Trauma of living with a Pickme Mother- One who doesn't decenter men

I Gave up. I didn't even bother to stop my mom who had just come back from a 10-day trip to Europe. She immediately went to our hometown to get stuff from storage, saw my father living in squalor and decided to go against god's preordained will by intervening in his karma. My father was controlling, weak, and a purposeless man. He was not a leader in our family, like many black men, he was a dependent. He went from his mother's house to my mother's house, to his sister's house when his mother died, and is now living in the projects in filth having ran out of women to exploit once his only sister died.  Men like this, leeches, rolling stones, deserve to die alone, you reap what you sow.

My father was dead weight, I know he did stuff, but nothing that he ever monetized. He could play the drums, speak Spanish, fly Cessnas, ex-military, ex border patrol agent, and built houses, but the will to live died sometime before I was born. Now he mostly just got drunk (Hennessy, gin or Budweiser), and slept on our couch. Even my best friend to this day recounts the dysfunction during our sleepovers.

My mom desperately wanted to be able to say that all her kids were by the same man, and he lived at home, on some 'my man, my man, my man' pickme shit. She placated him and put his needs before hers. She missed her licensing test to become an LVN to take my father to another city for a construction job. Talk about lack for foresight. Threw away years of study for his day labor job that only benefited him to buy more alcohol. That canon event could have made all the difference in her life and ours, but now she slaves away as a home health care worker. I remember the dysfunction of us having to beg him for school supplies, school clothes, sabbath tithes, easter dresses, etc. got to me at the age of 10 and I decided to go no contact early. This man did however make me into the vegetarian I was today, like Sarah Silverman's dad, he slaughtered my pet turkey (as I hand fed it). I got to watch as it ran around headless before dropping to the ground, got disemboweled and plucked before me. I was 8, and that was the day, thanksgiving, that I became a vegetarian. So besides having to grow up in the same home as a piss-poor parent we had to beg for support, he ran over my sister in the driveway in front of me (she lived after turning blue the entire way to the hospital), he went the wrong way down the freeway and caused a major accident and we managed to get out unscathed, except my aforementioned sister who he runover earlier had to learn to walk again after the wreck. Beyond his child endangerment and induced trauma. The repeated indignities of having to ask for things that should be given freely, and our mother encouraging it, almost as if to mold us into financially dependent pickmes or even worse, let us know how dependent we were on her for our survival. 

Nevertheless, despite it all, growing up, I saw my mother as a superhero because she did it all by herself, and then some. She had 3 kids but took in 2 more related kinship fosters (nieces) after black femicide by the hands of a jealous black man, in the family left them orphans, and then she took on 2 more foster kids. She said she loved being a mother and saved up so that she could not work for 5 years after she had me. My mother was a welder turned nurse. She has been helping people all her life. She wasn't dependent on a man, but at times we struggled. I remember moving into a hotel briefly and getting a bang and just for me perm during the stay, then and moving from house to house, even to a new city in squaw valley, like it was an adventure. We got to choose a new house every year because we had section 8. Bouncing around meant I was perpetually behind in schools, messed up my fundamentals, I think I missed out on long division lessons and fractions as a result. Truly it was just instability, poverty, and struggle, but she never let on to the kids. She even borrowed from her employers, got money from my hard-working uncle al, and my uncle by marriage uncle B. 

She loved taking on projects from broken children to broken men, to broken animals. She was a saint and a pick me. She tolerated more than she should have, and when my father and her finally split my senior year in high school, she latched onto the first dusty she could find, Choctaw and black Arizona reservation raised dusty, who collected his Indian check, played video games all day, and drove and wrecked my car I paid for. He got moved in before we were properly introduced prompting me to buy locks and install them on all of the girls' doors. Then they eloped without our knowing in Vegas. Talk about codependency and love bombing. Of fucking course it didn't last, he cheated on her with a girl from the dollar tree. She took off and left the apartment in a hurry with all of my sentimental, childhood nostalgia in it. I still miss my cheerleading uniforms and effects from my school days.

From there she struggled to find work in our hometown, as she felt she was being discriminated against due to her age and have been bouncing between her adult children's homes, well the doctor and me. She lived up until last week with me for the past two years. The first year rent free, with the assumption she was using all her money to pay down debts, improve credit, go through the NACA program for first time homebuyers and getting approved for a 1-bedroom condo. 

When I realized she was blowing all her money on clothes and taking care of my failure to launch siblings, I knew I had to start charging rent the second year because that was always the agreement. She lamented about not finding work but she found it fairly quickly, and I wanted to make sure she had savings before asking to contribute to household expenses. She collects social security, works two jobs, paid only $600 a month to live with maid service and utilities but still couldn't make ends meet. I wonder how my superhero, valley foundry welder mother, and superhuman mom to 7 girls fell so far from grace. Maybe getting foster checks from kids was making her ends meet?

She saw an opportunity to be my father's caregiver two weeks ago, when visiting my dad, seeing the dust everywhere and him complaining about not having food despite my dr. sister paying family 1300 a month plus IHSS to work for him, and decided that not allowing a deadbeat asshole to FAFO beat girl bossing it. Why my sister, who also has pickme tendencies, contributes to a man who wasn't there for her growing up is beyond me. I however, have great boundaries.

Despite trying to show her the finer things in life in Turks and Caicos, and trips to Mexico, trying to show her that she can work and get her degree as I got my MBA with her there. I showed her that you can turn your life around by losing weight and beautifying yourself. We went on several Sephora trips to find products she could use for mature skin, and makeup matching, as well as finding signature scents. She road with me while I habit stacked on financial empowerment books and motivational texts. We watched movies together and went on meal plans. We were thinking of businesses to get started. I tried to re-educate her with videos from Cyn-G, divestment channels, Princella, burb &bougie and countless other influencers preaching the 4B benefits, her attachment to tools of the patriarchy, namely religion has her brainwashed. She would have been a good cultist-- drunk the kool-aid and all. I love her but her societal and church upbringing has made her too far gone to critically think. Even Cyn G herself said she was a pickme and had to figure it out on her own. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. So I keep quiet and wait for the call, I can't do it anymore, he hasn't changed, can I come back? The answer will be no. Not all women can be helped and thank god she has 6 other daughters she can stay with, her only retirement plan.