my mother is fixating. she does this quite a bit. her last fixation/obsession was religion. she thinks of god as her literal biological father who is going to give her all his power and allow her to rule as queen of the world. the joys of having a paranoid-schizophrenic/delusional on your hands. now she's fixating on me. she's calling 2 or 3 times a day, more if i don't answer or call back. she wants to come by the house 2 or 3 times a week.

uh uh, NOT happening.

she may be my mother, but i have a family to deal with, including a disabled son, and i am not dealing with her delusions on top of everything else going on in my life. when you're taking care of 4 kids on next to no income, looking for work, dealing with a multi-differently abled son as well as 3 other people with disabilities in your home, and all the other real world stuff we adults have to take care of, there's no room or energy left for a parent who's in left field.

i've always wanted good family relationships, but the truth is my family in general sucks. my mother's family wants me to take care of my mother, forget the fact that i have my own family to deal with. my stepfather and his family are nonexistent in my life. my biological father, well, lord knows where he is, in puerto rico, i guess. i have an aunt that holds something against me that i said when i was 16, and i mean she's never forgiven me. she set up a family reunion last year and i never received an invitation of any kind. turns out it would have been my last chance to see my grandmother alive. that's how f'd up my family is. forgiveness is a 4-letter word not spoken by them.

thing is being nuts doesn't mean mother doesn't know the mother-guilt trip thing. she leaves these messages about how i shouldn't treat her the way i do and how she has a right to see me and her grandkids. i will agree that she has that right, but not 3 or 4 times a week, particularly since it disrupts my life. i don't have to answer 3 or more phone calls a day for the same reason. she comes by or calls and the whole rest of my day goes down the tubes rather quickly, something i can't afford as a writer.

i guess when the holidays are over i'm going to have to set some ground rules for this relationship. i honestly hate to do that, but i need the peace. if my mother didn't make me uncomfortable, if she didn't disrupt my day in a negative way, if i didn't have enough to deal with, it might not be so bad. but, for now, she needs to find another obsession. i'm just not willing to put up with it, and the "bad daughter" guilt trip bullshit is going to stop.

she's going to have to take our relationship on my terms or not at all. period.