It's devastating that my mother is terminally ill and I'm not sad about her dying

My mum (F56) has stage 4 breast cancer. This is a recent diagnosis so I'm still processing the shock. But this has also brought up a lot of complicated emotions for me.

Growing up, for as long as I can remember, I hated my mother. I am the eldest, then my sister (F23) and brother (M19). My mother desperately wanted a son, so she was disappointed when I turned out to be a girl, and would dress me in boys clothes and pretend I was a boy when I was younger. I don't remember this but there are pictures of me around 3-4 years old in boys clothes.

She kept having children until she finally had a son. My dad did not care so much about our genders, at least until I hit puberty and then the full hell of religious judgement came raining down on me.

When I was 7 or 8 I remember her crying hysterically that I didn't care about her, that I wouldn't care if she died. She would threaten to kill herself, describe it in graphic ways and then say you'll all regret how you behaved then. I learned to completely stonewall her and not show any emotion. I remember growing up feeling like something was wrong with me emotionally. Googling several times if I was a psychopath. I'm now probably the most empathetic person a lot of people will ever meet, I organise in my community, work in healthcare, and have been vegan for 7 years. I know now I was not the problem.

I remember her screaming at me and waving a cane about, I think for not showering immediately after coming home from school. I was so terrified of her hitting me. I climbed up the stairs into the attic because I knew she couldn't as she was heavily pregnant/newly post partum and stayed there for hours. I peed all over the floor because I would've had to go downstairs to use the bathroom.

When I had my first period, her way of starting the sex talk was to ask me if I know what rape is. I was intelligent for my age and knew what was happening. I got up and left, saying my siblings were waiting for me in the playground. I was 9. She never attempted to talk to me about it again, and I'm glad because I know it would've been fucked up.

Nothing I did was ever good enough for her. When I told her I got 98% on a test at school, she would ask why I didn't get 100%. If I was ever resting when she was around - reading, watching TV, just sitting down or playing, she would make me get up and do chores. Using pronouns when talking about her was disrespectful. I always had to say "Mum" instead of her or she. Talking back (explaining) was disrespectful. Crying or being angry was disrespectful. I learned to shut down and repress all negative emotions when communicating with her. When I would say I needed to go to the doctor, she would dismiss my pain and illness until I made a fuss or it got too bad to ignore. I learned to exaggerate my symptoms and that she did not care enough about me to even take me to the doctor. She would make me feel guilty for eating food, for having needs, for taking up space. Guilty for existing so she had to drive me to school and pick me up. I know she fucking hated me. Imagine hating your own children you fucking chose to have.

When I got first job, I was still in university. She discouraged me from taking it. She said my employer might molest me because he was x ethnicity so I shouldn't do it. I didn't listen to her and I wasn't asking for permission. She ridiculed me because it was unpaid internship but I knew it would kickstart my CV. I can thank this first job for a lot of other opportunities I got after this because I had more experience than my peers, so I'm grateful I didn't let her get me down.

I remember all these times so vividly. All the times she shut me down, was unkind to me, even cruel. And now that I'm all grown up and live a continent away, she's turned into this fuzzy, "innocent", "elderly" woman who has never done wrong. She loves to be the victim. She claims my success as her own when everything she ever did apart from provide me with the basic necessities to survive was designed to drag me down. Now it looks like I'm the bad guy when I call her once a month or less, when I go on vacation without telling her, when I don't let her into personal parts of my life. It infuriates me that all my pain just gets swept aside because it was so long ago. I do not care if she dies. It will be a relief. What is distressing is anticipating what new sorts of emotional manipulation she will perform now that she has another excuse to be pitied.