u/beehivebeliever777

This is a long story and I will try to make it as short and to the point as possible, but there is a lot of context.

I am nearly 40 and living on the opposite side of the country of my family and where I grew up. When I was 10, my mom left my mentally ill (bipolar disorder) dad as he had been abusive towards her for years and was becoming more unstable. We had a lot of family in the area and so had a lot of family support through the transition but mostly lived with grandparents in an extremely crowded house. My mom was already in her 40's by this time. She has always been a very sweet, loving, and generous person, but also very unboundaried and an air head (i've always been more bookish and valued intelligence and creativity). I never felt unloved by her, but she was not great at learning from her mistakes and experience and this often presented in her promises that certain things would happen/change/etc and never much follow through. This was the situation when I began middle school in a different school due to having to move. It was a rough time and I was bullied and struggled to make friends that werent troublemakers.

fast forward and before 8th grade, I begged to live with my dad and be at the school with my old friends. My mother, not being good at asserting herself and enforcing rules herself, relied on other adults in our circle to have the "stern talking to" with me and essentially threatened that I would never be allowed to see my best friend if I moved in with my dad (I had known her since birth). They ended up arriving at an alternative which was that my best friend's parent's could share guardianship of me so that I could attend my school with my old friends again (this was right across a river separating states so was necessary because i couldnt attend this school out of state). I understand that this was all done to keep me safe in hindsight, but frustrated that my mom always had other people do her parenting for her in these situations.

My father ended up committing suicide near the start of that school year (8th grade). it was horrible and he tried to go after my mom too but thankfully she got away.

this was all rough and I was indeed difficult so I understand her willingness to just let me stay with my best friend's family most of the time, we both needed it I think and it offered me stability and accountability and her some emotional relief from our relationship difficulties.

Over the years, she would still rely on other people to do her parenting for her, to the point she would even schedule frequent doctor checkups for me I didnt need to have our family doctor and her old friend lecture me during our appointments which she would basically just use as a way to air her grievances (I will say my behavior was not terrible at this point and I was doing well in school/activities/socially etc).

We also had moved back in with my grandma at this point because my mom lost all her money on Mary Kay, got kidney stones, and a bad romantic relationship she was in at the time fell apart. She also developed a mild substance abuse problem (unbeknownst to herself) due to pain meds she had taken for her kidneys. My grandma was elderly and in the early phases of alzheimers so my mom ultimately the roll of her caregiver along wtih one my aunts also living there. My mom has always ended up by choice or just due to lack of resistance as a caregiver and even dropped out of college herself to help care for elderly grandparents when she was younger.

fast forward again, after my freshman year of college, my younger brother, 17 at the time and just before his senior year of high school was in a terrible car accident that resulted in him sustaining permanent brain damage in the form of a Frontal Lobe TBI.

I didnt go back to college despite having made deans list with a double major so I could help with the family. This understandably also became the center of my mom's world. My life went up and down over the next few years, eventually leading me to an impulsive marriage and move across the country in my early 20's. I love my mom and I love my brother but despite my mom guilting people including me into helping her with his situation, It always came at the cost of it not being enough or having to shoulder the overwhelming burden of her own stress and grief. it was chaos. so I got away from it. I feel guilt.

I tried to help my brother in multiple ways over the years following, including trying to move him in with me which he ended up deciding against. during the next decade, I had 3 children, left an abusive marriage, and remarried. My mom tried to show up in my life at times but was never fully present for much, always obsessing over my brother, in an incredibly unhealthy co-dependent relationship with him, and at one point making a poor decision to resign her guardianship of him at the time which allowed him to move out of a supported living facility that he was thriving in and live independently. He ended up homeless on multiple occassions, in jail, in car accidents, an addict, etc.

My relationship with my mom revolved only around my brother and caretaking her emotions and dealing with her lack of boundaries.

When she would visit me as an adult, i caught her many times going through my things for who knows why. She would be more focused on looking at her phone, seeing what my brother was doing than playing with her grandchildren. She was always sweet but always full of excuses and frustrated when called out, like everyone around her should just understand and give her grace... but it was a never ending demand.

She is now elderly, living in a small apartment, my brother is currently in a "personal care home" 5 hours away from her. She cant drive. He isnt in the correct facility that he needs (hes able to come and go and doesnt receive onsite psychiatric care) a lot of this is just due to lack of proper care over the years and weird insurance coding stuff around him now being diagnosed with other mental health disorders that overrides his TBI and schizo-affective disorder related to that. Last year I agreed to start the process to take some control over this stuff and his guardianship and was named as a co-guardian in the state where they reside but am fighting an uphill legal battle to get that status transferred to my state so that I can move him closer to me and ensure he gets proper care (more resources for his needs here). My goal was to try to eventually move my mom out too. Anyways we were in the home stretch and I have plans to fly in in July to get things squared away to finish this process when I find out my brother is getting evicted due to multiplie instances of disappearing and drinking/brining alcohol on to the premises. His mental health continues to decline (he talks about nazi's hunting him and cia implants etc). He's facing homelessness. He isnt allowed to live with my mom due to the restrictions on her living facility and he was trespeassed from the property. He cant live wtih me due to his instability and the children in my home plus lack of space and resources to support him on my own.

Despite all of the challenges of dealing with stuff for my brother, Having to deal wtih my mother is worse. it always has been. Ive worked in social services for over a decade and burnt out on all the second hand trauma. All she does is dump trauma on me everytime we talk, despite having told her not to and cutting contact as a result from time to time. not always even hers just any miserable things she knows about, she'll dump. When i try to talk to her about my brother to get straight answers, she talks about wanting to die, how no one around her cares about him or her and no one will help (people have for years and people are just tired of it and theres no give and take with her). She wont pursue therapy. she treats me as a place to dump her troubles on, i cant even get a word in. I dont think she knows anything about me as person, she has her fantasies about who i am, who she is, her role as a mother or grandmother, but her actions never match it and she just has a pitty party if i ever try to call any of it out.

I'm just over it

TLDR: My mom is a loving, big hearted person but incredibly traumatized, airheaded, and self-centered. She has a co-dependent relationship with my disabled/schizo adult brother that I'm trying to help who is facing homelessness, and her entire relationship with me revolves around him and her dumping her emotional chaos on me, always expecting pity and to be given grace, but never respecting the boundaries i set and never doing anything to improve her own behaviors to protect our relationship. I don't know if I have anymore fight in me to try to mend or partake in the relationship with her (and unfortunately that means my brother too because she is the gatekeeper of it).

What is the right thing to do?

Can you tell how thick final coats will be as puppies?

Don't know if I should cut ties with my mother or not