2020 is turning out to be yet another "take-the-bad-with-the-good" year.

I've grown into my work, and my boss has finally admitted his faith and confidence in me, as well as his gratefulness to God for having sent me his way. Unfortunately, COVID has ravaged the business. We're surviving, but it's stressful and everything is uncertain. I'm proud to say, though, that I've been a pretty essential part of keeping the things up and running, according to everyone except my boss. I've been told he doesn't like to dish out compliments because he doesn't want anyone getting a big head.

I'm seven months into no-contact with my mother. Her number is blocked in my phone, but she's texted me three times, and called me once. The first two texts were just her wanting me to get my stuff out of her house. The third text and one call I didn't pick up were about my dad. I had to find out from my great aunt that my dad has cancer. He's had surgery to remove the tumor, and he's doing radiation therapy. He was supposed to visit this summer. I wanted to have a meaningful conversation with him, and ask him some hard questions. Thanks to COVID and cancer, I can't do that, and I feel now more than ever that my time to do so is running out.

My husband and I are this close to buying our first house. The work commute is a pain in the butt, but we will be far enough away from my mother's family that we can breathe a sigh of relief. We decided that once we move, we would start trying for a baby. It was a swell plan until we realized that we're Rh-incompatible. My blood type is A- and his is supposedly A+. I've seen the consequences of Rh-incompatible births gone wrong. My sister-in-law needed eight pints of blood transfused after birth, and she was born deaf. It's a terrifying prospect to say the least.

My half-brother, the only sibling I like, has become a self-recruited flying monkey for our mother. The last time I went to see him where he works, he told me repeatedly that I "needed" to call her. Sometimes, it's hard for me to tell when he's being sarcastic, so when he told me he was going to take a picture of me and send it to our mother, I very firmly refused and walked out of his office. He followed me out, swearing up and down that he didn't actually know how to take pictures with his phone, but how could anyone possibly believe that? I think that's going to have to be the last time I see him.

It still baffles me to think that no one in my family has reached out to me since I left. Clearly, I don't "need" to speak with my mother, let alone any of her family. They seem perfectly happy live their lives without me. And that's wonderful, because it means they'll leave me alone. It means I'll be able to continue living a peaceful, productive life with my husband and the children we will hopefully have.

I have a healthy support system, now. I don't need my mother or her family, much less want them.

JOURNAL: December 2019

DECEMBER 3

This was the end. The final act. My mother's magnum opus of hatred.

The day before, my cousin broke and admitted that I was the person who told her what my mother and aunt had been saying about her. My mother confronted me, tried to get me to admit to it, but I never did. But she isn't the sort that can resist being vengeful. I'd seen it in the years of her threatening legal action over every tiny, inconsequential bad thing that happened to her. But this? This crossed into the realm of psychopathy.

I heard her on the phone saying she wanted to take one of my cats to be euthanized while I was at work.

After that, all bets were off. I decided I was done being meek. I decided my so-called family was not worth the life of my pet. It never should've have gone that far, but my sense of self-worth had been so thoroughly destroyed by her that it took her threatening something I loved to make me realize just how dire the situation was.

The next morning, I decided to begin cutting her off. I told my husband to cancel our Hulu TV package. We logged all the devices off our account and cancelled. I came home from the vet with the cat my mom secretly threatened to euthanize, newly microchipped, and my account at their office flagged if anyone tried to bring him in. Not long after, my mother sent me a text demanding the login credentials for Hulu. I simply told her we cancelled our service. She stormed through the house, slamming doors until she came up the stairs. She started berating me, calling me spiteful, saying she bet I thought it was funny to cancel without telling her. It kinda was, though. Taking something as stupid as TV from her sent her into unbridled rage. It's so pathetic, how could it not be funny?

But it stopped being funny pretty fast. She suddenly demanded I give her the keys to the gun safe. My husband and I kept our firearms in that safe, along with the pistol my mother wanted locked away so she couldn't get to it, and a few of my brother's guns. I went to the safe to open it, and began removing mine and my husband's weapons. She began screaming at me not to remove anything. I knew it was because she thought we had stolen my brother's guns.

