Saying No To My Mother One Last Time

Cutting the ties that felt like a spiderweb

Things cooled off a bit weeks after my last phone call with my mother. She avoided mentioning my brother as if he never existed.

That didn’t heal the situation. I still felt betrayed and tried to swallow that down when dealing with her. I wanted to know who she really was.

A few months passed until I got my chance to find out.

My mother asked me whether I could take care of her cats while she is taking a 10-day vacation. I agreed to that, mainly because I liked the cats and had the opportunity to spend some time in nature, as my mother lived in a small village.

When I arrived at my mother’s house, she was already on vacation. I found a letter on the living room table. She explained to me how and when to feed her cats.

It felt a bit off as it wasn’t really required. I grew up with cats and knew how to treat them, plus she knew that her cats liked me. Well, I swept my confusion away and told myself that this letter was her way to show how much she loves the cats...

The real shocker came when I entered my sleeping room to drop my luggage. The was a big list duct-taped on the closet right in front of me.

On that list was everything she wanted me to get done while she was on holiday, like selling some stuff for her on eBay, cleaning up the garage, and many other things.

That felt really wild... but the sad truth is, it wasn’t.

My mother loved to make rules. One of them was that if my brother or I stayed for more than two days, we had to do some of her over-the-top chores. I am not talking about helping in the kitchen and keeping the house clean...

Somehow, I never questioned all the demands my mother had. I just did them, which of course made it an easy game to use me. And for whatever reason, I accepted it when I asked her for a favour or help and got confronted with cheap excuses.

She was my mother, I was just a son...

I refused to do anything from the list. It was the second time I said No to my mother, tho this one was only a voice in my head.

The next morning, my mother called me to ask how the cats were doing, or more exactly, whether I understood her letter correctly. Luckily, she didn’t mention the list...

I was not happy with that call. So I sent her pics when I fed the cats to show everything was fine. But it wasn’t...

She always found something to complain about, even when it had nothing to do with the cats.

My mother became more and more alien to me. It seemed to me that her real intention was to have some sort of control over me.

The more I tried to push this thought away, the more evidence reality delivered to me. It was as if I had been sleepwalking most of my life and now saw my mother with eyes wide open.

After I went back to my home, I did not have a desire to call my mother for several weeks. That is also when I became aware that it was I who mostly initiated the call. She only called me when she needed advice or wanted me to do something.

She complained when I called her less often, disregarding that she could also call me. In the end, it was I who paid her phone bills. It was once a Christmas present. I kept on paying for years, because she was my mother...

And then the pandemic arrived and turned out to as a catalyst.

My mother went full down the conspiracy lane. I didn’t argue with her. I knew from my brother and father that this made no sense. They believed in the wildest things, like being implanted by aliens into a human body...

I told my mother that I don’t want to talk about her wild theories. It was my third No. This time, spoken with a firm voice.

She told me she was fine with that. It was a lie...

A few days later, she texted me to call her as she needed some financial advice. I took the bait and called her, only to find out that no less than five minutes later, she switched to her pandemic theories.

I wish my mother had some mild dementia or just a chaotic brain. Not that I wanted to wish her anything bad; it would have made it easier for me to cope with the situation.

But since this was not the case, I was confronted with the fact that my mother was intentionally not respecting my boundaries.

I spoke my fourth No, again with a firm voice, and then ended the call. My decision was clear, but I wanted to sleep on it one more night when the rage I felt in my body had faded.

The next morning, I called her. I told her that I don’t want any contact with her for some time and gave her the reasons. She wanted to invalidate my reasons. I gave her no room for that and asked her to respect my decision...

She didn’t take it well and tried to call me a dozen times that day.

I understood her horror.

Mine was still to come.

And that, my dear reader, will be the subject of the next chapter.