[lylystarr]

Recently I've been in a rough situation (the house burned down) and ever since then I feel like I've grown more aware, not just of myself but of things around me.

I'm 24 and have never been on my own and my own caretaker before, but ever since the disaster I've been recognizing I need to get out of my physically safe and emotionally stunting bubble.

My mother spanked me when I was younger because of a trauma-related incontinence that continued into my mid-teens, and has verbally abused me as well under the pretense that because I live with her I need to bend to her rules all the time.

I lived in a rural area and I might suffer from social anxiety (it's not diagnosed but I feel a fight-or-flight, freeze-up panic whenever I have to talk to someone over the phone or in person) caused by repeated, constant bullying in school and supervising adults that only punished me when I tried to defend myself.

My mother lately has been not only getting on my nerves, but she actually needs me. she can't operate her own smartphone properly and all attempts at teaching her, no matter how patient, failed because she won't listen or remember it. I also constantly have to be the one noting down everything to remember it (I have problems remembering things for long) because she doesn't admit that she has memory problems and is at least as forgetful if not more than I am, and so she never writes down anything more than a name and phone number, and then doesn't remember at all what the number and name are connected to.

Her boyfriend tried to molest me once and is basically the biggest piece of crap that has ever walked the earth, but she sides with him and coddles him instead of agreeing with me until I blow up and yell about what he did to me. she seems to prefer a potential rapist's company too much to care about my safety and only makes weak-kneed attempts at "keeping us away from eachother".

My mother also constantly pushes me to do things she thinks of but are ultimately not useful to me at that point, only when it's convenient for her. I have a mobility problem (one knee had surgery and doesn't have full strength, and the other is very easy to sprain or dislocate simply by tripping or running), so I need to depend on her to take me places until I can get a bus pass and learn the city's bus schedule and paths, which makes it even more obvious that she does things at her convenience and not mine.

I'm also struggling with stress after the house fire (smoke smells trigger physical sensations of being too close to a fire) and trying to get my things in order so I can be independant without any previous experience, and I don't have time to deal with her aggressive, controlling way of coping while she's lying left and right about how things happened like she's attention-seeking when she's done the lying thing her whole life just to seem more interesting.

I've recently gotten over suicidal thoughts thanks to the mental health workers in the city who listened to me and understood what I was saying more than my mother ever has, but now I have thoughts of killing HER instead, which isn't much better. My dad, who I loved and will love forever, died from cancer, and I've constantly struggled with his loss. I genuinely would trade my mother away to have my father back in a heartbeat, and I've fantasized about gruesome ways to murder her when I was a teen.

Now that she's expecting me to stand up and be an independent adult after she spent all those years coddling me and keeping me in a dependent situation and constantly angry that I can't bootstrap-mantra myself independent, I feel like if I had a gun I would actually shoot her and I wouldn't feel any grief or remorse.

I know it's not normal, but I really need to share this with someone before I do something stupid by bottling it up so it can blow up in my face later.

[IowaFarmGal]

I hope you are able to get out of there soon! Sounds like a bad situation! Sorry to hear that you lost your father to cancer. Is your mental health worker helping you with resources to get out of the house? Good Luck with your situation. Hugs!

[shezbut]

I'm sorry that you're in such a rough spot. It sounds as though getting out into your own place will help put you into a better state of mind, and that's important!

It's good that you've gotten help to work through suicidal ideation ~ have you also talked with them about your anger and resentment towards your mom? I think that doing so would be very helpful for you. Letting those emotions out ~ speaking about them openly gives them a lot less power in your mind. Please do consider continuing seeing a T to help you work through your struggles.

Best wishes to you!

[lylystarr]

Thank you for your kind thoughts! I'm not sure if you know how much it means to me in my current situation, it's incredible to me that complete strangers without any benefit in helping me still do in a hundred different ways. At the same time it's a bit painful, because the woman I lived for most of my life with doesn't even give off the feeling she cares about anything other than herself.

I'm waiting for a call from someone a bit more specialized than the current worker, but I can easily request an appointment for if it gets too much. I've talked about the situation more in broad strokes, but in this town it's very rare to find a place to live in June and July due to all the college students moving out of the dorms, and they've already given me all the resources they have toward finding an appartment.

I also feel so powerless right now... I know I can't hurry any faster than the red tape lets me, but I feel like if I stay still for too long I'll get stuck that way. Is that even normal to feel at that point? That urge to just run off before I get comfy?

[lylystarr]

I'm not sure if you realize how much it means to me, but thank you for the best wishes. It's uplifting and depressing at the same time that I feel like my own mother doesn't even care as much as strangers on the internet do.

I already am using as many resources toward finding myself a place to live as the worker could suggest, but there are a lot of college people moving out of the dorms for summer in June and July, which means less stuff available. And thanks to the way the town's "emergency" rent list works, everything on it is public and it's really whoever gets there first that gets in and not whoever is most about to be homeless.

I feel utterly powerless a lot of the time when I'm looking about, on and offline, and there isn't anything each time I look and call. It's also not helping my feeling that I need to run away NOW before I end up rooted in place. It's not rational, but I'm scared that I'll never find anything and will have to live with the toxic people my mother knows.