Clearly, I have a lot of issues with my mother

Believe it or not, I actually trimmed a ton out of this entry before posting. Hopefully my little subheads (more like chapters) make it a little easier to read ...

Important history

My mom and I have had a rocky relationship for the last several years. After my parents separated (when I was 19 and in college), my mom put me in positions I should never have been put in. She confided in me way too much and way too often. I told her repeatedly that she was telling me things I didn't need to hear, didn't want to hear and shouldn't be hearing. I told her to call her church friends or her work friends or her longtime friends. She said she didn't want to wear them out. She chose to wear me out instead.

I was in college, working multiple jobs and taking classes full time. I was financially independent. I didn't have the time to listen to her or (mainly) the time to deal with everything I was hearing. I asked her time after time after time to call someone else, but she refused. Every once in a while, I'd get through to her that she had crossed the line. She would apologize and promise she'd stop. As usual with my mom, the revelation didn't last long, and less than a couple weeks later, we'd be right back at square one.

I started off being nice with my requests for her to stop talking to me about the divorce and my dad. It didn't work. I got more assertive. It didn't work. I got more authoritative, and that didn't work. I eventually would yell into the phone. That just made her cry, and somehow, the calls continued. I tried cursing at her, which just made her tell me not to use that language and then hang up on me. Still, though, the calls didn't really stop.

My patience with my mom wore very thin over that two- or three-year period. We reached a whole new point when I was home for Christmas my sophomore year in college and my mom told me about the day just four weeks earlier that she'd almost successfully committed suicide. She told me she wouldn't have done what she did had we not gotten into an argument that morning. I said "f--- you" to her and told her she was stupid if she thought I was going to sit there and let her blame her stupid decision on me. That just tells you, though, what our relationship became.

I think I probably stand up for myself better now as a result of all I went through with my mom in college, but it's left my patience level with her very thin. I'd say my fuse with her is about as long as an eyelash. And I think that's her own fault.

Big days gone bad

My mom and I go through phases where we don't talk. We'll get on one of a few topics of conversation that I know we should avoid (money, my brother or my dad most often), and it winds up in a huge argument. She gets emotional and hangs up on me, and we don't talk for weeks -- sometimes months. Almost every single time, what makes us start talking again is that something really big happens in my life. This last time, it was my engagement.

For some background, the summer before my junior year of college is when my mom got married. I told her that I was going to have several major events in the near future that I would want her and my dad both to be at -- my last home game as a member of the OU marching band, my last band concert, my college graduation and, someday in the far-off future, my wedding. I told my mom that those were all things I had been working toward for a long time. They were all a huge deal to me, and I would need her and my dad to be civil.

Well, three of the four have passed, and none of those went smoothly. Through them all, I was stressed and trying to be in two places at once. My mom acted awkward at all of them. She drove two hours to and from OU to come to my college graduation and tried to leave without saying a word to me or even taking a picture with me because my dad was there. As for my last band concert, when I called her after to thank her for coming, she proceeded to gripe at me through sobs because she just knew I had planned it out that my dad and his girlfriend would end up sitting in the row in front of her and her husband. She honestly thought that in April of my senior year in college -- through all the stress of capstone, finals, projects and figuring out where I was going to be living and how I was going to get my first "real" job -- that I had nothing better to do than to plan it out that my dad and his girlfriend would sit in the same room as my mom and her husband -- and only one. row. in front of them.

I told you she's crazy.

The latest

So anyway, like I said, when K and I got engaged, my mom and I were in another of our not-talking phases. What's kind of ironic is that we were fighting about the very likely upcoming wedding. I'd told my mom all along since the summer before my junior year that if she ruined all those things I had coming up, I'd be very upset with her. Since a year and a half hadn't been enough time to handle that, I wanted to be sure she'd have plenty of time before my wedding, especially since I'd found the guy.

In February, an opportunity presented itself that would be good for us all -- my dad and his girlfriend; K and me; my mom and her husband -- to get together briefly. I suggested it to my mom. She told me I was unreasonable and that everyone she knew agreed and couldn't believe I'd even think to ask her and her husband to do such a thing. She said she would never sit at the same dinner table with my dad. Needless to say, that conversation ended badly, so we didn't talk for weeks.

Then came the morning of April 1st, when K got into my phone and found my mom's number to get her blessing before he proposed. When he did, I had to call her -- she's my mom. That meant we were talking again.

A rocky start

I had to call my mom the weekend K and I were first beginning to make plans, which included coming up with our budget. I called my mom to ask her if she could sit down with her husband to figure out what they were comfortable with contributing. I told her that whatever number she came up with would be what I'd count on -- nothing more, nothing less. That way, their contribution would be established early on, and that's all they'd have to worry about.

When I explained that to my mom, she asked if I'd talked to my dad. She said she didn't want to tell me anything until after I'd talked to him. I told her that I hadn't called him yet, but that when I'd told him a few days earlier that K and I would be planning our budget that weekend, he told me he would help out as much as he could to give me whatever I wanted. I wasn't surprised to hear him say that. I know my dad will give me more money than he should and would put himself in an uncomfortable situation because he wanted me to be happy. That's what I don't want to happen, and that's why I'm doing things the way I am.

