Sorry, this will probably be long.
I cut all ties with my mother about 8 years ago. Someone recently asked why I hadn't made up with her, after all she is my mum - it was a good friend asking and she meant nothing by it, she's never met my mum and doesn't know the real reason behind why we don't have contact - but it got me wondering (again) if I am a horrible, selfish cow or if i am kind of justified in my decision.
The only feelings i really have for her (my mother) are hate and pity, sometimes guilt. sometimes i think those feelings alone should be enough for me to know something was wrong in our relationship, but I swing between wondering if my mother was abusive towards me, or if she was just a crap parent, if i expected too much, was too sensitive etc etc.
I could list literally thousands of examples but I'll just list a few that still sting. I would be really grateful to hear what other people think to give me a kind of objective view on it. I've always felt too ashamed to tell anyone what it was really like. Even my DH doesn't know.
My Dad would sometimes work away from home. She would close all the curtains, lock the doors, keep me off school, lock herself in my bedroom (as it had a tv) all day, in the evening she would move to the lounge and lock me in my room. If i showed any signs of being upset, she would punch and punch me like a lunatic until she literally had no energy left. I was about 8. I would only be for a few days at a time, it was weeks or anything but it fekt like a lifetime at the time. I would just eat biscuits or bread or cereal. Dad would come home and It would be like nothing had happened.
Night before my first GCSE exam, she suddenly, completely out of the blue, grabbed me by the throat and told me I had to leave. she started to throw all my belongings out of my bedroom onto the street (cue a crowd of local kids laughing, shouting etc). I eventually climbed back in through the bathroom window and revised all night in silence, had no dinner, or breakfast, climbed back out through the bathroom window and sat the exam. Somehow I passed (in fact got an A) but fell asleep on the bus on the way home and ended up in the depot. Got home, was like nothing had happened, even had a 'good luck in your exams' card on my bed. She later put an announcement in the local paper congratulating me and saying something like 'I have always been there to support you'. I tore the paper into tiny, tiny shreds and put it in the bin in the local park.
Broke up with my first ever boyfriend. Completely broken hearted, she aksed me 'what's THAT face for?'. I told her and she said, 'he probably thought he could do better than you.' and walked away. 
Back with boyfriend, I'm 16, he's at uni in the time before mobiles and email ( and no house phone in his flat). He would call me at a set time on a set day every week from a pay phone. One day the call never came. I fretted and fretted worrying that he'd dumped me or that something bad had happened to him. Eventually on my way to bed I picked up the phone receiver and there was no dialling tone, the phone had been unplugged. There was only me and her at home, and it was so hard to get it back in there was no way it could have fallen out. She had been completely 'normal', sympathetic even, most of the day, and she turned all 'well he's probably found someone else, i bet he's out with her'. I went to bed and cried under my duvet, feeling sad, angry and quite scared, she stormed in, pulled me out of bed by my hair and warned me I'd better shut up.
I was having a hard time at school, being bullied, i had no friends, cos I had no confidence, had shite clothes and just wasn't cool. Parents evening, mother very loudly asks PE teacher how I would go about a career in sport - teacher looks awkward, and confused, knowing a)I'm shite, and b)am not interested in sports. Said in full view of the kids who bullied me, mother starts roaring with laughter. They ripped the piss for weeks and weeks.
She was arguing with my dad once, and she started to punch and kick him, I tried to stop them and ran into the street screaming (aged 7ish) - neighbours came to help, calm the situation down and they kept saying she shouldn't be like that in front of me (she was threatening to slit his throat while he slept) and she just kept saying 'she has to learn, it's a lesson in life, she has to learn, it;s all part of growing up'
She would randomly leave what I can only describe as cryptic suicide notes for me to find. Of course she never did anything, but i lived in fear of it. still do.
House was a disgusting mess, stunk to high heaven, often had maggots in kitchen. I would frantically clean whenever i thought someone might come round (very rare as she had fallen out with everyone and I had no mates but i lived in fear of someone normal seeing how we lived). She rarely washed and quite frankly stunk. I would wash in secret using an old biscuit tin filled with water to wash in my bedroom and would handwash my school uniform and dry it on my radiator. Despite this should would often say in front of people that I stunk, had bad breath, should bath more etc etc.
Dad was killed in an accident at work when I was 11. We were pretty close, but all i felt was numb and scared at being left alone with her. For a while i slept with a chair wedged under my door handle to lock my door from inside because I seriously thought she might try to kill me while I slept.
I basically worked really hard at school, had loads of part time jobs to get me out of the house and I buggered off to uni as soon as I could and never went back, apart from the odd weekend to basically kept up the pretence that everything was ok. I saved and saved the money from my part time jobs (I had 5 during my a levels) and she would often 'borrow' from me and later deny it. I never got any lent money back.
I used to sob in my room watching home and away because I desperately wanted Pippa to foster me 
Basically i cut all ties with her years ago when she got the wrong end of the stick about my plans for mothers day and said something a long the lines of 'well it's a good job you hadn't forgotten because I would have been LIVID with you if you had'. We ended the conversation and I thought, well you can fuck off, i changed my number and shortly moved and she now has no idea where in the world i am. She initially sent me a few really nasty letters, but no attempt at reconciliation (not that I thought she would) but I still always kind of stupidly hope it might all go normal, like she might find me,hug me and apologise and we could be a normal family.
She has no idea about my dh or my dc - my kids are the main reason I haven't ever caved in under the guilt. I would NEVER, never, never let her anywhere near them.
She is skint, in poor health and has fallen out with everyone, family, friends, neighbours so is (or was last time I heard) a sad, lonely, bitter old woman. She doesn't have a nice word to say about anyone. when my dad died, people rallied round but she would bitch about each person to the another, make stuff up, and people basically worked out if she was so nasty about so and so who was actually a nice person, she was probably saying the same thing about them. and she was. I never blamed anyone for turning their back on us, i just missed their contact.
She very obviously has some mental health problems. I did tentatively try to help when I was a child - i told an on off friend of hers in secret about the notes and i told her GP she always seemed sad but no one ever wanted to help and i was a scared kid. I didn't know what else to do. Once a teacher took me aside and asked if everything was ok at home and i just said yes. I worried that i might get taken into care and that she would then kill herself.
Seems odd seeing it all written down. when i think about my own kids and the life i want for then, it seems clear to me that my childhood was wrong, awful, sad. But as it's all i know for me, it feels normal and I don't know if i deserved it, or caused it, or expected too much, which in itself sounds totally crazy.
And as she so clearly wasn't 'well' during all of this, should I still feel duty bound to look after her now?? Even though she made my life a living hell? I beat myself up about this a lot, but I actually don't feel i owe her anything (which is what I feel bad about, you hear so many stories, way worse that anything i had to put up with, and the people are then caring their dying evil fucker of a parent, and I wonder if that's what I should be doing). It's kind of only hypothetical anyway because there is no way she would have anything to do with me if i got in touch now.