see my mom be happy

Now my mother has $10,000 plus stored up from an inheritance and still refuses to spend any of it to make her living situation any better. She’s still waiting for someone to come in and do things for her. She’s to the point now that she’s unofficially taken up with a local business owner who claims to own a house in Mexico and one there in town. I don’t think she’d really like him, it’s just that she thinks this might be her only chance to make a change, maybe. I think he’s creepy. She doesn’t seem to mind. :( I think this is way out of my hands.
Oh, also, the skin disorder that I wrote about in the last entry has cleared up, but now her filling in her front tooth has fallen out and she doesn’t want to smile because someone might see it. It’s not even that noticable.

My mom is a threat to herself, and possibly people she’s around. She can’t see any better life for herself, she wonders why nobody will help her. I ask her what I can do to help, she says that nothing can help but money to get out of there and do something different permanently. Well… I’m a single mom, no job, full time student who lives off of credit and student loans. Money isn’t something I see a lot of, so that’s out of the question. I try to get her to come and stay with me to have a change in scenery, and she says that she don’t want anyone to see her because she has some sort of redness (skin disorder) on her forehead that she thinks everyone will immediately notice. This skin thing is controlling her life. She has $1000+ hoarded up and she won’t spend any of it to go to the doctor to get anything done because she don’t want to have less for when she leaves… which she won’t do because of the skin thing. It’s just a cycle of reasons that she won’t help herself. She’s a perfectionist- she won’t go out in public unless everything about her is perfect. She’s gained 50 pounds in the last couple of years thanks to menapause and she’s afraid to go anywhere because she thinks she’ll see someone she knows and they’ll tell everyone how fat she is (she still only weighs in at 150, even after the gain). I just don’t know what to do. I try to help, she gives me all these reasons why it won’t work. What can I do?

She’s getting an insurance settlement for $12,000 and my little sister that lives with her is getting $21,000. This is what they need to get out of their self-made (pretty much) situation and be happy. If she doesn’t take this opportunity to become independent again and get her situation straightened out, there really isn’t hope for her I don’t think. And, on top of the last entry I made about her not being happy with anything… she found out she’s getting $12,000 and complained because she wasn’t getting more. I just can’t understand.

I think that my mom is one of those types of people who can not be happy no matter what. I am just the opposite. She is very materialistic, she thinks that having some possession will make her life better and make her happy, and it does for a short time and then she’s on to the next thing that she needs to be happy. She complains about her situation all the time, I tell her ways to change it but she won’t take action. She has some reason that she can’t do it. Things have to be just perfect before she’d make a move. I tell her that things could be so much worse, and she refuses to believe so and she tells me that I don’t know how bad her situation actually is. She must not watch the news. I am so thankful for everything in my life, so happy with all the things and people that I have, I don’t understand how she could feel so sorry for herself and not do something about it. This is the way that me and my mom are so different, and I just don’t pity her. I do want her to be happy though, but is it possible?