I called my husband to help me identify his guns, but my mother was in my ear, screaming at me, screaming at my husband. I pulled out two ammo cans that belonged to us, and she tried to take them, so I yelled at her to get off. She was on the phone with my former-cop aunt, and said, "oh, did you hear that?! Did you hear her yell at me?!" As if I wasn't justified. My aunt then told her to call the police as though I was doing something illegal by removing things that belonged to me and my husband from a safe that we were about to lose access to. She had both keys, and was undoubtedly going to change the lock combination. Of course I needed to secure our firearms! She kept saying, "if you don't listen, I'm calling the cops!" I didn't listen, so she stormed away like she was going to do it.

Once everything of ours was out of the safe, I locked it all in our bedroom and went outside to wait for the police to show up. I called my dad, I called R, just to make sure they knew what was happening. I even had to call my boss and tell him that I didn't know whether or not I was going to jail that day. Well, the cops never came. But the fact that the thought even occurred to her to ENDANGER MY LIFE BY CALLING THE POLICE ABOUT US FIGHTING OVER GUNS, showed me how far gone she really was. She valued my brother's guns more than she valued my life.

I knew then that I never wanted anything to do with my "family" ever again. They feed into one another, and I can never know a healthy relationship with them.

And so began my life of no-contact.

JOURNAL: November 2019

NOVEMBER 8

I went to work to test for my next belt promotion. As the testing was ending, I got a text from my mother that said, "come to the top of the stairs." I then wondered how long she'd been standing at the bottom of the stairs, yelling my name to no avail, and it made me giggle. I told her I wasn't home, and she answered, "I have to be at my doctor's tomorrow at 12:45." I silently came home and responded to her message with, "okay?" She said, "need you to take me." I answered, "with what car? [My husband] is going camping and I'm working tomorrow." She came back with, "why can't HE ride with his friends?" Well, they didn't live anywhere near us, and he'd been planning this trip for a month. Belt promotions had been announced since before I even began working at the studio. I didn't dignify her whining with further response. I didn't owe her an explanation for the plans my husband and I had, and she never gave us any notice in advance about her appointment. I didn't understand why she couldn't just think, "okay, no big deal, I'll ask one of my other kids," instead of blowing up on me.

Of course, she immediately got on her phone and started complaining loudly to whoever she was talking to that she would have to take an Uber to get to her doctor. There are a million free transportation options for seniors to get around, but she wouldn't take advantage of them because she thinks they're beneath her.

NOVEMBER 12

My mother had been in the habit of putting anyone she calls on speakerphone, only taking them off if they start talking about me. She did this because we don't talk anymore, so it's the only way she can try to draw me into her gossip. I put my headphones in to try to tune her out, but she was so loud that I could still hear her.

On this day, I heard my mother laughing, saying that if she knew where my cousin lived, she would've called the Department of Children and Families on her, presumably so that her kids would be taken from her. Why else would someone call an organization whose claim to fame was for removing kids from their homes? It wasn't the first time she'd laughed about calling DCF on my cousin, either. It made me so sick. I told Master R about it and she advised me never to let my mom be around my future children. It was such an evil thing to laugh about, regardless of whether or not anything my aunt claimed about my cousin was true. They didn't want to help her, they just wanted to see her suffer.

So, I told her. I told my cousin about how I always have to listen to my mom and aunt say horrible things about her, that I was sick of it, and that she deserved to know what was being said. I warned her about allowing them to have access to her social media. They had done the same thing to me, used Facebook to perpetuate drama and keep tabs on me, so I advised her to block them. She was grateful that I told her, and blocked them.

Admittedly, I also did it for my own satisfaction. I just wanted my mother to shut up and turn off her speakerphone. I was certainly bothered by the things they said and felt a duty to warn my cousin, but the greatest satisfaction came from the quiet conversations that immediately came after my intervention.

