MAY 14

This was about the time it started to get really hot where I live. My husband and I had to put window units upstairs to give the house AC a break and prevent it from freezing up. It was working double-time because my mother refused to run the AC downstairs. I'd explained to her countless times that heat rises, and the temperature upstairs can get into the high 80's. My cats would suffer tremendously if that happened. She complained to us that the homeowner's association would throw a fit about the window units, and told us to remove them despite the fact that no one could see them from the street.

When we refused, she tried to blame us for how hot it was upstairs. She asked, "do you have blinds in that room? I went outside and looked, your blinds are up!" Yes, the blinds were lifted for the cats to look outside from behind the blackout curtains I bought to make it cooler upstairs. She then asked, "do you shut down your computers?" Of course we did, we weren't stupid.

In all her accusations, she conveniently ignored the fact that, not only did she refuse to turn on the AC downstairs, but she would also leave the back door open, letting in the +90°F air. I think she just wanted to create something else to fight about.

JUNE 28

My mother's cat had to be euthanized. He was constipated again, so badly that he couldn't eat. He was severely dehydrated, his fur was filthy. I took one look at him and knew he was dying. My mother asked me if he could still be okay, but I told her that if she didn't let him go that day, she would be prolonging his suffering. It was his time.

Turns out he had kidney disease. If my mother had just paid for the blood work, we would've known months ago. He could've been treated, lived longer, and wouldn't have died so miserable. I blame her for his suffering, and sometimes, when I think long enough about it, I hate her for it.

In September of 2018, she had to euthanize her other cat. The first time we'd brought her to the vet, she had a serious blood infection, but we also learned that she had hyperthyroidism, which was why she was so skinny all of a sudden. She healed from the infection but the vet also prescribed a high-calorie food and recommended we get a high-calorie additive. I ordered a high-calorie paste, and explained to my mother how to give it to her cat. She stopped giving it to her cat after a week. As a consequence, the cat began to starve to death. Her muscles atrophied until she couldn't hold herself up anymore, and that's when she was euthanized.

I blame my mother for that, too. I feel like her laziness killed her cats. I can't think of anything more selfish.

AUGUST 26

For some reason, and without notice, my mother decided it was mine and my husband's responsibility to take out the garbage and recyclables, something she'd been doing for 30-some-odd years without issue or complaint. It wouldn't have been a problem for us to take it out, and we certainly would have, but we were never asked to do it, and we weren't aware that she was refusing to do it anymore.

The garbage was supposed to go out for collection the next day, but it didn't. The garbage was rancid and maggots were all over the inside of the bin. To make things worse, a hurricane was supposed to make landfall the next week, so garbage collection would be cancelled. My mother sent me a text message that said: "the garbage should've been taken out last night." This was when I figured out that she wasn't going to take the garbage out anymore. I could only read snark and condescension from the text.

She took the bin outside and didn't even try to clean it, demanding I come outside and clean it. She faked struggling with the garbage bags inside the bin for so long that I finally told her to just let me do it, otherwise we would've been there forever.

After the storm, the maggots that were still in the garage had erupted into fully-grown flies. There were so many that they blocked out a large portion of the garage window. Once again, my mother acted helpless and expected me to be the one to clean up her mess, though she still clearly blamed me and my husband for the infestation.

She sent me another message later about how angry she was in finding a single fly in her bathroom. She knew when garbage was supposed to go out. We didn't. She knew that she was refusing to take it out. We didn't. It aggravated me so much that she couldn't admit responsibility for something so stupid and preventable.

JOURNAL: April 2019

APRIL 8

My mother's cat had been having issues with constipation, and I'd told her several times that he would need a laxative mixed into his water for the rest of his life. He was 17 and his insides couldn't be expected to work the way they used to. She clearly didn't trust my advice, because not only did she take him to the vet and receive the exact same advice, but we ended up at the vet again after that for the same reason.

When the vet tech asked for details, my mother kept emphasizing that she had left her cat alone with me and my husband for four days, implying that we must not have given him the laxative while she was away. She was trying to shift blame when he was likely already impacted before she ever left. She was trying to look good for the vet and ease her conscience.

I was not going to be blamed for neglecting a cat I loved and cared about. When my mother went to the bathroom, I told the tech the truth. She wasn't giving him the laxative. When she came back, they asked if they could do some blood work, but my mother refused because it cost too much. She never liked spending money on her animals. One of our cats lived its life with a fractured leg because she didn't want to do anything about it.

APRIL 17

I had a full load of laundry to wash, and she was using the washer as a hamper, something she knew annoyed me. I took all of her clothes out of the washer so mine could fit, and she came out of the kitchen and griped under her breath, "really?!" I answered her back with, "yes, really!" She argued, "you're doing a load anyway!" and came to look at my laundry. It was a load of whites with a couple of throw pillows which had small sections of light blue on them, so she yelled, "those aren't white! I've washed your clothes with mine before!" So have I, when there was enough room in the washer.

I still don't understand why this was such a big deal to her. Maybe it was because she's lazy and didn't want to have to do her own laundry.

APRIL 23

My mother had recently asked my husband how many guns he owned and, surprised by the question, he asked her why she wanted to know. She took that as my husband giving her attitude, but he told me later that the question made him uncomfortable because he didn't know why she wanted to know, or who she would share that information with. He'd done nothing illegal or wrong, so it seemed like a strange question to ask out of the blue.

She had also asked my husband to do an inventory of my brother's guns, despite having already done an inventory when we moved in. My husband had taken pictures of each gun and taken down their serial numbers, giving them to my mother when he was finished. He'd been too busy to conduct a second, unnecessary inventory.

We kept all our firearms in a gun safe, including my brother's. My mother didn't have access to the safe, and that's the way she wanted it, because she was afraid that if she had another seizure, she may use her gun and unintentionally hurt herself or someone else in her postictal state. My husband and I suggested she sell it since we didn't want it and she didn't want access to it, but that ended up being a reason for her to consider us thieves.

I overheard my mother on the phone with my brother who's in China. She started talking about his guns.  She said, "[my husband] better not have done anything with them. I need to make sure they're still there. Nobody has a right to your stuff. They gave me pictures of them, but they don't mean anything because I haven't seen the guns with my own eyes." She thought, and was putting into my brother's head, that we stole and sold his guns. We were not so hard up for cash that we would risk our rights and freedom to commit a FELONY. The guns were in the safe, where they'd always been.

After that awful exchange, which probably alarmed the hell out of my brother, my mother went on to tell him that I'm "so mean," to her, that me and my husband were "ungrateful and cruel," and then told him that I'd gotten a job. She said, "she finally got a job, some martial arts place, but it's only part time. I guess it pays for their $350 classes, who the hell knows?" The classes were about $300 when we started going, and I'd told her that, but mine were free once I began working there. And that "only part-time" job paid exactly what my last full-time job did, which was a pretty huge step up in my eyes. Ya know, not that she ever bothered to ask my about my work.

She made it crystal clear to my brother that he was not to speak to me. We never talked anyway, him being her golden child and all, but she just wanted to ensure that he wouldn't come looking for answers from someone who would tell him the truth. I knew the game she was playing.

OVERVIEW

In April, my mother continued setting up for my banishment from her family by isolating me from yet another sibling. My brother was easy to turn because of our always-strained relationship.