Decisions Decisions

Chris and I have an opportunity to go to the Indianapolis 500 this weekend for about $200.00. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Some friends of ours always go, and this year, they were taking her little sister as a thank you for babysitting, etc., and at the last moment (last night) she cancelled. So Chris jokingly says we ought to go since it was already all paid for, and they said if we would pay for one of the tickets we could go! Seriously!

It’s one of those deals where neither of us really cares about racing, and it’s not something that on our own we would ever do. But. So I said that we’d have to figure out something to do with Mom, and went to ask her if she would be willing to spend the weekend with Grandma? Yeah, that would be okay. So then she was supposed to decide whether she wanted to go spend a couple weeks with Debbie or if she wanted us to pick her up at Grandma’s on the way back.

So this morning she tells me that she doesn’t want to go stay with anyone, she wants us to leave her at the house, without a car, and she PROMISES that she will take her drugs correctly.

Yeah, right.

So now what? On the one hand, if the opportunity had never come up, I wouldn’t miss it. It’s not something I’ve been dying to do. On the other hand, Chris and I are just starting the 2nd year of our marriage, we don’t have any kids, we have enough money in the bank to be able to go and still pay our bills, and why can’t we be spontaneous and just go?

I was telling my boss about it this morning, he says I should tell Mom that she’s already agreed to go stay with Grandma and that we’ve already agreed to go, so she doesn’t have a choice. I haven’t talked to Chris yet, he was still in bed when I left this morning.

Mom says that she’s going crazy because she doesn’t have any control over her life. That she’s had control for the last year and done fine until she came to stay with me. I wanted to ask her “What control?” Margie was giving her her drugs, I was paying all of her bills. All she had to worry about was gas, food, and cigarettes. When she moved down here, she wanted me to give her more control, so I gave her a chance and let her handle her drugs – and she did really well until she got back on the Xanax. She wanted to pay her bills, so I said fine, I’ll let you pay the Tulsa bills. I asked her about that this morning, because I haven’t seen any checks come thru the bank account to pay any bills and she said that she hasn’t received any. In 2 months? I paid the April ones, but I haven’t paid anything for May because I haven’t seen any. (She goes out to get the mail and can’t remember what she does with it. I keep finding it in weird places – hers and mine both.)

I told her that I’ve been trying to give her chances to show me that she can handle taking care of herself, and every time I do something bad happens, or she makes a really bad decision.

So, what do I do? I’m so tired of fighting with her all the time. She’s not happy, Chris and I aren’t happy. Every day is a battle of wills over something. She wants me to give her all the money, let her buy a condo, all new furniture to put in it, a new car, as many trips to Seattle as she wants to take…and let the future worry about itself because there’s no point in planning for it.

I feel like I’m dealing with a child, and while I try not to treat her like one, I know that I do at times, but she’s all about I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT RIGHT NOW AND YOU’RE MEAN IF YOU DON’T GIVE IT TO ME. And that just pushes my “If you’re going to act like a child I’m going to treat you like one” button.

I just want my mother back.