It's been three weeks since my mother has come to visit me in the United States, and there's still a week to go, and it saddens me that I know I will be a whole lot less stressed when she's gone.

I love my mother. On an intellectual level I know that to raise me as a single mother required a lot of dedication and finding money where there was none, and I am grateful to her for that. Really, I am. Unfortunately she also has this way of getting under my skin. I've often tried to think about what it was exactly and of course it's a variety of things. They all came to a head this visit, too.

For one, she has to double check everything I say. Everything. I tell her that the neighborhood I live in is mostly populated by students, and she won't believe me until she's asked someone else. I tell her that buses don't run on Sundays, and she won't believe me until she asks someone else. Same with whether it is normal that the stove is always hot (old style gas stove, has pilots lights, but she won't take my word for it), or how cold it gets in winter, or anything really. My SO was with me at the beginning of the month to help me move into my new place, and she latched onto him completely. Not just in a "they're getting along" way, but more in a "excluding my daughter out of conversations and being convinced that everything he says is the absolute truth way." And of course he noticed and tried to get her to include me, but she just talks over me. It came to a point where she basically made him go outside on the porch to talk while I was stuck in the kitchen tending food.

I really thought that the reason I didn't get along with my mother was because, well, she is my mother and mother-daughter relationships can be tense. To have my SO, then, who is usually extremely patient with older people - a lot of his friends and mentors are my mother's age or even older - take me aside and tell me he really cannot deal with her anymore, means that really somewhere there's a problem. And my mother and I have our good times, our good conversations. Except at some point I will slip up and say something that isn't *exactly* what I should have said in her opinion, and she'll snap at me for it.

The kicker? She admits it. She admits that when we are around other people, she will more willingly joke about herself and accept to be teased, but that when it's just me and her she tends to think everything I say is an insult to her. She will admit to randomly jumping from one topic to another, but when I ask her to clarify what she means, she'll snap because she thinks I know what she means and am just being difficult. It's like I can't win!

Now I could have lived with her thinking my SO was the second coming and that I would never be worthy of him, but on the last night he did something that upset both her and me. He started questioning her religious beliefs, even though she didn't bring them up, and started insinuating that my aunt who was a nun was just "running away from real life." Now I don't subscribe to the same beliefs as my mother, but I DO believe that 1) my mother deserves respect 2) my guests deserve respect, and not to be attacked unprovoked 3) my aunt had passed away just a month ago and it was cruel to talk to her like that. I immediately called my SO out on that and he apologized, but now my mother thinks that he is immature and abuses alcohol (he had had a couple of beers when the conversation happened) and won't shut up about it. I mean yes what he did was wrong but there really is nothing more I could have done. In fact I stepped in immediately and defended her. But apparently I should somehow have stopped it from happening in the first place.

Still a bit clueless as to why my SO thought it would be appropriate to do that, but he had to leave for work the next morning and we haven't had a chance to talk about it yet. All I can gather is that, in his world, religious = creationist, which as a scientist he is completely against. But still. Uncalled for.

So now my mother is convinced that I hate her, even though I don't. She is convinced that I do all the things that annoy her on purpose, while telling me that all the things she does that annoy me are just part of who she is and I need to accept that. I don't know how to deal with her. I do my absolute best, put myself out of my comfort zone for her, and she still accuses me of not doing enough. And when I start pointing at all the things I *did* do, she says that a good deed is one you don't call attention to, so I should not say anything.

Yesterday she cried because she felt that every time I was rude or short to her (in her mind) it was because I was purposefully paying her back for all the times she's been that way toward me while growing up. She'll remind me of the horrible things I did as a teenager to explain why she is wary of me. I admit I was a terrible teenager, but I was a TEENAGER. I am an adult now. I have apologized and I really don't even raise my voice against her anymore. But she's been an adult through the whole thing, so what's her excuse for the horrible things she has done (and has admitted to doing)? Of course I don't tell her that. I just try to remind her of all the things I've done that show I love her.

This is more an incoherent rant than anything else, but her contradictions are wearing on me. She's always insisted that I be an independent child/teenager/young adult, yet as an adult she absolutely refuses to be left alone even in my apartment. If she wants to go somewhere, I have to go with her. If she goes shopping for herself for hours, I not only have to go with her, but I have to follow her through the store, by her side, unable to even look at things that would be of interest with me. When my SO was with me, we tried so hard to have some time together. Maybe just a half away as we go to the supermarket together. But she always insisted on coming with us.

I feel awful for having those thoughts. I love my mother. I just can't stand her attitude, and more particularly the way she treats me. I thought it was all in my head, but at least one other person has seen it. My SO has actually told my mother to stop treating me so badly. Of course she thought I had set him up to do so. Feels like I can never win.

Rant over.