I had allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security. And I’m pissed about it. The trickiest part of all is to place my anger where it rightfully belongs – not on myself, but on her.

{Here are some background details on what it was like to put my boundaries in place. Feel free to keep them in mind for yourself if you need to refer to some guidelines on such matters, though of course what works for me may not be the right answer for everyone.}

When I realized I needed to pull down some iron shutters on my life, and establish some more steadfast, in the end permanent boundaries between my mother and I, it wasn’t exactly as easy as tapping a button or two. First, I blocked her phone number. That was the hardest step emotionally but actually the easiest step technologically. Once she could no longer call or text me, she took to emailing me; this took more figuring out, it wasn’t as intuitive, but I started by reporting her messages as spam. The trouble with that was that I still needed to periodically go into my spam folder to either empty it or check for something, and I’d still therefore see her messages. In the end, someone taught me that I could have emails from specific addresses forwarded directly to the trash folder, and that worked out much better for me, as I rarely go in there. Facebook messaging also was an easy block, and you can easily block people on Facebook itself; I’ve also changed my profile name to make it more difficult to be found if people search for me, and I’ve locked down those privacy settings as much as I can (and periodically check them to make sure things are set up the way I need them to be).

Only a fool would consider those boundary delineations to mean anything to a narcissistic abuser though. Far from deterred, my mother began to employ a number of people we had in common, or people she had in her corner, who would contact me on her behalf in any of the above ways they could. People who would foist upon me my mother’s oh-so-sad side of the story and implore me to talk to her and work things out and “do the right thing” because after all, she’s my mother, how could I treat her this way…I would go look at all the screenshots I’ve saved over the last few years, to give some specific examples, but frankly I’m not in the mood to trigger myself. She also often contacted my husband and his parents, trying to get to me through them, even going so far as to accuse my husband of keeping me from her. Within a few months, at my encouragement to avoid engaging with her, they stopped responding to her and she eventually stopped trying to contact them for the most part. Her threat at one point to try to sue for grandparents’ rights to see my kid (more on this another time) really showed my in-laws her true character, I think, so I’ve never really felt much pressure to explain my position to them, which I appreciate.

Once I pruned as many tentacles as I could find (in terms of mutual friends on Facebook, phone numbers of people we had in common, and so forth), she was left with very few options. In hindsight, knowing how materialistic she often was, it should have come as no surprise that she resorted eventually to trying to buy back my love with sending gifts. She knows my home address of course, having been here a number of times before I cut ties with her; for years, I’ve had recurring nightmares of her just showing up on my doorstep. Anyway, at first these gifts were just for me and were showing up at random, not always relating to holidays, and it became so painful for me that I grew to dread going to the mailbox. These are never packages sent from her directly; she orders things online and puts my address as the shipping address. My husband has become used to retrieving our mail most of the time. If there is a package from her, he has gotten into the habit of bringing it out into the garage and opening it for me, and he’ll let me know what it is and I’ll decide what to do with it.

If the items were coming directly from her, I could do “return to sender”, which would make a point clear that this stuff from her – that she herself – is unwelcome. But nothing has ever come from her that way, it’s always been via third parties. When I had retained legal counsel awhile back, the original advice was to save these items for evidence just in case we ever needed to go to court, so there is some random stuff thrown in a closet somewhere. I’m at a point now though where I’d rather donate or trash the stuff, or on rare occasion we’ve been able to do a return, and then I’ve used those funds for worthy causes that don’t directly benefit me or my family.

Once she found out about my daughter, the packages we received periodically were almost exclusively for her, attempting to claim a relationship that she does not have. These packages are received as addressed directly to my daughter; no one else ever sends mail to us in that way, or if they do, they let me know ahead of time about it. In fact, pretty much everyone in our lives has become very good about giving me a heads up about when I should expect a package from them, because they know how traumatized this mail situation has made me. (For the record, in case this tidbit helps anyone, you can block someone from sending you stuff in the mail, they can arrange that at the post office – but that doesn’t work if the packages aren’t coming directly from the undesirable person.) If a package shows up that is addressed as such, it’s pretty easy to recognize that it must be from her and handle it with a proverbial ten-foot-pole accordingly.

