I'm done being her doormat. She can rage all she wants.

My relationship with my mother is criminally toxic. I’ve been low contact for a while now—just one short phone call a week, if that. The only reason I haven’t gone full no contact is because she would escalate. Including showing up at my home or workplace and causing scenes. A restraining order might stop her legally, but she'd still find ways to make my life hell. So she gets 5–10 minutes a week. It makes her feel like she still has control, not because she actually wants to talk.

Monday she called. She’s visiting family up north. And as always, she puts on the “devoted mother” act for anyone within earshot. It’s nauseating how fake she is when she has an audience. Mid-call, she tells me her “friend”—the man she allowed to abuse me for years, in front of her—might have to be hospitalized for a foot amputation. Mind you he's had issues with this foot for months and refused to see a doctor… Until the day she goes out of town? She doesn’t if he is going. When or for how long. She just knows I’d need to stay at her house to watch the dogs.

Context: she and this man should be in prison for the things they did. The only reason they aren't not is because she had me so gaslit as a kid, I thought the abuse was my fault.

And now I’m supposed to just go stay in that house?

The same house I can’t sleep in without feeling physically sick?

Also—my brother lives in the house directly behind hers. Their backyards literally connect by a gate in their shared fence. He has four dogs of his own and is her perfect boy. But when I ask why she isn’t asking him, she says she “doesn’t trust him.”

Since when?

What I think this is really about is my new job. I just started somewhere I actually like, but they have strict attendance policies. She knows that. And she also knows the train tracks near her neighborhood frequently block the road in the direction of my commute. Maybe I am paranoid but I feel like she’s trying to sabotage me.

I refused. And of course, she melted down. I am every name besides my own. Then ropes in the family she’s visiting. They start calling and texting me, trying to guilt me into caving. I didn’t.

Now today, she’s called multiple times and left voicemail after voicemail begging me to stay with the dogs because her “friend” is officially in the hospital.

I ignored her.

A few years ago, I would’ve folded. I would’ve dropped everything and destroyed myself to appease her. But not anymore. I’m done.

Let her rage. Let her gossip. Let her come back ready to burn bridges.

She’ll find I’m not standing on them anymore.