The sweet smell of validation...

Now, I am 68 years old.  And I have done about 8 years of therapy in one or two year dollops, and 22 1/2 years of recovery in AA.  That's a heap of healing.  Yet, my wounds still are only scabbed over, and recent events sent me spiraling into active bleeding.  Again.  My father died.  I always knew he would predecease my mother, and I was lucky that he lived to be 91 before that happened.  Hard to grieve this man.  He never valued me, since I was female.  And neither did my mother, for the same reason.  Okay, they are from THAT generation, and I should get over it.  And here I am, flailing around in anger and angst.  Again.  You see, somewhere inside me there is this little kernel of hope that things will change.  Suddenly, my mother will remember that I was the only one who showed up, year after year, on her birthday, on Mother's day, on my father's birthday and Father's day, even on their anniversary until I spent an inordinate amount of my hard-gained $$$ on a special gift that she turned a contemptuous eye toward.  My little brothers (63 and 65) were not there.  Oh, nonono.  Yet they are golden.  I am past the point of thinking this is my fault.  But it is still my problem.  I cannot in good conscience walk away from my aged mother.  Perhaps I am still hoping there is a pony in all this shit?  Well, not exactly.  You see, I have to live with ME.  And I want to know in my heart of hearts that I am a good person.  My mother won't do that for me, but I can.  Recently, I bought a book for my Kindle (and if that isn't the niftiest little thing, just push a button and poof, instant literature) on narcissistic personality disorder.  I know all about this from a course in abnormal psych I took (only three years ago, I went back to college at 61, my mother said "how stupid"), that mother is one of those.  And this book says that it is common for an NPD mother to single out one child upon whom to spread her hatred and loathing.  And I am getting that my methods of dealing with her are truly fine.  Like, I give her three nasty barbs, then leave.  Sometimes she doesn't shoot at me.  That doesn't mean she had stopped.  I never visit unless I am well rested and spiritually fit.  And I don't tell her ANYTHING about myself.  It would just hand her ammunition.  I am pretty sure I will go to my grave still shredded inside by this woman.  And I know that I am such a different person because I had here horrible example before me all my life.  I care probably too much for other's feelings.  I let my children be who they were meant to be, even when that was not comfortable for me.  And I pray for this woman.  Somewhere, sometime, she was damaged, too.  She just chose to pass her pain on rather than walk through it.  So, while she sits in her tiny chair in her tiny house in her tiny town and rules the world, she is essentially weak and ineffectual.  Poor thing.