Me and my cousin agreed to keep my involvement secret. When my mother inevitably asked if I'd spoken to my cousin, I told her to leave me out of whatever nonsense she was involved in. It was a truly Oscar-worthy performance, if I do say so myself. She believed it in a heartbeat. I rarely lie, and I don't like to do it, but it was especially satisfying watching my mother and aunt trying to figure out who told my cousin what they'd been saying about her. Like stupid dogs chasing their tails.

NOVEMBER 14

The two of them were still playing detective. They'd gotten in contact with a few family members who all denied involvement. It made me and my husband laugh, listening to them try to figure it out. My aunt was convinced it was me, but my mother insisted that I didn't care. In a victory for me, those conversations were not on speakerphone.

I was in the kitchen when I heard my mother say something rather illuminating about her character and who she thinks she is. She said, "this is my family. My family. I'm the oldest one. If I tell my family never to speak to her again, I can promise you they won't." I assumed she was referring to forbidding anyone from speaking to my cousin. She thinks she can just snap her fingers and everyone will do what she commands. She's a control freak. She thinks she has power over the family. It was an absolutely insane thing to hear her say out loud.

I knew I needed to get away from her.

NOVEMBER 21

My husband and I were wrapping up making dinner when my mother came into the kitchen and started talking to one of my cats. She asked him, "oh, what's wrong? Are they not treating you right?" I turned around and gave her a look I imagined was some cross of angry, disgusted, and bewildered. She immediately claimed it was "just a joke." We didn't "joke" with her anymore, and I didn't find it very funny. I treat my cats like kings and I love them to death. I don't appreciate "jokes" about me treating them poorly, especially not from her, given her neglect of her past pets.

When she saw my face, she threw her hands up and raised her voice, asking, "what was that look for?!" I shook my head and went back to washing dishes. She went on, griping that she was in her own house and "couldn't say anything." My husband tried to get her to calm down, and she started yelling, "don't you wave your hands at me!" He told her she was getting mad over nothing and told her to calm down, but that made it worse. She yelled, "don't you tell me to calm down!" She repeated that a few times before yelling, "I'm done!" and stomping away. She was clearly just looking for something to fight about.

She has no intention of changing. Her life is meaningless without conflict.

NOVEMBER 22

I heard her gossiping on the phone again. The first was with my sister. Of course it was about what happened the night before. She claimed that she "couldn't sleep" because of us. The conversation I overheard was made extremely personal and ugly. She called my husband and I dumb, said that we had no friends, that we didn't deserve "all she did for us," and that she would never be kind to us again. For sake of pettiness, she even called my cat stupid. She said she was thinking about calling my husband's father and telling him how "disrespectful" he'd been. So, I told my husband and he warned his dad. My father in-law said that he would just tell her to leave him out of her shitshow.

One of the grossest things I've ever heard her say came out of her mouth in that conversation. "If I bend over and tell you to kiss my ass, you'd damn well better do it, because you're living here." Basically confirming my feelings that she viewed us as servants.

She then called my aunt and told her the same story. She told her we were lazy for not putting a garbage bag in the can that she uses to throw her garbage away. She said, "it's [my husband]'s job, and I'm not going to do it." She then complained that I wash my dishes and not hers. She called us "immature and hateful." Because of a garbage bag and a bowl left in the sink. But, okay, we're the immature ones? We're not servants or slaves, and no matter how much she kicked and screamed, we were not going to be her servants. She claimed she was going to tell us to leave because of that.

I finally felt the need to reach out to my dad about the way she'd been treating us. At this point, I was willing to set aside the feelings my mother had implanted in me about my dad, and seek his advice and comfort. He implored me to forgive, but I had to tearfully explain to him that something was seriously wrong with her. I told him that as I started my self-help journey, I began to realize that nothing in my life with her had actually been normal. I told him that I didn't think she loved me anymore, and that I wondered if she ever had. He said his heart broke for us, but that she was still my mother, and I should try to find a way to make things work.

It didn't work for them. It wasn't going to work for me.

