I've written this post about ten times and then decided to start over. It's a hard thing to write about in just a few paragraphs.

One of the things I attribute to better health than ever this summer is a rift between me and my mother. She is an overly critical, hyper-nagging, negative person who wants to tell me that every decision I've made in my life is the WRONG one. I'm afraid I'm going to become like her. I want to surround myself with positive and supportive people, but it's a lot more difficult to achieve that when a family member, supposedly someone you MUST spend time with, is not that kind of person. Thus, I decided that this 'family obligation' thing should, from here on out, be optional. I have not seen her in about three months. There was an event which served as the straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back. Let's say I hope that nobody else on this planet has a mother who has ever acted the way that she did in this particular event.

She apologized this week. It only took eleven weeks.

But there has been many years of my serving as some sort of punching bag/whipping child for her anger. (There was abuse of various types, at different times in my life.) There is probably little chance that she can regain my trust. There is currently no desire on my part to mend anything, because I like being around people who are nice to me, and I don't want to go back to any situation where someone is not being nice to me. I mean, I'm not going to willingly put myself somewhere that I knew in advance, would be painful or destructive.

And there are 32 years' worth of negative associations that can't be destroyed in one fell swoop. I don't think this issue is about forgiveness, but more about not forgetting. I want to do whatever it takes to avoid being her target. Not being around her has worked better than any other strategies or methods I tried over the last two years, all which have failed.

Since I haven't been a mother before, maybe I'm missing something here. But how can one not treat their offspring with love? I ask myself that question often.