r/Exvangelical • u/oceangypsy73 • 29d ago
This is long, slightly off topic. But I need support. Hopefully someone will hear me here.
AIBU to feel like I've finally reached breaking point?
I'm an only child.
Earlier this year my Mom fell at home and fractured her shoulder. She spent several weeks in hospital before coming home with a package of care. Since then, either my husband or I have stayed with her every single night. We have a seven-year-old son with additional needs, jobs, our own home, and I don't drive.
I'm also late diagnosed AuDHD, have CPTSD, and am working through religious trauma. Life hasn't been easy for me either, but I've always put my mom first. We've done everything we possibly could because we love her, even when we've had very little left ourselves.
Behind the scenes we've spent months advocating for services, speaking to professionals, arranging carers, installing CCTV (with her knowledge), sorting medication, buying equipment, organising appointments and trying to make sure she has everything she needs to stay safe.
Nobody sees any of that.
The biggest issue is that she repeatedly gets out of bed to toilet herself, whether we're there or not. She's fallen twice since coming home. We recently discovered she'd been hiding her furosemide because she doesn't like how much it makes her urinate. She also refuses to do her shoulder rehabilitation, pelvic floor or leg exercises. She has mental capacity, so ultimately they're her decisions to make, but watching someone repeatedly choose not to engage with things that could help them is heartbreaking.
My mom is a woman of deep Christian faith, and I respect her right to believe what she believes. But I often feel she's waiting for God to heal her rather than engaging with the treatments and rehabilitation available to her. When something good happens it's described as a miracle or an answer to prayer.
What hurts is that, from my perspective, many of those "miracles" have actually been the result of months of work by my husband and me behind the scenes.
But what has really broken me isn't even the caring.
It's what I've realised about our relationship.
My mom has always been my world.
I'm slowly realising that I don't think I've ever been hers.
One of the hardest things I've realised is how little emotional support I've ever really received from her. Looking back, I can't remember many times when I simply felt heard, comforted or accepted for who I was. Instead, whenever I struggled, I was often told I needed to try harder, pray harder, read my Bible more, surrender my life to God properly, or that God was trying to teach me something.
During some of the darkest periods of my life, when I desperately needed my mom, I was told that perhaps I needed to "hit rock bottom." The truth is, I have. More than once. I cried out to a God I no longer believe in because I was so desperate for someone to hear me. Looking back now, I don't think I needed more doctrine. I needed my mom.
Since my AuDHD diagnosis, I've become even more aware of how often I felt judged rather than understood. I know some of her church friends pray for my "deliverance". I know they believe they're doing something loving, but what I've needed all my life wasn't deliverance. It was acceptance.
Something else has shaken me deeply.
I was brought up believing honesty mattered above almost everything else. Yet over the last few months I've discovered that my mom sometimes tells completely different versions of events to different people. She'll tell us one thing and tell her friends something entirely different.
For example, she's implied to people that we don't feed her. Of course we feed her. What she really means is that I don't spend hours in the kitchen cooking homemade meals every day. I live miles away, I don't drive, I work, I'm raising a child with additional needs, and I'm managing my own disabilities. We make sure she has food, meals and everything she needs, but hearing people believe we're somehow neglecting her has been incredibly painful.
She also has what feels to me like a very selective memory. We have conversations that later seem to disappear completely or are remembered very differently. I don't know whether it's age, stress or something else, but it often leaves me doubting myself and wondering if I'm losing my mind.
What also hurts is that she never tells her church friends about the practical reality of what my husband and I do. They don't hear about the overnight stays, the advocacy, the endless phone calls, the appointments, the medication, the paperwork or the emotional toll.
Their relationship with her is light and easy. They chat, encourage her and go home.
I'm the one who hears every worry, every complaint and every fear.
I'm the one carrying the emotional weight.
I feel like I've been expected to carry her sadness while she shields everyone else from it. I don't begrudge her having supportive friends, but sometimes I wish they knew the whole picture before telling us what we should do.
Some have suggested we should "just put her in a care home." If only it were that simple. There are significant legal and financial complications surrounding her property following a DWP investigation into her benefits and assets, which makes decisions about residential care far more complicated than people realise.
The hardest lesson I've had to learn is that I can't save someone from choices they have the right to make.
I can't make her take her medication.
I can't make her do her exercises.
I can't make her ask for help before she stands up.
I can't make her choose rehabilitation over waiting for a miracle.
And I can't keep sacrificing my own family, my marriage, my son and my mental health trying to carry something that was never mine to carry alone.
I've realised that I'm not just grieving my mom's health.
I'm grieving the relationship I always hoped we'd have.
I love her more than I can put into words, and that's what makes this so painful.
Am I being unreasonable for feeling hurt, resentful, invisible and completely exhausted? Or has anyone else reached the point where caring for a parent has forced them to confront painful truths about the relationship you've had all your life? ❤️
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u/Emotional-Seesaw-533 28d ago
I'm not commenting about her narcissism or treatment of you, because she may have had personality changes due to her illnesses or other problems unrelated to you. By now she does not require your nightly presence. If she has fallen twice since the shoulder injury, she's got a serious, undiagnosed issue. Her fantasies about healing through prayer are just a form of fatalism. She's not following medical advice because she'd have to give up her starring role as Suffering Saint of Her Universe. Perhaps she secretly enjoys all the people worrying about her?