NOVEMBER 24

We went to church after missing the previous two weeks due to illness and me staying up way too late one Saturday. We usually find that whenever we return to church after an absence, we come back to a message we sorely needed to hear. This day was no different.

Earlier this year, Master R invited us to her church, knowing we were looking for a new one. We finally took her up on the offer in August, and were told the story of Caleb and Joshua, and their faith and resilience, a story we needed to hear at the time. We loved the church and its pastors immediately, and made it our new spiritual home. My mother wasn't happy about it. She said we needed to go back to "our" church, the one I grew up in only periodically. The one where I sat alone, where no one greeted me, no one spoke to me, no one wanted to get to know me. I enjoyed the pastor's teachings, but it was a lonely place. R's church has been a warm and welcoming presence in our lives, and brought my husband back into faith, something he confessed to me the night of our tenth anniversary. That gave me so much peace.

This day's sermon was out of Mark, when Jesus was on his way to heal Jairus' daughter. A woman had heard about all Jesus had done, and having suffered for so long, thought that she would be healed if only she could touch His clothes. She believed He could heal, and because she had faith, He did. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace, and be freed from your suffering." I wept as I read it. I felt it so deeply.

The pastor spoke about how seeking other ways to heal our internal suffering didn't make us bad people. It meant that we were perfect candidates for the mercy of God. I felt that personally, too. With all the self-help I'd been doing in trying to heal myself from the wounds inflicted on me in my childhood, I felt like this sermon was for me.

He then said that we serve a powerful and immediate God. Just as the woman in Mark had immediately been helped, so would we if we truly and earnestly believed, and just asked. He said that no problem we had was too insignificant for God's attention. I prayed before we took communion: "God, please, help us get out of this."

My husband's boss, who is also R's husband, was kind enough to sit with us after the service was over and listen to us talk about how we identified with the sermon. He said something to me that I thought would help me come to terms with my mother's issues. I'd mentioned that I'd kept hoping my mother would change, but I just kept getting hurt, and despite that, I still hoped. R's husband said it was as if I was walking up to someone I knew would punch me in the nose every time I saw them. It hurts, not just physically, but emotionally, too, and you don't forget it, but that I need to learn to stay away from it so that I don't get hurt anymore. I'm slowly accepting it, but I think some ancient part of my brain will always hope that my mother will love me.

After church, we had plans to attend a Friendsgiving. On our way there, R called. She asked if we were alone, and my husband put her on speaker so that I could hear her, too. She told us that she was going to give us a large sum of money to add to our savings so that we could get out of my mother's house sooner. I immediately started crying. We tried to thank her, but she told us, "no, thank God. I feel like this is something He wanted me to do." I cried almost the entire way there because I realized that in reaching out earnestly to God and believing He would help, He did. It felt so unreal, but it happened. We serve a powerful and immediate God, indeed.

To think how different, how void, how hopeless our lives would be now if we hadn't walked through the doors of the martial arts studio, if Master L hadn't taken a huge leap of faith in hiring me. These people have given us so much love and hope in the short time we'd known them. Only God could have brought us to where we needed to be and known that's where we needed to be.

Words still can't describe the awe, the thankfulness, the relief, the love, the sense of grace that overwhelmed me. I was a perfect candidate for the mercy of God. I asked. I received. May I always remember the people God has put in my path, the people He has moved through to help me and my husband. Thank God.

NOVEMBER 26

I went to see my half-brother where he worked at the car dealership where I bought my car. I needed a roadtrip check-up because my husband and I were going to see his family for Thanksgiving. I'll never forget what he said to me after I told him that: "Why aren't you going to Thanksgiving at [aunt]'s? Because they don't want you there?"

Now, my half-brother enjoys clowning around, but I think he knew what he'd said was true. And I think that's exactly why he said it. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to cut him out of my life, as well. He was the only one of my siblings I actually liked, and even with as little as I ever saw him, I enjoyed his company. In the rare moments he was serious, I could have a good conversation with him. He was the last link I had to my mother's family, but I knew that if he was going to be one of her flying monkey's I would have to let him go, too.

Spending time with my husband's family was strange and relieving all at the same time. Strange, because everything was peaceful and everyone was so warm and welcoming with one another. Relieving for the same reasons. Their family was normal. It was something I wished I could've had.

One night we were there, I got to talking with my father in-law about all of this, how I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet, and I was scrambling to get back up again. He reminded me that I was in their family, too. That they loved me and were happy to have me in their family. That not all was lost, and I still had them.

I was just sad that I couldn't stay.

JOURNAL: September & October 2019

SEPTEMBER ??

We told my mother that we would have to cancel cable because it would cost too much after my husband quit working for the cable company. We knew she wasn't going to like it, because the only thing she ever did was watch TV all day. She turned it into a conversation about our finances, and said she wondered where all our money was. I don't like talking about money, and I let my husband handle our money so that I'm not stressed about it. I refused to speak during her interrogation, one she claimed came from a "place of love" (when they have to say that, you know it doesn't), which angered her. I told her that she needed to accept the fact that sometimes I had nothing to say and didn't want to talk, and she needed to stop taking it as a personal slight against her.

Well, of course she took that as a personal slight. She later demanded that I come downstairs and talk to her about my "little outburst," as she called it. I told her she wasn't going to corner me and lecture me like I was a little kid. I should've walked away right then, because she was trying to bait me. She said I was ungrateful, that the last several months had shown me what an "evil" person I was, that she had never done anything wrong to me and that she would never admit to doing anything wrong.

That told me everything I needed to know. I told her if that was the way she felt, we had no more reason to talk. She griped that we already didn't talk, and I asked her why I would talk to her. What did we have to talk about? We had nothing in common, and whenever I did tell her anything, she would immediately turn around and gossip about it with my aunts and half-sister. She then said that she had the "right to vent." That was her justification for all the trash she talked, not just about me, but about anyone who dared cross her. She essentially told me that she was entitled to my unconditional love and attention by virtue of being my mother. She demanded more of me, and she demanded that I do it joyfully. She wanted me to push down everything I felt, and shower her with praise and affection.

I became so angry that I started crying. I hate that I do that. I wish I could just be angry without looking like a baby, because God knows I was furious. Maybe "hurt" is a better word. That's reason enough to cry, I think. I wasn't going to roll over for her. I asked her if it was a requirement for daughters to speak to their mothers, and she was flabbergasted. She couldn't answer. She finally said, "I've never heard anything like that in my life." I told her she should tell my aunt and sister all about it, and left.

OCTOBER 20

My husband upgraded our Hulu account to allow live TV to replace cable. He wrote up a long, detailed guide for my mother so that she could learn how to use it, and she never read it. Instead of trying to familiarize herself with things that are new to her, she makes us explain everything, and even then she complains that she doesn't understand. She always has an attitude when she has to learn how to do something, because she's either easily flustered or just doesn't feel like she should have to do it herself. Maybe it's both. She was the same way when she had to learn to use Uber.

OCTOBER 23

Mine and my husband's tenth anniversary of being together. We never had a ceremony when we first got married because we didn't have the time or money. My mother made us get legally married before we were ready because he was living with us, and my mother was worried that when my dad visited, he would blow up at her for letting us live together before we were wed. She was worried about her image, but my dad never even asked about my husband living with us. Honestly, I don't think he would've cared.

We didn't want our tenth anniversary to pass without finally having a ceremony. It was too last notice to invite his family, and I didn't want mine to come at all. This meant we had to plan in secret. My mother didn't deserve to be there. We had a private ceremony at the new church we'd begun attending, with just the two of us. I was so overwhelmed that these people who barely knew us would go so above and beyond for us. I was crying before the ceremony even started. They gave us a cake and a bouquet, they dressed the church up beautifully, they toasted with us at the end. I guess I just wasn't used to being treated so kindly.

We had to come up with an elaborate lie about what we did that night and why we came home with cake and flowers. It was one of the most monumentally amazing and important days of my life, and I couldn't even share my joy with my mother. Isn't what what we're supposed to do?