AITAH for turning on the AC for all of 5 minutes?
I honestly can't believe we are doing this again. Unfortunately, this was an issue last year where my mother pulled the thermostat off of the wall twice on hot days. Sorry for the background info, but I know this is a pattern with her.
Our house seems to get extremely hot easily with the oven on or the stove in use. We typically used to keep it on 72 heat, but she refuses that and has it on 73 heat now. Forget about 72 ac. But it will get up to 75 and 76 in the house with the stove/oven running. I put it on 73 ac for a few minutes to cool off as it was extremely hot in the house. My mother had asked if the AC was on, I said yes, for a few minutes as it was hot. She was fine and a few minutes later, started to yell about how she is sick (walking pneumonia) and how the ac was going to put her in the hospital. How she refused to have the ac on if it was 70 degrees or below outside (it was 63) and how I was lying about the house temp was not going up...despite having seen it herself many times. I had already planned on changing it back to heat as the temp went down.
Despite this, it turned into a fight. It stopped after a frw minutes after I went outside. Came back in to have her start yelling about how google basically said it will make her illness worse and essentially was insinuating that I wanted to kill her or hospitalize her. How something was wrong with me, and how she needs her needs accounted for in this house. I had only wanted it on for a few moments to bring it down from 75. I know she is sick and do not want to make it worse.
She was telling me how glad she was i moved back almost 2 years ago for how much I have helped her and my step father. But 24 hours later and she is threatening to take the thermostat off of the wall over 5 minutes of AC and accusing me of wanting to make her even more ill. I am at the point of wanting to say "screw it" and tell one of my sisters to help her because I can't do it anymore. I can do a lot to help her, drop what I am doing to help her and her dog, and still get treated as if I am going to hurt her. Part of me moved back to help her because I really wanted to try to have a better connection with her as it has always been strained I understand it is her home, the home I have also been in since I was in the womb, and that she did not have to want me to come back home, but am I insane? Am I just some stupid person? I probably just could have opened a window or something.
Posted Apr 9, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC