Reply #9: I didn't talk to my mom once for about 3 months

[noonwitch]

We talk now, but about ten years ago she said some really unforgiveable things to me. She and my dad have been divorced for a while now, and she was trashing him to my grandparents in front of me. I told them all that he was not a monster and if they continued to say that, what do they think of me, since I'm his daughter, too. Anyways, later, she asked me how I could defend him after he hurt her so badly. I told her that he never beat me, never raped me and paid for me to go to college, so what do I have to complain about. She then said basically that she traded sex for my tuition money and I should be eternally grateful to her for that. I told her that her marital relations were her business and not mine, and didn't talk to her for a few months. I just let my machine pick up her calls, which after a couple of weeks became unintelligible cryfests. I know that the whole thing was really passive-aggressive on my part, but whenever you try to express anger with her, she just cries. There was more to it than that, but that was the kicker. She was mad at me for asking my sister to stay with me after I had gallbladder surgery, instead of asking her. It was time to set some limits-she's one of those people who thinks everything is about her. If I get sick, it's not about me being sick, it's about her needing to take care of me. I had to establish a firm boundary with her, although she still will make a snide comment occasionally about how much I hurt her when I had surgery.
Part of the reason it had really made me angry was that in the actual divorce, I did side with her, because my dad was a drunk at the time and she had been steadily manipulating us since we were kids to have issues with him.
She's a codependent with borderline personality disorder (my diagnosis, based on a 17 year career as a social worker). Her former employer got sick of her and made her go to a therapist-she conned the therapist after 6 months of treatment into writing a letter to her boss saying she was fine.
Dad's been sober now for about 6 years and Mom now has a boyfriend, a psychologist who obviously has his own issues. Unfortunately, Dad now lives 1200 miles away in Florida.

Anyways, sometimes you do have to take drastic action to keep from getting hurt or yanked around. For me, it didn't need to be a permanent severance of contact, just a temporary one to let her know I wasn't a kid anymore. It was hard on my sister when I did that, because my mom would call her to cry about it. My dad never knew about it because it didn't involve him at that point.