As I shared last week, I am at the beach for Spring Break with hub and my son. We are having a good time, so please don’t think I am spending all of my time thinking about my mother/abuser because I am not. However, I am continuing to be plagued by nightmares, causing me to wake up feeling shaky every morning.
I read three of your comments to my Monday blog entry before I lost Internet access where we are staying. We stay my father-in-law’s beach house, which does not have Internet access, so I am at the mercy of obtaining wireless Internet access from wherever I can get it, and I lost it here after the first couple of days. Alas. I plan to go to a local restaurant that offers free wi-fi so I can post this blog entry and read your other comments.
I also spoke with my sister. I emailed her a draft of the letter, and her response was to do whatever I needed to do. She just wants me to let her know before I send anything so she can avoid answering the phone when our mother/abuser calls her to complain about it. However, to this day, m/a never told her about my “Back the f#$% off!!” note, so she isn’t sure if m/a will contact her about a confrontation letter or not.
The part that makes the angriest is that my mother’s insanity takes away so many of my choices. I would like either never to see or hear from her again OR confront her about what happened. I hate this in-between crap. I am sick to death of hearing (whether in her letters or secondhand through my sister) that m/a is baffled as to what she could have done to deserve being treated like this. She is being treated much more kindly than she deserves because she deserves to rot in a prison cell, but I haven’t pressed any charges.
Mia makes a valid point that my letter would be good for a sane person but not an insane one. Because she is not sane, any letter to my mother probably will just encourage her as it would any other stalker.
I don’t know. I am frustrated and angry because I could not have been clearer about my boundaries, and she won’t respect them. I have the tools in my arsenal to “force” her to obey them (the truth), but that could cause her to have a psychotic episode which could hurt someone else. It isn’t fair, just like nothing in my childhood was fair.
The good news is that my sister already relayed the message that I will not be in town over Mother’s Day weekend, so I can check relaying that information off my to-do list. (I purposely did not ask my sister to get in the middle of this, but my mother put her there.) Mother/abuser actually had the gall to go on about all of the “excuses” I am making not to see her. I don’t recall making any excuses. Saying, “I don’t want to see you,” and “Back the f#$% off” sound pretty direct to me.
Edited to add — I really like MFF’s suggestion of a very short version:
If you can respect my boundaries, then we can write letters monthly. If you cannot, then I am not interested in maintaining a relationship with you.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Yesterday, I shared that I wrote a 
My sister recently had a birthday. Our mother/abuser called her to wish her a happy birthday and then spent most of the conversation b@#$&ing about why I won’t talk to her. That really rubbed me the wrong way and motivated me to write the following draft letter to my mother/abuser, which I have not sent and don’t know if I will:
Does anyone else feel like you are constantly relearning the same lessons? Here is an example of what I mean…
I was talking with someone the other day who was describing another person as seeming very sad and insecure. The person then said, “I hope she isn’t damaged goods.” I asked what was meant by the phrase “damaged goods.” The person said, “You know – abused as a child.”
In my 
On my blog entry entitled 
On my blog entry entitled 
On my blog entry entitled 
Blooming Lotus 