Is there anything i can do regarding my unstable mother? (humongous wall of text insi

First of all, i would like to apologize if the story seems relevant to more than just depression. I believe that depression is at the root of the problem though, so i am posting here.

I’ve started writing this in hopes of getting some advice, but as it was shaping up it became a tool for venting as well, so please bear with me. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated. What follows is a tl;dr and a huge wall of text. You have been warned.

tl; dr I am filled with impotent rage. My mother DOES NOT WANT medical help, DOES NOT WANT psychological help, and she DOESN’T EVEN WANT help from any sort of organization or person who really knows what it feels like to be in such a situation.

She was a witty, confident and loving person when i was a child. She was a bit possessive and a bit of a control freak even then, but was more than sane enough to keep a family fed, clothed ad genuinely happy. Then due to circumstances i won’t go into, she was forced to borrow money from a loan shark. She couldn’t pay back the ever increasing installments, and was eventually forced to sell our apartment. For more than a decade this man tormented her, and she was living in constant fear, and that took its toll on her nerves.

She had problems with her sight her whole life, but then one day about 8 years ago, she hit her head really hard, causing her to get an ablation – a condition where the retina starts dethatching itself from the rest of the eye. In a week or so after hitting her head, her vision started getting blurry and darker. She had to undergo an operation in hopes of getting the damage under control. Unfortunately, although the operation was successful technically, her eyesight kept deteriorating. She was devastated by this and didn’t want to get some kind of post op oil removed from her eye. Eventually a cataract started forming on the eye she had the operation on (she neglected treatment of her other eye decades ago and was blind on it), leaving her essentially blind, without her wanting to take any steps in salvaging it. Like i said, it’s been about 8 years now, and so the eye is probably beyond repair, but in any case, she did not want anything else done on it, as she had developed paranoid fear of hospitals and doctors due to the bad experience.

She also claims to have caught some form of bug or virus or whatnot while staying there, which serves as an excuse for her not to eat. She had some insignificant trouble with hemorrhoids, and a vase or two of bad diarrhea, which has caused her to become terrified of anything that might give her indigestion or diarrhea again since she “can’t bear it”. Now the only thins she will eat are a kind of chocolate cookies, a certain kind of pastry, and light cheese. And this is on a very good day, since most days she just eats the cookies. She currently weighs a bit more than 80 pounds, and wears literally five layers of clothing, both to disguise the near skeleton she has become, as well as to keep her warm, as her circulation is ****ed up as well, so she feels cold most of the time, except in summer.

She spends her days sitting on the couch and listening to the radio or the TV at a loud volume because she claims that “she can hear it when the volume is lower, but that it’s better when the volume is louder, that it feels more real to her that way..” I suspect she might be developing hearing troubles as well, but how the hell should I know, since she is adamantly opposed to seeing a doctor.

One part of her character which sadly didn’t go away but got even worse is the control freak aspect. She has to know EVERYTHING. If i leave the room, “where are you going?”, if my brother shows up from work literally 10 minutes later than planned, she gets all tense, nervous and scared and asks why he was late. God forbid i should just up and go out one day without telling her where or why. She’d probably have a fit. Apart from this, she has to constantly know where everything is and keeps her stuff mostly in the living room because of “the germs” in another room where an intended closet for her was. I am, of course, aware that a blind person needs a stable layout and environment to be able to function correctly, but having the right to be informed does not equal the right to know everything.

Speaking of germs, she has developed a germ phobia over the last year or so. Everything needs to be anti-bacterial, the soap, the detergent, tissues etc. She used to go through a bottle of anti bacterial detergent a week before i took it upon myself to do all of the dishes all of the time. She has to grip all the door handles with a tissue, has her own liquid soap, and generally a whole mess of these products. A few weeks ago she asked me to buy a twelve pack of tissues. FIVE DAYS after, she asked for another one. That is more than TWENTY tissues per day that she spent in that small amount of time, god knows on what. If i threaten not to buy her so much of that crap, she becomes extremely agitated, the way an addict might get when denied his fix.

