My mother the crazy woman who cries when she gets lost

I think my mother has major abandonment issues and that is why she needs to control me so desperately.

Her own mother was kicked out of her home by her husband (my mother's father) because she was sick too much and was a liability to the family because she couldn't work on the farm. They lived in a rural area. Of course because my mother was only a small child, not even five, she would have felt that her mother abandoned her, so she has these major abandonment issues now.

It came to light one day when we were in a big shopping market centre and she was lost. She's really bad with directions as it is, but it was a market, not out in some strange city where she didn't know anyone and plus she had a mobile phone with her so she couldn't get lost.

She decided she wanted to go off and explore on her own, as did her friend and I did the same. We agreed we would meet at a designated time in a designated place and I reinforced to my mother to orient herself properly so that she could remember it. And of course she said she would, but like a child, she just says yes and then her attention wanders off elsewhere.

At the designated time both her friend and I were at the designated place, but not mother. We waited and then I got a phone call on my mobile phone. She started crying like a baby, telling me she was lost and didn't know how to find us and that she would "never" find us. She kept crying and telling me how lost she was. This was a huge almost square market mall, only one level and then a car park, with a lot of vendors/stalls and it was still busy, so she wasn't going to be lost forever.

I had to calm her down, ask her what could she see in front of her and then direct her to where we were, even though this was the first time I had ever been to that market mall too. My sense of direction is a lot better than hers even in the worst of times.

When she finally got to use, she started laughing inanely like a child, as if it was such a funny lark that she got so lost, go overwhelmed with emotion that she was crying and that it was nothing unusual.

This is my family! A bunch of nutcases who try to make me responsible for them and their actions, when they need to take responsibility for themselves, not put all of this unwarranted responsibility on me.