So, back to present-day, and that false sense of security I mentioned? Well, it’s now mid-May 2022; we haven’t received a package from my mother since mid-October 2021. After years of getting some kind of package about once every one or two months, it had been seven months of no contact of any kind from her, and while initially I had some weird mixed feelings about being given up on, overall it was peaceful. It seemed she had stopped trying, and I was a little sad about that, but mostly very relieved.

I should have known better.

The weekend before last was Mother’s Day weekend. On Mother’s Day, my husband and daughter and I were driving a couple hours from home to go meet my in-laws for a lovely lunch gathering. I received a phone call from a number I did not recognize, and it was coming in on my secondary, or former, phone number. (I opted to get a new phone number about a year ago, as another step in moving on and away from my mother and such – but I still have the old number for now, we got this thing called a dual SIM card. My intention to formally rid myself of that old number now has some renewed motivations.) I figured it must have been a spam call, so I didn’t answer it, and the caller left a very lengthy voicemail which I did not listen to at that moment. A short while after that, I received a text message from that same number.

It was oddly written – clearly my mother’s words, but not addressing me directly, even though the message was sent to me. Eventually we figured out that it was someone else sending the message, verbatim, that my mother had asked them to send to me on her behalf. Yes, once again, my mother had found a new sucker to swallow her sob story and do her bidding to try to get to me. The content of the message itself wasn’t anything new, playing up how she’s apparently ill (things she’d blamed me for a few years ago) and she “isn’t toxic, just very sick,” and just wants to talk to me “before it’s too late,” and how she cries every day.

(If any readers out there are feeling sympathy for my mother and questioning if I’m being cruel or heartless for not harkening to her pleas – first of all, you’re not wondering anything about me that I don’t already wonder about myself, and second of all, please respect that in my heart of hearts I know that I am doing what’s right for me, but by no means is it easy.)

While of course it was upsetting to receive this message, I was able to compartmentalize well enough and have a good day with my husband and my kid, and my husband’s family. It helped to know that this communication had not come from her directly. I decided that since I could be pretty sure now I wouldn’t end up hearing her actual voice in it, I could listen to that voicemail once we got home that evening.

That was my fatal mistake.

The sucker turned out to be my mother’s first cousin on her father’s side, and the first part of the voicemail was her explaining that she’s sending my mother’s message as a text but since she wasn’t sure if my number was a home or cell phone, she also was calling to verbally read me the message to make sure I got it. Then she read the same message aloud. Then she went on for another minute and a half with a holier-than-thou attempt to guilt trip me into reconciling with my mother and taking care of her because she’s supposedly sick, and that’s what daughters are supposed to do, on and on.

Needless to say, I was not okay after that, and it took me some time to get back to being mostly functional. But it wasn’t until I had a session today with my therapist that I was able to figure out why exactly the voicemail was the tipping point for me.

For four years, I’ve worked very hard to prevent that kind of invalidating, dismissive perspective to enter my life. I have entertained or tolerated extremely little vocalization in support or defense of my mother. I’m at a point where anyone whose allegiance lies with her is excluded from my life. As such, I suppose I’ve gotten used to peace.

Letting those words back into my mind, back into my body, felt like poison.

In their efforts to help process this, some of my friends gently asked me if I would want to consider talking with my mother at all, hash anything out, “before it’s too late” and all that. They meant well and were very respectful of the stance I’ve always held, and it’s not an unfair question. It’s one I asked myself. There have been times over the last few years where I’ve considered that these boundaries may be temporary, that someday I might be ready and willing to try again with her. But I know now that I’m done. Because here’s what I’ve realized.

If after about four very long years of no contact with my mother, the vocalized idea of reuniting with her feels like poison…that must be because it is poison. It is poison. There’s just no other conclusion I can come to.

I will not knowingly ingest poison anymore.