Giving up on my mother

Sorry in advance for any grammatical errors. Not a regular Reddit poster.

I am the eldest daughter of four girls. I turn 24 soon, two of my sisters just turned 18, and my youngest sister is 12. Growing up, I have always had a difficult relationship with my mom. Even before I could form memories, she was creating a chaotic environment for me. Drugs, alcohol, abandonment, random men in and out, etc. She even got a DUI when I was a baby because she had me in the backseat while she had a beer in her hand. Someone saw her casually turn it up and called the police. This is the type of carelessness and negligence she carried with her my entire life.

She and my dad split up before I was 2 because she was cheating on him. I’m not upset about their split; it was better that way. However, she proceeded to drag me from house to house, around sketchy people, occasionally abandoning me with strangers or "friends" for the following years. One of these times, she met my stepdad. Their being together was literally like pouring gasoline into a wildfire. They abused each other in every way, encouraged each other's addictions, and plotted together like partners in crime. They did all of this in front of me, putting me in the middle of their fights and then frequently deciding to team up and be mad at me together instead. Despite my middle sisters being born, they did not last long together, and eventually, it was just me and my mom moving around again. My stepdad had taken my sisters and started to give them a somewhat normal life, at least much more stable and normal than mine.

My mom moved me through at least 10 elementary schools, in and out of homeless shelters, sometimes staying with random families/men, etc. All this while consistently being visibly high and/or drunk. She even got me taken away by CPS once when I was 9 for leaving me in the middle of the night for hours, while I was sleeping, with no way of contacting her or anyone else. Then, she guilt-tripped me into moving back in with her. She has always done stuff like that; been a terrible person to me, and then guilt-tripped me with either love-bombing or acting completely clueless and/or pitifully incapable. Her bad behavior was not exclusive to external factors. She often criticized everything about me personally. It could be my weight, my friends, my grades, something I said or did, nothing was off the table for her to make fun of.

At 10, she somehow convinced my stepdad to take her back, marry her, and then have a 4th baby girl not too long after. This is where I became extremely parentified. She was more stable house-wise, but her mental health and relationship were not. This often led me to not only be the scapegoat to her and sometimes my stepdad's anger, but also be the one left to pick up the pieces every time they fought, and progressively do more and more of the raising of my sisters. Over time, as my mom and stepdad fell more off the deep end with each other, my sisters relied on me for more.

When I was around 17, I got really fed up with my abusive stepdad and moved in with my boyfriend at the time's family. I still visited and kept in contact with my sisters, even buying practically all of the presents for Christmas and making sure holidays were acknowledged for a sense of normalcy. I felt terrible for leaving, but I could not take living there anymore. I graduated with my high school diploma and an associate’s degree before leaving for a university. The chaos continued to follow me, though. Every other week, I would get messages or calls from my mom about how my stepdad had abused her, or messages from my sisters about something crazy either both or one of the parents did/said. I couldn’t help but care, but I felt helpless being hours away, so I dropped out and moved back to their town. On the day that my boyfriend and I’s first apartment application was approved, my stepdad died in an insane, tragic way. For a long time, I blamed a LOT of stuff on him. Don’t get me wrong, I knew my mom was to blame for a lot, but his dying felt like a majority of the issues would go away, as bad as that sounds.

But, you guessed it, they didn’t. The problems did not go away, but they changed. Now, my mom is the type of person who cries every time you talk to her. Not about him, not about how she or he impacted our childhoods, but about her life and how she hates it. She hates it because she has no money, distant relationships with her kids and family, no friends, etc. And we have to hear about it CONSTANTLY, including how she envies the life that I have built for myself, BY MYSELF (not even lavish, I just live alone and pay everything alone, which anyone knows is not easy these days). She is always involuntarily employing those around her to be her new therapist, but refuses to actually go see one or get help. She refuses to get a job but makes my 18-year-old sisters pay rent with their little minimum wage jobs, despite also always begging them for money and taking every beneficiary check that came in their name after their dad died. Not to mention, she is also getting a beneficiary check herself, food stamps, and Medicaid. Additionally, she inherited $30k TWICE (once from her father and once from the wrongful death suit of my stepdad) and blew all of it on NOTHING. She finds a problem with everyone she becomes friends with and always blames them for whatever it is she conjures up. The same goes for her entire side of the family, whom she has either done something terrible to to be cut off from or refuses to speak to them because they “don’t care about” her, simply because they don’t do hand-outs for someone who won’t even try for themselves. She will not engage with her children, and when she does, it always ends in criticism, accusatory/guilt-tripping arguments, or some comparison to how whatever they shared with her is not as good as whatever they shared with me. She thinks there is always a competition between us because my sisters trust me and go to me for help when they need it, because we have close relationships.

As for her and my relationship, I have tried everything. People often think that I am harsh with my mother because I explain her behavior bluntly, but I have been unfathomably patient with her. As an older teenager and a young adult, I have stood up for her in situations where she was clearly in the wrong, offered my time and money to help her when I didn’t have to and sometimes barely could, had my money and car stolen by her while I slept, gone out of my way to get her out of crazy situations she put herself in, tried to make doctors appointments for her, referred her to my job, been her therapist, her mother, her teacher, her friend, her daughter, and more. I have literally offered her a kidney before. I have defended her to my sisters in the small amount of times she has been right about a situation, invited her on trips no one else wanted her to go on, and bent over backwards to reward her with special treatment on birthdays/Mother’s Day that she did not deserve.

Long story short, I have done everything I possibly could to help her and prove my worth to her. And I want so badly to be done. Nothing I do is ever enough. I am always a villain, selfish, and trying to replace her. She even claims I “hate” her. And I am at my wits' end. I don’t want to be a therapist for someone who traumatized me my entire life, give to someone who was supposed to be my main source of comfort and nurture, but has done nothing but take from me, and continue to enable her crappy behavior by always giving in to whatever it is she wants. She is draining and a constant source of anxiety in my life. I don’t know how to completely cut contact while she has my minor sister, but I also think a part of me desperately wishes I could just have a mom. I am the only sensible adult that my sister has, and I wish I had that too, while simultaneously also feeling trapped by being one, if that makes sense. Part of me wants to act as though everything is fine, like I always have, but as I get older and juggle more responsibilities, it is getting more difficult to do that. Part of me wants to say screw all of them and cut everyone off, but I would never do that to my sisters. What I’ve been doing recently is keeping her blocked unless I have my youngest sister with me, not engaging in conversation outside of telling her I’m bringing her home and whatnot. Right now, this is working, but I know it will not last for long. I had to attend graduations alongside her last month, and she made it so awkward by being all lovey, invading my personal space, and asking me why I am "punishing" her. I find it hard to say something in those situations for the sake of peace. I've done my fair share of crashing out on her before. I’m so tired of putting so much effort into making everyone else's lives easier, but in a sense, it’s all I’ve ever known, and I don’t feel like I have any other real purpose. I don't know, man, I'm just really freaking tired.