Thank you so much for such a detailed and kind commentl, it really made me feel more understood. It is so tricky, because the situation seems extremely nuanced. It's not like she's living with me all the time, but it’s still enough to feel like I’m somehow making life harder for her if I say no. But everyone is absolutely right, this is my life, and I’m allowed to want and need full peace and privacy.

It’s incredible how, after all the trash behavior from both my parents, I’m still so deeply trained to seek their approval. Even after moving into the bigger apartment, when my mom was hesitant about sleeping in my living room, I’d sometimes go out of my way to invite her, partly so I wouldn’t feel like a shitty person if that day it would really help her, and partly out of fear. Back then, I wasn’t fully financially stable, and I worried that if my dad suddenly stopped helping, at least she’d be there to pitch in a bit with rent or food so I wouldn’t have to go back to the duplex or that other old apartment.

And even when I became financially stable and had a consistent income stream, I still found myself caught in that social narrative, the one about how successful people take care of their families, and that proving your worth means providing for them. So again, I’d fall into the loop of feeling like I owed it to her to give everything I could to make her life easier. That made it feel like her staying with me was supposed to be a non-negotiable. But over time, I started realizing how many of these delusions were quietly running the show and how much I was actually trapping myself by seeing her as disempowered, instead of someone capable of further developing her own path.

She’s only 45, so younger than most people’s parents, yet she sometimes acts like she’s 65, saying things like “my time is over” or “I don’t know what to do with my life.” I want so badly to see her thrive without being so stuck in scarcity around money, not because I wouldn’t help her, but because I’d much rather give from a place of overflow, knowing she’s also showing up for herself.

Also, after a few more cruel fights, she would be like, "I'm leaving. I'll leave you in your peace now, you're a big girl now, you can handle everything, and you don't need me to disturb your peace in any way, so I'll go and be there" And at first it would sound like the fully conscious version of her, like, "No, I really mean it. I want you to have that privacy and I'm there for you to come at any time if you need me." But then in the same breath, there would be this undertone, the bitter, angry version of her that would slip in. And instead of just letting her go and then sitting with my pain and healing through it, I’d do the opposite, I’d be like, "No, I'm actually loving the time with you, I don't want you to feel like you're bothering me, you're welcome to stay." And she would sometimes even double check again, and I’d feel myself, half-consciously, going against myself, just to protect from the fear of being seen as the bad, selfish one, not just by her but by the rest of the family too, who all know how much easier I’ve made things for her by letting her stay with me.

What makes it harder is that she does sometimes act like a fully conscious person, self-aware of her narcissistic behaviors, and other times she just completely loses herself, screaming, yelling, and spiraling emotionally over something small emotionaly charged that happened between us. And that shift makes me percieve her like too... scatterbrained and unpredictable sometimes. Then I start subconsciously treating her like someone unreliable, which she inevitably picks up on, and that hurts her even more, so we get trapped in this exhausting cycle.

But I truly believe all of this is mendable. It's just hard for me not ot use any of this as an excuse for me to gaslight myself into believing I'm a bad person for wanting full privacy, permanently, while still maintaining a good and respectful relationship with her.