Mother's day today - for some

Today is Mother's Day, but of course I don't have a relationship with my mother so this time, for the first time I did not buy her a card or a present. I just don't see the point in pretending that everything is really good between us when it isn't. It would be buying something just for the sake of it and it would feel totally fake. But besides this, nothing would change. She would be nice to me for a day (or less) and then go back to yelling and screaming at me and not doing anything about the obnoxiousness LayZ boy or my step-father show to me. She condones their behaviour by just watching silently as they say their shitty words to me and saying nothing.  She does this all the time.

I was at home all day today clearing out more of the dry produce in the pantry, re-organising the packets, putting some more of the packetted food into air-tight glass jars because I found more of those larvae in between packets of food. I also wiped down more of the shelves with a cloth dipped in white vinegar - the smell of the vinegar brought out some more of those larvae, which I also got rid of. It was a pain to have to throw out more food, but at least now everything is really clean and fresh (mostly - I still have the bottom of the pantry to clear out, which I will do tomorrow).

Now that my mother and step-father have come home, his immediate reaction to my clothes being on one of those mobile clothes lines in the lounge room was: "That idiot daughter doesn't know how to dry her clothes outsides, so she has to bring them in here. Bloody idiot." Of course he doesn't want to acknowledge that it is almost winter and at about 3pm when the sun loses its intensity, there is not more warmth and clothes don't dry well because it's only after 11am that the sun even starts to warm up, so you don't have much time to get your clothes outside and dry. Even my mother brings her clothes inside to dry them too, but my step-father just wants to have something to to criticise and complain about and as he wants to put me down, he'll use anything to accomplish this. Lovely isn't he?

I told my mother a few days ago not to expect anything from me for Mother's Day because we don't have a relationship, so there is no point me buying anything. Her response? "That's okay." And she says this in a really defensive way, because it's not okay but she is so stubborn that she wont admit it.  She fully expected me to go back on my word and buy her something, even if just a card as she didn't really believe that I not give her anything or not do anything for her. I feel bad for her. I know it must hurt her. But dammit, she hurts me every day. What she sows, she is now reaping - the shitty way she treats me has to have consequences. How am I supposed to give her anything when it just doesn't change anything and it will make me feel worse when I know I spent time looking for the perfect present and she continues to treat me like shit and allows everyone else in the house to treat me like shit - she's the ruler of the house and what she says goes, so if she tells my step-father or brother to do something, they do it, so if they treat me a certain way, it's because she allows it. While they are responsible for their behaviour, she is the one who makes the rules in the house that everyone must obey.

As an aside, regarding gift giving, everyone loves my presents because I spend a long time thinking about and searching for something that they will really like and invariably they love what I give because I think about what the person I am buying a gift will like and what will suit them and I usually get it right 9 times out of 10.

LayZ boy has always been the favourite child

Around 5pm today, LayZ boy came home, driving our mother's car as his car is in the garage getting serviced. He never has enough money (he cant manage his money), so who knows if he will get it back or he will just dump it. The fact that mum gave him the keys to her car, when she removed the garage keys from my keyring without my knowledge (she came into my bedroom, went into my bag and removed them) because she didn't want me to have access to the garage so I couldn't drive her car, really upset me a lot. I don't have car keys to her car - she was just being vindictive because one day her keys were not on the door of the internal access area of the garage and she accused me of "stealing them to get her car" (of course I never took them and told her she was crazy for flinging wild accusations at me just when I woke up without any evidence) and when she found out my step-father actually took the keys, but he forgot to tell her, she still got paranoid, thinking maybe I made a copy of her car keys to take off with her car without her permission. Of course I didn't, but she was paranoid.

Anyway, the fact that she gives her keys to her son and does everything she can to prevent me from even having access to the garage where her car is, upset me greatly. She was just showing her favouritism to her son over me yet again. It is unfairness to a ridiculous level.

The really ironic thing here is that my mother accuses her own mother of favouring her sister over her and yet here she is, doing the exact same thing with her own children - repeating the pattern and not even realising that she is doing that! And when I mention how it is similar, she tells me the dynamics between her sister, their mother and her are "totally different". She always says that. No self-awareness at all. Not an iota.

LayZ boy is a mummy's boy

My mother and brother have a really close relationship - they always have. It's because he is so good at lying and manipulating her to get what he wants and I am not (well actually I could be good at it but I refuse to engage in such base behaviours as I think they're beneath me).

My mother calls my brother to see how he is every single day, on his mobile. No matter how much he upsets and hurts me (and it is on purpose), she calls him to say hello and to see how he is because she wont believe he would ever antagonise me on purpose, she wont believe her son is that vindictive.

With me, it's a different matter. She is completely oblivious to me. I have to fall down and be unconscious for her to notice that something might be wrong with me! Even the other night when we went to the club for dinner and my face turned white and I told her I would go home because I couldn't breathe properly, she didn't even take any notice of what I said and started talking about how excited she was about the desserts they had at the club and left the table to get some! She is really thoughtless. And then she gets defensive and offended when I tell that she was didn't even notice that I couldn't breathe.

She has always been like that with me - very thoughtless. And besides which, LayZ boy has always been her favourite child.

LayZ boy calls his mother "mummy" whenever he is calling out for her at home. He sounds very much like a baby when he says that, as he says it several times when he's calling out to her. He does it on purpose to sound like a baby, because he knows his mother loves it when he acts like a baby - the mummy's boy that he is! He also calls her "grandma" sometimes. He used to call her "old lady", as a joke, "hey, old lady" if he was addressing her, but she would get upset with him and he would cajole her until she saw his joke. If I did the same, she wouldn't talk to me for days!

I think my mother and brother are very similar in their characteristics, which really stands to reason, since she raised him and taught him everything he knows.

• Neither of them are good communicators - they cannot express how they feel about anything, ever
• They get angry if they cannot get their way
• They blame everyone else for all of their problems - nothing is ever their fault
• They both live in their fantasy delusions which are not based in reality
• They both lie to everyone about everything (except maybe each other, but not sure about that)
• They are both very uneducated and illiterate and don't like to read anything beyond magazines, if that
• They are both very stubborn and refuse to see any other point of view but their own
• They both behave very charmingly, nicely and quietly in front of most other people to create the illusion that they are lovely, warm human beings to other people, when that is so far from the truth

LayZ boy learnt rage and volatility in emotions from his father, his step-father and his mother.