I (28F) am moving out of my parents (55M/ 54F) house for the first time tomorrow. I emphasize my age here.
My mother has always been painfully codependent on me. She does EVERYTHING for me. I was in scouts (6 – 11 yrs old) she would do all my badges for me, and sew everything onto my sashes. When I was 12-18, I joined Air Cadets. I was hoping with the "cadets" title I could be independent. I was wrong. She would pack for me for any camp, and wouldn’t even let me touch my bag until it was all done. I had to argue with her a lot to let her iron my uniform. She or my father sewed everything onto my uniform. Even at 18 they were doing all of this.
In my first year at uni she would ride the bus with me a few times, down a super sub optimal route because that’s the only one she knows (she hasn’t rode the bus since her teenage years). I again had to have an argument to let me go on my own, and down a far faster route (it shaved like 35 – 40 minutes off the route she went).
This is all to give context to my current fight. As I said I am moving out and she’s once again interfering with everything. So I set, what I thought was, the simplest boundary of all time "only help, if I ask you to". She said "yes", then I keep catching her packing random boxes without even telling me. So I’m looking for stuff and she’s like "I already packed it". I went grocery shopping and she promised she’d leave me alone (I can’t drive, so I needed them to). But that promise lasted 1 aisle where she then started pointing out where everything was. I asked her to stop. She said "sure" but then kept doing it anyway every couple aisles.
So now I made it super firm that I NEED to be left alone. And now she say’s I’m "using" her (by getting her to do nothing?). And that I’m being super rude and unreasonable. She also said she’s not codependent at all, and that she doesn’t believe in boundaries. She also hates my therapist now, for teaching me how to lay down boundaries.
AITAH for wanting to deal with moving on my own?