Escaping an Abusive Mother

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I want to start this post off by saying that I've frequented wrongplanet for almost 5 years without ever creating an account. The community here has helped me so much with finding positive ways to cope with the abuse I have been subjected to. So for that, thank you all.

But I so greatly need help with my situation now, that I fell I need to make this post. My family has been torn apart by alcoholism and mental/physical abuse twice in my life. My biological father is bi-polar, my mother is not diagnosed but definitely has BPD, and my younger brother's dad has severe depression. I have an order of protection against my dad because, two years ago, he came to my mom's house and physically assaulted me, and tried to kidnap my younger brother. My brother's dad left us and moved to Oregon three years ago because he couldn't live with my mom abusing him.

My brother is ten years old, just a year older than I was when my parents divorced (For the better). He was diagnosed as high functioning autistic when he was 7. After he was kicked out of his school two years ago, I started homeschooling him, which he has responded very well to. In order to be there for my brother I had to drop out of high school when I was 0.75 credits away from graduating with a GPA of 3.7. I love my brother with all my heart and I have done my best to help raise him since his dad moved away.

My mom puts all of the responsibilities of running a household onto me, saying I owe it to her for working (she cleans houses and is self-employed). When I was working my previous job, she would have me sign all of my paychecks over to her so I couldn't save up to move out. I babysit and school my brother while she is at work every day of the week, do all the chores, and make dinner from scratch almost every night. Despite these things, and despite being a legal adult I am not allowed to leave the house without her explicit permission because I have "responsibilities to attend to". If I am even one minute late coming home, I am punished. This has been the case my whole life. If I slip up in any way, my mom accuses me of being completely worthless, and she emotionally abuses me until she drinks herself to sleep. She drinks at least a pint of liquor and a few beers every day, though she often drinks a liter of vodka in a night. After her first drink she will begin engaging my brother and I in impossible semantics. Rolling her cigarettes constantly, dropping anything we are occupied with to get her things that are only a few feet away from her. The list goes on. She does this to anyone who lives with her but most especially boys, because men are inherently evil apparently. She has been drinking fairly heavily ever since she separated from my dad, so I guess about 11 years. Whenever she has a night where she freaks out on us and hurts us, she acts as if nothing happened the next morning. If you bring it up, you just trigger the same behavior and that day is ruined too. At her lowest, she would drink until she could no longer speak in our basement and would hurt herself on the concrete floor, bleeding, laying in the puddle that would build up over the floor drain. When things like this happen she will not accept any help from anyone, and will attack them if they try, only to later tell all the adults in our life that we hurt her.

In December, one of our cats turned the bidet in our toilet on in the middle of the night, pumping gallons of water onto the floor until morning. The damage to our home was minor, but we have been displaced and living in a hotel downtown with our kitties for almost two months while contractors do repairs. My brother went to OR for a couple weeks when the damage happened but has since returned to our home city. While he was gone, I could barely be in the hotel with my mom because she would drink so much and then fight me all night and into the wee hours of the morning. Last week, she had broke down so bad that my brother and I had to lock ourselves in one of the bedrooms here. She called the police on me because she thought I would get taken away by the authorities and placed in a mental hospital. When they arrived they could see that my mom was clearly inebriated and asked my brother and I if she would keep fighting with us if they left. We said yes, of course, so they called an emt to the hotel. They deduced that my mom had overdosed on alcohol and needed to take her to the hospital for the night. While she was in the hospital I posted on her facebook wall what had happened that night so maybe her friends could see that she did this to her children, and the feedback I got was so supportive. The next morning my mom deleted my post from her wall and had made no mention of the incident, which really surprised me. She doesn't realize she has a problem and will not seek help. She is an ex Jehovah's Witness, and thinks any help is like some indoctrination into a cult or something.

So that's the state of things I guess. Friends have offered my brother and I shelter, but I'm scared that our mom will accuse me of kidnapping. I think the best thing for him would be to fight my mom for custody rights and to get a home that she can't find. I want to get a job, but every night I am working poses a threat to my brother's safety. I cant save up to get us away from this environment if I don't work so I'm lost. I created a YouCaring fundraiser so my brother and I might be able to escape and find the help we need to mend the wounds abuse and addiction have inflicted on us. I will post updates as frequently as I can and we will do live streams on youtube to thank our supporters. Please if you have even a dollar to spare, consider donating to my fundraiser, or just sharing the link on your social media. If this can help us move on with our lives I will try always to advocate for others in hard situations and to give back to the community in any way I can. It's taken every ounce of my courage to do this, and I hope I didn't break any forum rules so please forgive me if I did.

The link to our fundraiser is under my "website" section on my profile if you are interested. I would have put in in this post but I'm not allowed.