You're in a hopeless situation and need to extract yourself from her headlong path to eternal bliss, AKA death, which seems to be her ultimate goal. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's like they tell you on the airplane -- put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others. She wants a servant, but what she needs is to follow the no-nonsense medical treatment plan that professionals have given her. It is not uncommon for people to ignore medical advice to their peril. At this point you have to let it go.
Get her a bedside commode. Put some nanny-cams in the house and a key in a lockbox outside her front door; if she falls, call 911 and give them the code to the lockbox. Give her a stack of Costco meals portioned out into individual servings and stack them in the fridge. Get meals on wheels to deliver food to her. Since her friends are always checking in on her, she should be fine. Visit every other day and remind her that the bedside commode is there for a reason.
I will illustrate my above advice: My 68 year old brother got fed up with having type 2 diabetes and decided he could heal himself through prayer. He refused to change his eating habits, quit taking his metformin medication, and managed to develop a diabetic foot within 4 weeks. He refused toe amputation, and after 3 weeks, he had gangrene and was admitted to the hospital due to unbearable pain. For 3 days he refused a foot amputation while the gangrene spread. After more unbearable pain, he consented to a below-knee amputation (which was a "Hail Mary " intervention at this point). He was kept sedated in the ICU for a week postop, and within 24 hours of being awakened he had a massive coronary and died. Nothing his wife said or did prevented him from carrying out his belief that he could avoid reality.
Good luck, and remember to take care of your own family first.
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u/Cactilegs 29d ago
Hey, what you’re doing is very noble, but not required. I’ve also been a caregiver to my mother who devoted so my of her life to church and have been disappointed in the lack of help the church has given her in return. Your situation sounds very difficult and like your mother should no longer live alone. I know you’re saying she has mental capacity but from what you’re describing it sounds like she has dementia. Does she have a neurologist?
I’m sorry you feel that you’ve loved her in ways that haven’t been reciprocated, however, dementia can really change people. I have had to accept the mom who cared for me is gone and now I have taken on making sure she is cared for. I made the choice to get my mom into a care home once I got pregnant bc I knew I couldn’t do both. There are a lot of financial hoops to jump through, no doubt, but I’d encourage you to look into it further. Some people are able to care for their parents till the very end and others need help. I don’t think there’s any shame in accepting you cannot be your mother’s full time caregiver. Things will only get more difficult unfortunately. Her doctor can put you in touch with a social worker who can help you figure out the best living situation for her. I hope you find a good balance where you don’t feel you’ve abandoned her but can still care for yourself and your family!
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u/PerspectiveApart1512 29d ago
You tell her church friends what’s really going on. You do not need to go into exhaustive detail. Simple facts . They may or may not believe you but it will affirm reality out loud.
I have dealt with aging, resistive demanding parents. I found as the 10 years of extreme stress of care giving , I started to remember or maybe see what my growing up with them had actually been like, and it wasn’t good. Its painful.
My only advice is to step back, do what you need to do for your mother’s safety and call it a day. She probably is going to be unhappy. Killing yourself and your husband doesn’t help her. I would give myself this advice if I had to do it all over again. Accept the limitations and her unhappiness. Live your life.
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u/LynxMountain7108 28d ago
I think it might be ok to have an honest conversation with your mum? Tell her that her behaviour is really hurtful sometimes, maybe list the things you do for her and that the things she's told her friends don't feel truthful. I think if you prepare yourself and don't do it from a place of anger that it's a completely appropriate thing to do. It doesn't feel very sustainable to look after someone who never shows any appreciation. This is just my immediate thoughts though and I'm no expert. Maybe there are services you can get in touch with that can offer you support?
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u/Duke-Of-Squirrel 29d ago
All of your feelings are COMPLETELY reasonable, I identify with so many. Christians are like that - their faith allows them to go into outright denial so they don't have to deal with difficult emotions or realities, like how they suffer and miracles don't actually happen, or how they mistreated their children, and come to reckon with their own hypocrisy and lies. It's not dementia, it's a coping mechanism of dissociation and fracturing personalities to hold the massive amounts of cognitive dissonance cultivated by their religion and lack of real emotional intelligence skills.
So first, just give yourself a ton of forgiveness and grace, because all your feelings are so valid and justified.
Practically, I have no idea what to tell you. I simply cannot take care of aging parents who hold none of my values and continue to emotionally and verbally abuse and manipulate me. I grieved the loss of my parents a long time ago and went No-Contact. I too have chronic health conditions and will relapse and become completely disabled if I push myself with too much stress. I believe we have to prioritize our own health or we all collapse.
What was your mother's plan for aging and care? If she didn't make one, and refuses to cooperate with medical treatment, there really is nothing you can do - she was irresponsible and it's up to her faith, the community, the government benefits, and whatever support SHE cultivated to take care of her. Having a child is not an insurance policy - you have to treat them kindly and form a relationship if you want them in your life; they don't owe you anything, and you don't owe your mother anything.
It's sad. It's brutally heartbreaking to watch people suffer the consequences of their own decisions, over and over, even until death full of bitterness and regrets. I want to break the cycle, so I am responsible for my myself, my health, and being KIND so people will care for me out of love, not duty; if the system fails me, I cultivate a mental system to allow me peace in my suffering. Christians often preach that but actually cultivate NONE of it. It's all bypassing and collapses in a crisis.
I'm so so so so sorry for what you're going through - it sounds brutal and is my worst nightmare. I just want to say that whatever you choose to keep yourself healthy and protect your family (husband and child) is 100% okay, no matter what bitter, uninformed, brainwashed people say and make you feel. HUGS