Dear Elle, I've erased and restarted this response several times now. I wanted you to know that reading your perspectives over the last couple of years has helped me exercise empathy for my own mother, who while a very different person from you, could easily relate to this struggle to connect with other people, including her children, regardless how much she felt she wanted or needed to. I haven't spoken to her in nearly two years, but I feel like trash about it. I'm not seeking advice on the matter, because it's too much to get into why I need my distance, but I am grateful that my outlook is no longer anger towards her. If anything, I just get melancholic now. I think about reaching out most days, after she's expressed so much pain that I'm gone (in her last email to me, over 1000 words in length, last February, and I've yet to decipher if she meant it, or if it's just a strategy)... but until I'm not a disappointment to her as well, I can't do it. I'm on welfare right now. The last time I was around my family, we were visiting relatives, where it was discovered she still addressed me in baby voices, and when I happened to move out a week later, she was very adamant that I'd fail and end up back home with her. Social assistance is close enough. Someday, I'd love to drop in on a family gathering using a helicopter. I miss my cousins, though I'm embarrassed that our last interactions were based around the way my mother treated me, before I just went into hiding... anyway, I'm sorry these comments get so long. It's not a tactic of any kind, my average phone call with friends, or with my grandmother or aunt back in the day, would often go north of 4-6 hours long. Even when I wasn't complaining about stuff!!! Which I'm presently wondering if that was rarer than I think... I haven't even read most of this piece yet. I'm sorry. Moving on. 😶