My mom told me she would think about the whole budget thing. I talked to her a couple times the next week, but that didn't come up. Finally, I brought it up myself. My mom completely stunned me with her response: "I still need to pray about it."

"What does that mean?" I asked her. She explained to me that it was not her husband's responsibility to help pay for my wedding. He has three girls of his own, and he didn't even meet me until three years ago. It wouldn't be fair to expect him to pitch in.

"I completely agree," I told her. "But I figured since you two are married, you'd have a joint checking account. Obviously whatever you pitch in will affect him, so I figured you'd talk about it together."

My mom said something about how they don't discuss with each other how much they spend on their kids, which doesn't make sense. This isn't like my mom's giving me money for gas or for prescriptions. This is a wedding.

My mom continued, telling me she and my dad had paid for their entire wedding on their own. She told me that she was just "confused" as to what her responsibility was in the whole thing. She said K and I probably make three times more than her, so she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be helping with. She also mentioned that our relationship is pretty rocky. She then told me that I only call her when I want something -- usually money (Funny, since I started paying for my school supplies and the majority of my clothes, feminine products and other necessities when I was 14.). That conversation didn't get much better, so I got off the phone before I exploded at her.

When things really got bad

She didn't call me that week, which meant we didn't talk until the day I went dress shopping and fell in love with a reception site. I called her to tell her about it. I was noticeably excited about the place and some of the other things I'd discussed with the site manager. My mom, who always has an opinion about everything, was silent (Remember, I'm noticeably excited). Finally, I asked her to tell me what she wasn't saying. She proceeded to tell me that she didn't understand why K and I were going to serve dinner to everyone.

"Mom," I explained, "people will be flying in for this wedding from Pennsylvania; Georgia; Ohio; Washington; Washington, D.C.; New York -- from everywhere. The least we can do is feed them a little bit of food." I reminded her we will most likely have a buffet, which is much more economical than a plated dinner.

Then, she started on the whole alcohol thing: "Well, I know you and K want to have an open bar, and I don't understand why you're wanting to throw a huge party for everyone and pay for it," she said. I reminded my mom that K and I had not decided on anything yet and that we wouldn't even wind up making a decision on a bar until probably March. We'd see what was left in our budget and work with that.

My mom said, "I know you and K want to have this big, elaborate wedding, but ..." I cut her off at that. "Have you listened to anything I've said about this?!" I asked her. I told her that I've said all along that we want a simple wedding, but we want it to be fun for everyone. My mom then told me that she was a little worried that we were spending as much as $10,000 on a wedding and thought that was being frugal.

Um, hello? We're planning a wedding in Dallas, Texas. "Everything's bigger in Texas" -- yeah, that state. Dallas is huge, and it's full of people with huge hair and huge budgets (and huge fake boobs, but that's another story). I assure you thinking you can plan a half-decent wedding for 200 people in Dallas, Texas, at less than $10,000 is like building a rocket out of a film canister and an Alka-Seltzer tablet and expecting it to reach the moon.

I told my mom that her comments so far had been frustrating and upsetting. I told her this was supposed to be one of the most fun things a girl can do. It's something we look forward to from an early age, and I didn't want this to be a year of her shooting down everything I told her we'd planned. I told her I wanted that to stop.

She told me that I was frustrating and annoying her. The argument kept going and going and going. It went far beyond weddings, my dad and the present. My mom was twisting my words, which she's so talented at doing, and I was getting more and more frustrated.

Pretty much a timebomb

There are several problems with my relationship with my mom. For starters, as I said earlier, my fuse with her is very short. She annoys and frustrates me faster than anyone in the entire world. She doesn't upset me, though; I'm surprisingly calm and disconnected in our conversations. I wonder if it's some coping mechanism I developed in college when she was calling me five times a day.

When my mom cries, instead of getting sympathetic, I get annoyed and start wishing I was anywhere doing anything instead of listening to her cry and be so overdramatic about her emotions ("That cut me to the bone", "I'm dying [insert overdramatic, at-least-five-second pause here], and so are you. One day, I won't be here." -- not kidding, those are actual quotes.).

I'm also very honest with my mom. This is bad. It means that when she asks me a bad question, I tell her the (bad) honest answer. Example:

Mom: I can’t believe you just said that.
Me, blandly: Sorry.
Mom: No you’re not.
Me: You’re right, I’m really not.
Mom: Well, then why did you even bother apologizing?
Me: Because it was the polite thing to do.

Those three things -- short fuse, lack of sympathy and brutal honesty -- make for a pretty bad combination. Our argument that night escalated and escalated to the point that my mom just went from talking normally to bawling so hard she could barely speak. I actually did feel bad that she was crying so hard, but I couldn't help but notice how child-like her voice sounded through the whole thing. I felt bad that she was so upset, but I didn't feel anything really for being a good portion of the cause of it (her lack of sanity being the main culprit).

I'm usually a very sympathetic person. My mom is the only person I'm like that with. It's for that very reason that that night, a few hours after we'd gotten off the phone, I deleted my mom's number from my phone. I have her number memorized, but I figured without it in my phone, I'd have to dial a whole 10 digits before I could press "send" to call her. Surely by then, I'll have realized it's not a good idea.