My mother physically, sexually and verbally/emotionally abused me. The physical abuse started early and ended when I was in my teens. She'd usually just slap me across the face, but one time when I was 11 she shoved me to the ground and kicked me. She also threw things. These violent outbursts were most often the culmination of arguments she started for no reason, with no provocation from me. Every once in a while I said something that would set her off, but usually she'd just pick a fight to give herself an excuse to lash out. The sexual abuse started when I hit puberty and didn't end until I stopped visiting in my mid twenties. She groped me almost every time she hugged me. One time, when I was 12, she tried to make out with me, like kissing me up and down my neck while feeling me up. It was one of the grossest things I've ever experienced and thinking about it still makes me feel tense and sick to my stomach. There was other stuff she did that was just generally creepy, like she'd get drunk and put on one of her old records and dance around the house in this see-through nightgown and ask me to dance with her. There were several times in my tweens and early teens that she called me into her room when she was changing and when I knocked and asked if she was decent she'd say it was ok, then I'd open the door and see stuff I really didn't want to see. Or she'd walk in on me when I was changing. I wasn't allowed to have a lock on my bedroom door.

Every time I tried to stand up to her I was told I was the problem one way or another. Often I was told it wasn't happening, like her outright denial of things she'd just done, which is terrifying to see in person, when seconds after doing something she can just snap, "no I didn't" in response to being confronted about it and then act as if everything is fine. I don't think words can do justice to that crazy level of denial. But there was also my dad, who just wouldn't hear any of it, and would cut me off and talk over me when I tried to go to him for help. He also pushed all these misappropriated neurological and psychological theories on me, and had me pretty well convinced that I was crazy for a few years. When I was 12, I stayed after class and told my health teacher about how my mom tried to make out with me, but I said it happened to a friend. He told me "my friend" should call child services. That night, when my mom copped a feel, I told her not to touch me like that and if she ever did it again I'd call CPS. That's when all that gaslighting bullshit started. Sometime that same year, while driving me to rehearsal for a play I was in, my mother threatened to have me institutionalized. I was a cutter back then and she saw the scars on my arm. At the time, I thought that gave them all the ammunition they needed to discredit me. Between the two of them they bullied me into silence for over a decade. Other then a few off the cuff remarks to friends when I was a teenager, I didn't really talk to anyone about it until my 20s.

They got really angry at my attempts to get distance from them. Fewer phone calls and visits made me "ungrateful" in their eyes. My mother just couldn't be reasoned with. A little over a year ago I told my dad that if they weren't willing to talk about the abuse so we could work through it, then I couldn't have a relationship with either of them. Somehow, my mother found out where I lived. I don't know how she got my address because I never gave it to her and I instructed family members who did have it not to give it out to my parents. Last December, I got an email from my mother saying she didn't know "what tore us apart." A few days later, a package showed up at my house that didn't say who sent it. It took some digging, but I found out it was from her. At that point I'd had it. My house was my sanctuary, my safe space, and that was primarily because my mother didn't know where it was.

I got a lawyer and got a protection from abuse order. Then I moved myself into an apartment where I feel safer and put my house on the market. How am I coping? Not very well. I'm really fucking angry. That crazy bitch has screwed up my life for the last time. Let's just say, it wasn't a good time to sell. Not only did she cost me my childhood, not only did she do serious damage to my self esteem and my ability to stand up for myself (I'm drawn to abusive people and I freeze up and go into shock when people assault me and later internalize it and blame myself) not only had she instilled in me a whole host of fears and insecurities, most of which I still have yet to heal and recover from, but now she's costing me actual cash money, a real, measurable cost. I'm not just angry, I'm livid.