you said i act like i hate you. since you’ve never been willing to TALK or LISTEN to how i feel, i’ll outline it for very clearly.

you’ve criticized me for many years saying that my friends are more important to me than my family.  who stepped up to the plate when YOUR daughter showed up in Dallas completely out of her tree?  my friend.  who drove me all the way to the Potter’s House to pick up YOUR daughter? my friend.  who drove me and YOUR daughter to Parkland Hospital at 11pm and waited until 1am and drove us back to the motel?  my friend.  do you know she didn’t get back to her own house until 130am?

you are selfish.  your only concerns are you.  you said you were going to fly to Portland and help her clean out her apartment “but she messed it up by going to Dallas.”  so what changed?  you said you were going to Portland and you didn’t show up.  so someone else was left to pick up the pieces.

then i find out that you are maintaining a storage unit at a cost of $210 per month.  really?  i don’t give two shits about how you spend your money but i find it awfully funny that YOU said, “i can’t drive to Dallas because my tags are expired and I don’t have money to get them.”  i find it also quite funny that after your swollen wrist and knee, i get a call from your OTHER DAUGHTER asking if i can pay for your “$80 prescription.”  well i’d guess if you weren’t wasting money hoarding furniture you might have a few pennies to pay for ESSENTIAL items like, seeing about your mentally ill daughter!

what really kills me is all of your excuses.  i’ve been in Dallas for 3 years, going on 4 and you haven’t been here to visit me yet.  frankly i no longer care if you ever visit.  you showed me how much i don’t mean to you when you left me alone to deal with YOUR daughter.  my friends think it’s so great that you’re only 3 hours away yet they don’t realize it doesn’t matter.  you still aren’t coming.  yet you manage to get to church, to your sister’s house, the grocery store, the doctor, but your car just won’t make it to Dallas.  it must be those expired tags preventing the trip.

you never stopped to think, this must be a major load on her shoulders, dealing with a mentally ill person all on her own.  and here we all sit, me, my eldest daughter and we aren’t there to help.  what gets me is you vilify my father, rip him apart for every ugly thing you can recall – shit that happened before i EVER showed up, yet you’ve done shit in the last 30 days that was fucked up.  and is there an apology?  and acknowledgement of your wrong?  never that.  because “you did the best you could.”  or better yet, when the conversation turns to your issues, your fucked up ways, you’re ready to get off the phone or somehow twist the subject so you’re not under fire.

do you know i’ve saved all the shitty emails you’ve sent me about my father?  what woman disparages the father of her children TO HER CHILDREN?  that’s just disgusting.  did you talk shit to your other daughters about their fathers?  or do you just reserve all that venom for my dad?  and you wonder why i don’t speak to you.  i have nothing to say.  you are a hurtful woman, full of anger and bitterness from YOUR past and every chance you get you bring all that bitterness up and spew it at your children – or anyone else willing to listen to it.

i don’t have any room for anyone else’s baggage.  you’ve been carrying a lot of crap for many years.  and the cold part is, you’re always quick to say what hurts you, or that you’re hurt because your kids don’t call you, but do you ever think about what hurts your kids?  how fucked up is it have your own mother call your dad a freak?  to your cousin?  how fucked up is it to have your mother tell you “as far as i’m concerned you’re just a landlord and i’m a tenant and we don’t have anything to talk about.” how fucked up is it to have your mother stop paying the rent and leave you $1700 in the red trying to recover while she makes plans to relocate to another state?  worse yet, how fucked up is it that she never ever acknowledged her wrong?  but sent you letters and photographs of your childhood telling you “you kicked me when i was down.”  if that’s not fucked up i don’t know what is.

yet you wonder why i don’t race to call you and tell you how much i love you and how wonderful you’ve been as a mother.

every time i hear from another sibling “mom is really hurt that you didn’t call her” i get pissed.  be a woman and pick up the phone and speak to me directly.  it kills me that you’re able to dish out what you see as truth yet when it comes to hearing it you run away.  you’re quick to talk about everyone else’s faults, who doesn’t call you, who is ungrateful and then talk about “they’ll see, they’ll get theirs” like you’re calling down curses on someone.  but what about YOU?  do you EVER look in the mirror and do a self-evaluation?  EVER?  or is it just everyone else that’s fucked up and needs your forgiveness?

i cannot think of  a time when you and i had a civil conversation about our disagreements.  as a child you were always in the right.  as an adult you run from confrontation and feel that whatever happened, happened.  but the cold part is, that only applies to the shit YOU’VE done.  you don’t apply those rules to anyone else.  certainly not to my father.  you run him down constantly and you know what, that really hurts. he has always been a listening ear, a coach, a cheerleader, my support.  he admits when he’s wrong, asks for forgiveness, and moves on.  but not you.  you never admit when you’re wrong, maybe because you don’t think you are.  maybe you really think it’s everyone else that’s wronged you.

so i have a lot of reasons for not wanting to deal with you.  i don’t have time for fake and phony bullshit.  if you want to have a real conversation, fine.  if not, that’s fine too.

i look at my cousins, how close they are to their mom.  their mom drove to dallas many times to visit, in fact, i saw her when she was here.  yet my own mother never seemed to make it to visit me.  and you wonder why i treat you like i do.

and the favorite line is that “time is short.” that “i could die tomorrow and then what?” you know what? so could i.  there is nothing to say that death will visit you before it visits me.  but i will say that i’ve had enough of the drama, the tears, the “what did i do” to last a lifetime.

i won’t even bother with the rest of my grievances with you.  but this should give you plenty to think about when you’re crying over photographs of your kids at 3 and 5 and 7.  when you still had control over our minds and actions.  surprise, we don’t stay young forever and when we grow up we can see the forest and the trees.