I want to go no contact with my aging mother, but she has no one.

I really just need to vent and get some outside perspectives because I have so many negative feelings when it comes to dealing with my mom.
My mom has never been the ideal parent. We’ve never been close, and she’s never really provided emotional support. Honestly, she was my first bully. Growing up, she made comments about my acne, my body, and who I was as a person versus who she wanted me to be. I never felt comfortable just being myself around her.

She also has really bad anxiety and OCD, and growing up, I felt like I was constantly a maid. If something wasn’t clean enough, she would yell, slam dishes, slam doors, scream in my face, etc. Whenever things didn’t go her way, there was always some kind of temper tantrum. I constantly felt like I was walking on eggshells.

She treated my dad the same way, so when they got divorced about a year ago, I understood why he left. But now it’s basically become “woe is me.” She’s angry at my dad, angry about the bills, worried about money, constantly saying she can’t work because she’s hurt, etc. And what frustrates me is that she never seems to take responsibility for the choices that have gotten her here. She expects everyone around her to take responsibility and has even once asked me to give her an allowance.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to better myself because I know I can’t rely on her. I work, I’ve built my career, and now I’m starting a doctoral program. But I can barely share good news with her without feeling like it’s going to get minimized or redirected.

I literally told her recently that I got accepted into a doctoral program, which is a huge accomplishment for me, and she cut me off to talk about potato chips. She literally started talking about how good the chips were and then said she needed to “get her piece out first” before I could speak. Like… WHAT???

And then there’s the emotional manipulation whenever I don’t do what she wants. If I say I don’t want to hang out, it becomes, “You forgot about your mother,” or “After everything I’ve done for you.” But she has not once supported me through anything. It was always “figure it out or else you get in trouble” or she shows up at the end ready to celebrate and take credit to tell people that I’m “just like her”.

She barely visited me when I was in college despite working 30 mins away and barely pours into building a real connection. I’ve lived in my apartment for almost two years and she has visited me twice. I moved 35 minutes away and always have to make the drive to visit her. So it’s frustrating to constantly be guilted about how I supposedly don’t make time for her when she hasn’t exactly made an effort to build a relationship with me either.

I also resent her for a lot of the things I feel like I missed growing up. I couldn’t freely hang out with friends, spend time with cousins, or just experience life without worrying about what mood she would be in. Now that I’m an adult, I’m finally building a life for myself, and it feels like she wants me to drop everything and cater to her.
She has pushed my dad away. She has pushed my sister away. And now she doesn’t really have anyone, so I feel like she’s trying to make me fill that role but I don’t want to.

I don’t want to be responsible for making her feel less lonely. I don’t want to constantly listen to her complaints. And I don’t want to pretend we have a close mother-daughter relationship when we don’t. She always complains about me not telling her things and being close to her because she sees other people have a close relationship but it’s hard to do that with her.

The only reason I haven’t gone completely no contact is because she literally has no one. If she had an emergency, I know I would probably feel responsible for helping, especially because she has health issues.

And that’s where I’m stuck. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, but I also don’t want to sacrifice my peace just because she’s my mother.
She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t acknowledge how she’s treated me. And honestly, I’m just tired of being angry every time I see her name pop up on my phone. She calls and texts me every day and throws a tantrum when I don’t respond.

How do you handle having a parent you don’t necessarily want a relationship with, but also don’t feel comfortable completely abandoning?