A family friend died, and my mom used this opportunity to note that he had a heart attack caused by the tension resulting from his son having an illicit affair. So please don't sully the family name and/or give her tension that could kill her. Promise?

Oh dear Lord, the temptation to respond with "Mother, I solemnly promise to protect the purity of the family name by being so sneaky and discreet that nobody will ever know about my sooper seekrit life as a polyamorous pole-dancing rentboy" would probably be enough to give me a lethal heart attack.

I keep wanting to respond in depth to everything you're going through, but I'm always a few hours behind and everyone else says it first.

But, ugh, I'm just twisting up inside for you -- cheering for the calm you found in your last conversation with your mom, and that your uncle, annoying conservabot though he may otherwise be, is on your side -- but just twisting up because I totally recognize the need and the angry and the longing, and how incredibly hard it is to disengage from family members who are judgmental and unreasonable and incredibly parsimonious with their praise (which can be even worse to cope with than pure incessant negativity, because it just keeps feeding you scraps of hope and then yanking your choke-chain again). And, shit, when I went through all that it was just a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins, not even someone so messily and intimately tied to my core as my mother.

I'm just awed by every single step you take toward protecting yourself, disengaging, attempting to treat her with respect without sacrificing your own self in the process.

I've decided that the cut I want is an amalgamation of the Juliana/smonster/Aims/JZ variety. I wish I could drag the four of you in with me and do a hair parade and say, Edina Monsoon style, "Like that! I want it like that!"

There will be no awe of me.

She says, "Promise?" And I say, "Yeah." And I still feel bad.

Man, screw that. All that stuff the other Bitches have talked about, about the old bad tapes and K-FUCKED broadcasts and whatnot? That's what the still feeling bad is. It's not always possible to stop the voices in your head that get triggered when your mom pushes certain buttons, but you can at least know that she put the buttons there and the voices are going to go off when she does, and sometimes it's possible to just let them run and not respond to them. Fucking hard as hell, but possible. They're not telling you the truth about yourself, they're just a programmed response to a certain stimulus. Static. Feedback whine. Not meaningful, not true.

Tea is made and I ate a weight watchers chocolate muffin for breakfast. Now I just need people to tell me that my friends won't care if the apartment is a bit messy. After all tonight is about Talia, not all about mememe, right?

ION, I ended up buying a few little things for a good-bye present for Tal yesterday, a purple (her favorite color) bookmark that says "Reach for the stars", a journal with the Irish Blessing on it, a scrapbook for her to put new memories in, a book about ways to relax (which she so needs), Hello Kitty stationary, and stamps.

There will be no awe of me.

Pfft. Dude, if I could play you a ghastly montage of my own fucked-up twenties, including how vastly less extreme my own circumstances were, how close I was to thirty before I managed anything like the awareness and beginnings of control that you're already within shouting distance of, and how many metric fuckloads of therapy money it took to get me there, you might be willing to permit at least a stray grain of awe here and there.

Oh, those sound like great gifts. And your friends won't care if your apt. is a little messy.

Pfft. Dude, if I could play you a ghastly montage of my own fucked-up twenties, including how vastly less extreme my own circumstances were, how close I was to thirty before I managed anything like the awareness and beginnings of control that you're already within shouting distance of, and how many metric fuckloads of therapy money it took to get me there, you might be willing to permit at least a stray grain of awe here and there.

Well, but...I didn't do anything.

I think my problem is I grew up thinking my circumstances were generally normal and shared by most people, and therefore I should just deal, because That's the Way Things Are.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time - my 20s, my 30s, much of my 40s - letting my mother yank my chain. Then one day I had a little epiphany and it stopped bothering me as much. But I'm a slow learner.

And drat! when I originally posted (about Ruthven) I'd thought it was the Polidori story ... then I thought "No! it's 'Varney the Vampire'" which was wrong, wrong, wrong. However you pronounce it - do your cats come when you call? - enjoy life with new kitties.

Let's make oblique VM references in response, so that one day in their memoirs they'll describe us as "inscrutable."

Force equals mass times acceleration.

(Note: the "give her tension that could kill her" part was a mere extrapolation and not anything she explicitly said.)

I'm sure it was her subtext, but for your own sanity, ignore her subtext when you can. Passive aggression is only effective when the victim buys into it. If she wants to be aggressive, make her be actively aggressive. When she's playing passive-aggressive, you play obtuse.