Yes, there are plenty of reasons dating back to my childhood to be angry with my mother, but I decided when I became a mother myself to forgive her. I was an idiot. She earned my utter disdain all over again. For anyone who has cut off their parents I urge you not to give the bastards another chance to betray you.

For me, the reason I cut off my mother a second time comes down to 2 categories;

Manipulation) my mother manipulated me into putting up with constant verbal abuse of me, my husband, 2 out of my three children (for some inexplicable reason she hated my son since the day he came home from the hospital) she would tell me how much she adored us, while putting us down with the next breath. She lived with us and although she was well below retirement age she worked for 3 months in those ten years. My husband supported her financially and yet she verbally abused him until he would not leave the bedroom when she was in the house. She would often take our youngest child aside and tell her she was the only “good” member of the family. She said she supported me emotionally, but would tell people I no longer wrote (when I was managing to turn out roughly a novel a year). She then complained that I didn’t share my work with her but every thing I did, from writing, to my appearance, to cooking, to my personal taste in music she had a back handed insult for. I once had a great public reading before a very hard audience and all the way home she calmly explained to me why it had not been a success. Every morning when I began to to write she would do everything to distract me, beginning with turning the t.v. on full blast and ending with stomping around the house shouting about being ignored. I could not go on a date with my husband without her getting in her car and following us, then sitting at the table beside mine and saying “I’m not allowed to sit with them”. When I had sex, with my own husband, in my own bedroom after the children had gone to bed she moved a chair beside the bedroom door and sat there coughing and sighing loudly. When confronted about any of this behavior she either denied that it had taken place at all or she somehow shifted the blame so that everything was my )or my husband’s fault). Add to this she never swept the floor, cleaned a single bathroom, or washed a dish on the time she lived with us, instead she pouted, mocked, and generally threw a fit when we cleaned the house, telling our children we were “crazy” for cleaning. I tried to make healthy meals (my mother is diabetic) but she would refuse what she referred to as my “hippy food” and would instead spend what money she had on fast food that would send her blood sugar sky high. She refused to go to the bank or the hospital for routine check ups unless I dropped everything to accompany her. She refused to do anything unless I accompanied her and if I did anything that was not about her she would huff and pout and rail.

Lies) I explained that my husband and I were leaving the state with the kids and not taking her with us. I soon afterwards discovered after confronting her about the verbal abuse and manipulation and that she had been lying to all our friends and family for years, telling them I had taken financial advantage of her (she never paid a single bill in all the years she lived with us and threw a hissy fit during the three months she worked and I asked her to buy a few groceries) What enrages me is that anyone actually believes her. Not only have I cut my mother out of my life I have decided it’s not worth the effort to convince anyone stupid enough to believe that I was sponging off of her. There was nothing there to sponge.

I know this is rambling and disjointed but years after the fact I am still too angry to write about it calmly.

Nothing in the world could convince me to give her the opportunity to harm me again.