Because the last time that I saw my mother’s partner, they were kicking me out of the house on Christmas Eve into the snow when it was -40C outside and spit-screaming at me “I feel sorry for your boyfriend because he has to have you now you fucking bitch.” And my mother’s response when I told her what happened was “well, I can’t say that I disagree. Christmas was awful with you.”

Kicker is, what was so “awful” about me was that I couldn’t keep up fake-smiling and being fake-perfectly pleasant through the holiday because one of my best friends had just committed suicide and I was still too sad to keep up a stepford housewife-esque fake persona 100% of the time. Everyone else at Christmas didn’t think anything was wrong with me (ie they didn’t even realize I was grieving) but to my mother, anything short of a a Stepford perfect smile 100% of the time is me being an awful bitch to her. It’s fucked up, and I don’t go back.