So in the middle of typing up a draft of this post in a word processor, she texted me wanting to talk when she got home because she thought I had some good ideas that we can implement. We haven’t discussed anything yet, but she plans on washing the throw rugs and cleaning the hardwood floors tomorrow. I’m going to help her because glorious cleaning, but this is a complete departure from last night and I’m both surprised and mildly confused.

But I know people come here for the drama, so I’m still going to share what I had of the draft up to that point, what happened last night/earlier today before the text came, and a little bit of my previous thoughts on the situation at that time.

Oh, and here’s your warning: REALLY GODDAMN LONG. Like about 8000 characters long, I checked. To give you an idea, reddit has a limit of 10,000. Honestly, I'm sorry if this is actually too long, I'm pretty sure the mods just said something about that in the one-post-per-day sticky and I don't want to go breaking the new rule immediately.

Anyways, uh, settle in with some popcorn or wine or something because this post is fucking huge.

Welp, I ended up talking to Old Yeller last night instead of having to postpone it to tonight. It…did not go well.

When I told her I slipped on the floor because of all the dog piss, except in many more words and about five to seven to maybe even ten minutes of nervously trying to get the words out and choose my words carefully, the first words out of her mouth were "so you want to kill my dogs?" Off to a great start there.

She took it personally and said I didn't like the way she kept the house, and said about six or seven times that she's not getting rid of her dogs. Each and every time I told her I wasn't asking her to, but she kept on bringing it up and trying to put words in my mouth.

She tried to act like it was my fucking fault. She acknowledged that her dogs weren't well-trained but that we apparently wouldn't have this problem of them making messes in the house if I had just helped her and let the dogs out while she was at work like she asked three years ago (except I don't remember her asking?).

She acted like I had no right to tell her I wanted the house to be cleaner when I leave dishes everywhere and don't clean them or put them in the dishwasher (which is something I'm trying to get in the habit of doing recently, actually), and don't help her clean. She said she's screamed at me in the past to help her clean and I never did. Except I don't remember her ever asking me to help her clean, and every time I asked her if she wanted my help when I saw her cleaning, she would say no. I didn't mention that, but I did point out that it's simple ignorance and me not knowing any better, and that I'm not a mind reader and I don't know these things are problems if she doesn't tell me.

I didn't point this next thing out either, but part of it is also that in a lot of cases with food and housework, I've just never been taught. My boyfriend has taught me how to efficiently cut my food, for christ's sake. He's taught me not to let empty glasses of milk or other certain beverages sit because it's hard to scrub out before putting in the dishwasher. There is a surprising amount of things I don't really know how to do or know anything about simply because I was never taught.

I'm not sure this is the right phrase to use, but it sure felt like she was throwing mother's day in my face. Multiple times, she said some variation of "You made it clear you can't stand me and now you want to [...]?" She said that since I've made it clear I can't stand her or her dogs, "us three inconveniences are sorry that we're in your way, but we don't really give a shit if we're inconveniencing you anymore since you've been treating us pretty much like shit."

She even said she's been thinking over our relationship and how she's been as a mother to me since the holiday and she doesn't know what she did to make me feel this way about her. Holy shit bitch, really? Seriously? Do you just conveniently not remember yelling at me until I cried and making me out to be some horrible teenage kid who never helped you when you never asked for help and turned it down whenever I offered it to you?

I tried. I did. But she kept saying "I don't know what your endgame is here, do you just want to hurt me more or rub it in my face or..." and literally all I wanted to do was find a solution to the problem of the floors being disgusting. But no. No, me giving a shit about my living space is a personal attack on her housekeeping and trying to deflect the blame that actually falls on me for being a devil child that doesn’t help onto her.

It just seems like she doesn't care anymore. She doesn't care about whether or not I think we can have a relationship. She doesn't care about the condition of the house because she'd rather blame it on me. She doesn't care that all I wanted was to find a solution to the floors, which I flat-out told her when she said she didn't know what I wanted. I seriously said I thought if she and I talked about it, we could find a solution so that the house didn’t have to be like this and the dogs could be trained and taken proper care of and everybody would be happy. But she kept insisting that she didn’t know what I wanted or what I was asking for.

Towards the end I realized there was nothing I could do, she's clearly not going to listen to me or change.

She said at one point that I never even say hello to her (she’s been harping on that since I was like 14, jesus fucking christ) and only talk to her when I want something, and so I later asked if she wanted me to get a job and stop asking her for money. Again she brought up mother's day and said something like "did you really think that you could tell me you can't stand me and then ask for my money?" So I told her I’ll find a job but I don’t know how long it will take.

The point where I realized she wasn’t going to change and we talked about me getting a job and no longer asking her for concert/convention money was kind of the end of the discussion. From there I went back to my room, where my boyfriend was waiting for me on our chat client. I told him all about it immediately.

His response to all of this was that she can’t see past her own nose and the relationship between us has been shanked for a while now, and she has no idea what she did wrong. He thinks at this point my best bet is to see about moving out of this shithole.

Or at least, that’s what he said last night after I told him about it once I got back to my computer. Today, he and Trusted Family Member are advising me to try talking to her again and see if we can work out a solution to train the dogs and make the house cleaner.

Personally, I think they’re both being too optimistic. Old Yeller seems to have made it perfectly clear that she doesn’t give a shit what I want or that I think the house is filthy and seems too fixated on what I said to her on mother’s day (except hello?? She asked the fucking questions and I gave her an answer, whose fault is it if she didn’t want to hear that?) and on me not liking her to even consider listening to me. So I don’t know if talking to her again would actually work. I think my best bet is to move out.

That was all before she wanted to talk about my apparent good ideas. Now, I don't really know what to expect. I don't know if she still wants me to get a job quickly (though I do plan on getting a work-study at the start of this coming semester anyways, so it'd just mean I have a job earlier than planned if she did). I don't know if she's going to want to start training her dogs or if she'll want me to help if she does. I don't know what's going to happen.

But I am cautiously optimistic. If she's open to what I actually tried to make my point about and discuss with her last night, maybe there's hope that A) the house doesn't always have to be gross, and B) our relationship doesn't have to be this way.

I don't really know how much of a relationship I might want with her since she's kind of abused me and scared the shit out of me, but I'm too surprised by her complete 180 from last night to think deeply about how I want to handle our relationship right now.

Either way, uh...I guess everything's actually kind of okay for now?