've found a way to work that is tolerable. I'm a freelancer in a creative field. The trouble is I'm still not making enough money to get out of my parents house. I'm hopeful that someday I will. But, there are no guarantees. I do the best I can with what I have and know. In the meantime, I'm trying to survive the living situation I find myself in. Does anybody have any advice on how to protect oneself from toxic house mates like this? I've given up on trying to connect. It takes two people to have a relationship, and my mother makes it clear by her behavior that she doesn't want a relationship with me. I accept that. I just need to know how to survive the situation with my sanity in tact until I can make enough money to get out. The last thing I want is to end up on the street with no resources.

Any useful information is appreciated.