It seems that your mother has you walking on eggshells. It's always hard to tell if such people really feel victimized or if they are deliberately manipulating you. My older sister is the same way. After she makes a decision, she will claim to have been manipulated or coerced by others into making that decision. In college, we were both studying music when she was persuaded to change her major because someone flattered her and said she was a genius in another subject. Fast forward a few years, I started getting a lot of compliments for my music skills and my sister started complaining that she had been tricked into changing her major and that anyone who complimented me was being deliberately rude to her. She has done this with every decision ever since. Once she persuaded me to move to another city with her because she couldn't afford the move on her own. After we got there, she claimed that I had forced her to relocate. Despite being 2 years older, my sister has blamed all her life decisions and job choices on me and it sounds like your mom has a similar type of mentality.

I can't be sure if these people are genuinely confused or just plain manipulative. One thing I learned over a hard life is that they will be angry no matter what you do so you need to make decisions that you feel are right without being influenced by fear of making them angry or offended. The thing I am struggling with today is whether I should do the right thing when my sister is being a nasty bully. I guess I should take my own advice and do what I think best no matter what she is doing. I try to see her rages and toxic rants as a natural phenomenon like the weather. We can't change the weather so there's no point getting upset about it. Its hard not to be affected though. So just remember that you didn't do anything wrong. If your mother is acting out mental problems of her own, her negative feelings may not really be about you. You just got in the way of whatever is constantly happening in her mind. It probably doesn't help to apologize because if she can make you grovel by being mean, it will motivate her to repeat the behavior. Someone once said I might be co-dependant and it made me angry. But I understand in retrospect that they referred to the fact that I grew up trying to appease my mentally ill bully of a sister and it ended up enabling her bad behaviors so they got worse over time. This comes naturally when you grew up with someone like your mom so people like us have to learn not to go to crazy lengths to keep unreasonable family members happy. Nothing you do will ever be enough and the first time they don't get what they want, they will say you "never" do anything for them. No one can make them happy because they are broken and incomplete. I hope I didn't ramble on too long. Enjoy your friend's wedding!