Advice

On a very sad person

My mother was physically and emotionally abusive to my siblings when we were growing up. We’re all adults now but the emotional abuse continues. I haven’t seen her in five years but we still speak on the phone and at this point I realize that I’m only keeping any sort of contact out of some misplaced sense of obligation or some fear – I’m not really sure, because she almost always makes me feel like total shit after she’s done with me. I try to share my life with her and it’s like she uses any information she can to hurt me, or as she puts it “show me”. She’s even gone so far as to find phone numbers of my friends and call them saying all sort of crazy things ranging from claiming that I have some disease (MS, I think? It was stupid – and embarrassing), and another time, telling another friend that a gift I gave was a family heirloom that belonged to my mother and she’s going to press charges for theft unless they agree to let my mother pick it up at their home. She’s never been diagnosed with any mental illness because she refuses to seek mental health care, and mocks those who do as “weak” and “crazy”. She’s cruel, unhealthy and destructive in every sense of the word and I know it isn’t good for me to have her in my life. I know for damned sure that if I ever had children, I wouldn’t let them anywhere near her. No way. Yet I’m still talking to her and I don’t know how to let her know that I can’t do that any more.

If your mother is toxic, it’s okay to cut her out of your life. You don’t have to talk to her. It’s really that simple.

Also, don’t become her. If you catch yourself falling into your mother’s patterns of cruel and unhealthy behavior, get help. Break the cycle.

You know what I’m talking about.

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