My (29F) brother (33M) keeps trying to pressure and guilt-trip me into being a caretaker for our mom (68F) in her old age.

Our mom was abusive, but mostly only to me. No idea why. I've searched for an answer my whole life.

Her main thing was my weight. She was constantly convinced I was fat or on the way to becoming fat. To her the world may as well have been ending. I got weighed every day and she recorded it for years. She often made me do a certain amount of exercise before giving me food when I was young. Then once I got bolder and tried to make my own meals when she wasn't around, she put locks on the fridge and cabinets. She told my brother the code so he could still eat whenever he wanted.

It got worse as I became a teenager. It was as if she didn't realize teenagers are supposed to get bigger. A few times she completely went psycho. Screaming how much of an embarrassment I was, and how lazy and selfish, how could I do this to her, no one my age has boobs that big, what must everyone think of my huge fat belly, on and on. She decided I didn't need any more food those days and locked me in my room until dinner was over so I'd go to bed hungry.

She also liked to embarrass me when shopping, she'd purposely pick tiny sized clothes knowing they wouldn't fit then make a scene to salespeople in the dressing room about how I had some problems with my eating but "we were working on it".

Only when I got to college did I realize I was never actually overweight. In fact I was underweight.

Anyway I cut off all contact from her after college. She was never going to change. She'd never love me.

Now I have my own life. I barely think about her. I still have huge problems with eating properly, and have been seeing a psychologist for several years.

My brother and I have a strained relationship but still talk. He somehow doesn't remember how she treated me, even though half the time he was right there laughing.

Up until now he lived with our mom and would help her out with stuff. She was diagnosed with alzhiemers a year or two ago. Plus she became paralyzed from the waist down after a fall a few years ago. She insisted on living independently in the same house we grew up in, from what he told me. He took care of whatever she wasn't able to do.

Now he has to move to another country due to his job reassigning him. He leaves next week. Ever since he told me this he has been pressuring me on and off to take over the responsibility of caring for our mother.

It's been relentless this past month. Nonstop guilt trips and trying to make me feel bad for not coming for Christmas with them. As if I haven't spent the past almost eight years apart from them only keeping in contact with my brother through phone and email. He also passed on my info to our mom so I had to block her because she was constantly calling and emailing to berate me. If she wasn't paralyzed, I'd be seriously concerned that any morning I'll wake up to her banging on my door after driving six hours across as many states. That's the kind of demanding person she is.

So anyway, no way in hell am I giving up my life to move back there and take care of the person who got enjoyment out of abusing me as a kid. I'm about ready to cut off my brother too, because not only does he deny my mom did things to me that go way beyond just "tough love and normal discipline" as he puts it, but he also doesn't think my career matters at all. He's free to go pursue his career, but expects me to drop my own to take on this burden he wants to dump on me. This shit almost always falls to women anyway--if you don't want to act like a caregiver there must be something wrong with you. I need to be more "forgiving" and "compassionate" he says. He even said it's a good thing I don't want children because "I'd fuck them up by being a cold-hearted shrew."

I've made it clear each time I flat out refuse and she will never receive anything from me whether care, time, attention, or money. He makes it seem like she's going to die because of me. So what even if? If he truly believed it was that dire he'd stay. I called his bluff there and he just cursed me out and hung up.

Oh yeah also he refuses to just throw her in a nursing home and have done with it because that would be "abusive." So that's really just the cherry on top as to why I think I want to take a break from having a relationship with him if he won't drop this.

How do I make him respect my decision?

Tl;dr: My brother won't accept my decision to not throw away the life I've built to be a live-in caregiver for our mom, who abused and bullied me until I was 18.

Submitted January 03, 2019 at 02:10PM by ResidentAd0 http://bit.ly/2Vrvyks