By now you have gotten a good idea about just how INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING my life has become. I am ashamed to say that i haven’t been of much help in getting a way out of this. I mean, i don’t know how to help her other than urging her to go and see someone qualified to at least try and help her out. She won’t even go and see our family doctor (who is supposedly the only doctor she trusts). Seeing this sniveling, pathetically scared, withered husk of a person on that couch day in and day out is becoming increasingly less bearable. It’s not so much because of what she has become, but because of the fact that she doesn’t want to TRY and get better, in spite of being aware that she is hurting both herself and the people she supposedly loves so much. I’ve tried compassion and love, I’ve tried logic and reasoning. More and more i am resorting to plain ol’ anger or verbal abuse. I can’t stand the constant whining, the self pity, the obsession over cleanliness and other people’s defecating routines, the need to constantly be appraised of EVERYTHING that is going on and then pulling the “If i wasn’t blind I’d just see for myself” card. I am ashamed and troubled by the fact that i have come to loathe the shell that was once my mother.

I am sick and tired of getting up in the morning and the FIRST *** **** THING i get to hear from her being a report on how she slept or did not sleep, and get asked if “everything was ok”, meaning whether or not i or my brother took a dump she might have missed. It’s beyond degrading for me to have to put up with this particular facet of her, and it’s kind of pathetic that i get a cramp every time i do need to take a ****, knowing that she’ll ask about it afterward.

I am sick of the mood swings, which shift from “irrationally scared and almost paralyzed with anxiety, acting subservient and feeling like crap” to “hey look, i feel a little bit more invigorated, so I’ll spend the day telling people the same old **** I’ve been talking about for the past 10 years or complaining about the most mundane things concerning the lives of others.”

When one does confront her about all of this, be that in a calm and compassionate way, or with anger and frustration, she gets extremely scared and apprehensive about all of it. I simply can not believe that it is easier for someone to put up with insults from their own child rather than consent to nothing more than a routine checkup. I asked her on numerous occasions “what if that eating disorder you have is caused by nothing more than bad bacteria which could get cured by simply drinking a pill your doctor gives you?” She acknowledges that that might very well be true, but doesn’t want to go.

So after much coercion, the supposed reason she won’t go and see a doctor is the unspeakable phobia of having to be in a hospital and getting treatment. She, in her clairvoyance, is convinced that she has some sort of cancer or whatnot. To which i respond along te lines of “but how can you KNOW this without getting a check up? Would spending an hour or two in hospital for an examination be so horrific, and you still wouldn’t do it even if you knew that this would be all you would need to do?” She still wouldn’t do it. Also, she is scared that we are going to put her in some sort of home. I honestly never considered that to be a viable option since she is so fiercely opposed to it, and since we don’t have the money even if she wasn’t. If she continues to deteriorate like this, it won’t be much longer till we won’t be able to provide for her needs adequately, and what else is there besides an institution which can give her what i can not? Not even her supposed greatest fear, going to an old folks home, and the fact that by behaving as she is behaving she is potentially bringing that fate upon herself IS NOT ENOUGH FOR HER TO BUDGE.

The best one can coax out of her is something like “give me a month to pull myself together and then I’ll go see the doctor.” It’s been more than three years now since first she babbled her way out of a confrontation like this, and we’re still waiting for the big change. To her “credit”, she did schedule an appointment in march for a date in may. The day before she needed to go on that ROUTINE GP CHECKP, she all but threw herself before me begging me not to take her. Disgusting.

My brother isn’t of much help either – sure his job is the highest source of income we have, but other than that, living with him is mostly like living with a good neighbor – we exchange a few words or stories, have a meal or two together and then off he goes int the room where we sleep, reading up on some self help crap or looking up forums on the pc. He did use to get in fights with he when he was younger, but now he just keeps his distance, either from truly not giving a ****, or, as i’d like to hope, caring, but seing the futility of any further intervention on his part.

**** me, but I am at my wit’s end.

I’ve thought of at least telling my family doctor all of this a couple of times, but haven’t acted on it, as it is after all an intrusion deep within her being, and i am sure she would resent it. As you can read from what i have written, I’m not the most stable of people anymore myself, and I’ll have to eventually tell a psychiatrist at least if i go and seek treatment for myself.

I am not delusional in thinking that things could be the same ever again, but is begging someone to at least try and do something really too much to ask for?

P.S. We aren’t from the States, or any English speaking country for that matter, so i doubt that there are as many options readily available if and when she does decide to do something.

Hello & Welcome, Pickle 101!
You are certainly at your wits' end, and lashing out in anger will damage you over time.

Even if she is your mother, you have a need and right to self-care.
Your concern over her probable reaction to a caring, rational act indicates your emotional boundary strength towards your mother is weak. Strengthening your personal boundaries may be a first step, and you may need help doing that.

Please keep posting.