I am wondering if there are any "only children" out there, and in particular, if you struggle with your duties as a daughter or son to your parent(s). I ask this because I know that for a lot of families, there are always "other" siblings to take up this duty... or who, at best, are more willing that you are to take care of your parents when they get old and possibly sick. But what happens with an only child situation?
This is something that has been stressing me out a great deal lately... though it's nothing new. (Feel free to skip to the bottom if this is too long.)
My mom has been alone for a long time, and her issues are legion. She is over 60 and refuses to go back to therapy, and always thinks she is going to die tomorrow despite her relatively decent health (she talked about suicide all the time when I was a kid, usually as a threat to get my attention). I have had to be the "parent" to my mom, emotionally, for most of my life... and now that I'm recently married and heading towards 30 and having my own kids, she's getting even more insecure/clingy/demanding/guilt-tripping. She feels regularly "jealous" of my husband, saying that he's "taking me away from her," etc. She always talks about what a loving child I was, when I was about 5 years old, "holding on to her leg" and how I've changed since then. (Since I don't cling on to her leg, apparently, that means that I don't love her anymore.)
She has no concept of boundaries and gets very hurt when I set any of them (she's Thai, notoriously dependent on daughters for everything)... that tends to be a strongly cultural thing, since there is no such thing as privacy in Thai families. Everyone's business is yours, and vice versa.
Granted, she has several valid reasons for her insecurity, and I understand those. My father died when she was 8 months pregnant with me (after just a short time of being married to him, after she was 34 and had waited all her life for a "good man,"), and then after 17 years my stepfather decided to leave her (he IS a good man, but she never admits to it because she drove him away... so instead, he's "to blame"). They were never married. Lack of trust, and total codependency between them... very unhealthy.
Then her mother died just over a year ago, and my mom was the primary caretaker... it was pancreatic cancer, very painful to watch her die in our home. But now my mom has given my grandma a kind of immortal/martyr status, and has also taken on herself the title of being the ultimate altruistic child who gave up everything to take care of her mother (hint, hint... right? you see it coming).
Then my mom's closest sister left Seattle after 28 years of being by her side, practically, to live her with husband in Las Vegas... and that was a massive support ripped out from under my mom.
Then I got married, which was the end-all of everything for her, apparently. You should have seen her the night before the wedding.
I have never seen such behavior. And this latest development seems to have sent her into a tailspin of depression that has been almost as bad as when my stepdad left her 10 years ago. She was never truly happy for my marriage, which hurt me a lot.
The list goes on and on. My mom has had a lot of shit happen to her, I realize. I have a ton of compassion for my mom... I just don't have a lot of tolerance for her behavior as a result, and the fact that she refuses to go to counseling "because it never helped" when she did go, really pisses me off. She expects ktspktsp and I to move right back home as soon as I finish my PhD (yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight) so she can raise our children and "make her happy" that way. Can anyone say,
AAAAAAAAH?!
She gets so lonely and pathetic, but then she tries to solve that by being even more clingy and demanding... which makes me avoid her even more, and NOT want to move home ever again. (And hey, I call/e-mail her at least 3 times a week, if not more... and visit several times a year, so it's not like I ignore her.) Yet she persists, thinking that if she just keeps making demands, someday I'll give in. Which I never have, since right about age 5.
But there are no other siblings to ask for help on this. It's her and me. That's it. And hence why I want to know what other "only-children" have done in similar situations, if they exist. I am not in favor of any kind of "disowning" of my mother; I do love her, at some level, and I will not abandon her to a nursing home or any such place when the time comes. If I'm Asian at all, I'm Asian in my treatment of elders. But I don't know how to resolve this issue for my own sanity, and to repair the relationship with my mom, if it is even possible.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I have been in counseling for a long time regarding this issue, and was doing a decent job of setting boundaries with my mom and having productive talks... but the marriage thing seems to have sent her over the edge. I am at a loss, and very scared of how things will be when we have children or when she actually starts to be unhealthy or sick. Did I mention she also has panic attacks, so she has been on anti-depressants for some decade or so...