I Welcomed My Elderly Mother into My Home – Now I Regret It, Can’t Send Her Away, and I’m Ashamed in Front of My Friends.

I took my elderly mother into my home. I now regret it, I cant send her away and I feel ashamed in front of my acquaintances.
I took my elderly mother into my home. Now I regret it, and I am unable to send her back. I feel embarrassed before my friends.
Today I feel compelled to put my story, so personal and heavy, on paper because it presses on me like a stone on my chest. I need a wise, thoughtful piece of advice to understand how to get out of the swamp I have sunk myself into.
Each of us has our own worries, our own trials. We must learn not to judge others, but to reach out when someone is drowning in despair with no apparent way out. Indeed, nobody is immune to such situationstoday you judge, tomorrow you may find yourself caught by fate.
I brought my mother to live with me. She is already 80 and used to live in a village near Rouen, in an old house with a sloping roof. She could no longer manage on her ownher health was failing, her legs gave way, her hands trembled. I saw her fading away alone there, and decided to bring her to my city apartment. I did not realize the burden I would bear nor the impact it would have on my life.
At first everything went smoothly, like on rails. Mom settled in my threeroom flat in Lyon and seemed to keep to herself. She did not interfere with my affairs, stayed quietshe remained in the bedroom I had lovingly prepared for her. I had arranged every comfort: a soft bed, a warm blanket, a small TV on the bedside table. She only needed to leave for the bathroom, toilet or kitchenI tried to surround her with ease. I supervised her diet, cooking only what doctors recommended: no fats, minimal salt, everything steamed. The medicationexpensive but essentialI purchased with my salary. Her pension? A pittance, barely enough.
After a few months, things began to deteriorate. Urban life started to tire hermonotonous, gray, like the concrete walls around us. She began to impose her own rules, pick fights over the slightest matter, turning trivialities into mountains. Sometimes it was dust I hadnt cleared in time, sometimes the soup was not prepared correctly, or I had forgotten to buy her favourite tea. Nothing pleased her any more; everything irked her. Then the manipulation beganshe appealed to pity, sighed theatrically, repeated that she lived better in the village than in my prison. Her words cut me like a knife, yet I endured, gritting my teeth, trying not to react to the provocations.
My patience ran out. I was exhausted by the constant accusations, the shouting, her perpetual dissatisfaction. I resorted to taking nervoussystem pills, and after work I stood frozen at the entrance, unable to go back inside. Behind that door was not a cocoon but a battlefield where I lost each day. My life had become a hopeless nightmare.
Taking Mom back to the village isnt a solution. She wouldnt survive therethe house is halfruined, without heat or comforts. And how could I send her back, leaving her to fate? What would people think? I already hear their disapproving looks, the whispers behind my back: A daughter who abandons her mother what a shame! I am ashamed even to entertain the thought, ashamed before others, before myself. But I cant take it any longer.
The situation feels like a tight knot I cannot undo. I am drained, empty, lost. How can I live with her under the same roof? How to handle her obstinacy, this wall of complaints and grievances? How to soothe her without losing myself? I am at a dead end, and each day I sink deeper into despair.
Has anyone experienced similar stories? How did you cohabit with seniors whose temperament is as abrasive as sharp stones that shatter our patience? How to stay sane when a loved one becomes your hardest trial? Please share your adviceI need a glimmer at the end of this dark tunnel.