My mother's final gift

Part 3 of three related essays on escaping domestic abuse

Reader’s note: This is the third and final post of three related essays on the end of my relationship with my abusive mother. This post is for paying subscribers. If you’d like to read it fully, please subscribe.

Part I is here. This is my last letter to my mother and her husband when I evicted them from my property.

Part II is here. This was the response of my mother’s abused husband, who decided to threaten me when I tried to rescue him.

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What led up to this post you’re reading now is linked above. To summarize for new readers:

1. In 2016 I finally faced the depth of my mother’s derangement, figuring out that she was severely personality disordered.

2. I went into more than $100,000 in debt to buy a second house I could not afford in order to give her a place to live.

3. Within two years my mother had devolved into the same screaming, lying woman I remembered from childhood, and it drove me to drink and a nervous breakdown.

4. When I finally saw through her mask to who she really was, her response was what you see below. As painful and (at the time) deranging as this letter was, it was vital to me. There could be no more denying my mother’s lack of love or care for her children, no more denial of how brutal and wicked she was.

While it hurt me badly to read it the first time, I have taken this letter out from time to time to remind myself that I am not crazy.

I am not a “bad son.”

I did not deserve my mother’s treatment.

I am not crazy. She is.

This letter was my mother’s last gift to me.

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