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I thought I should scream several times.  It leaves me bitter, unhappy, takes all pleasure out of everything by casting a shadow over all I do.  I'm so nervous about it, I'm sharp with the children, morose, quiet. It flares up periodically and there seems no solution to it.  Mother tells me "some terrible thing is going to happen" if I persist in my indifference.  It isn't that I'm indifferent, I simply am baffled.  I've been through all this a hundered times, tried every way out to no avail.  I am getting to dread being alone with her because when we're alone there is scarcely ever a cheerful, normal conversation – it gets mired inevitably in  argument, complaint, criticism, innuendo, unwelcome advice.  I'm at my wits end to know the answer.  Our home life is definitely abnormal when Mother is with us; there's no use dodging that fact.  And yet she is getting older and must be with us more and more.  And the older she gets, the worse her heart gets and that I feel sure is at the bottom of her extreme nervousness and depression which is the fundamental cause of all her trouble – her twisted outlook, her persecution complex.  She won't admit she has snubbed our friends by refusing to come downstairs to see them.  She has no idea she herself is rude in continually interrupting people in the middle of their conversation.