When I was a little kid my mother (passive agressive bipolar narcissist) opened her heart to me. Keep in mind, I am her first of two children with different fathers and she wasn’t married. She told me how she never felt loved by her parents, siblings, or the men in her life. She said she thought by having a baby she would get someone who had no choice but to love her.

When my half-brother and I were 13 and 11, she abandoned us in a trailer on a dirt road. She had found a boyfriend who was also her boss at work. She went home with him at night and rarely came home.

The electricity got turned off because she didn’t pay the bill more times than I can count. The refrigerator and shelves were empty most of the time. My brother and I had to go fishing, steal corn from the fields, and collect returnable bottles from the roads to eat. Some days we got nothing.

She would come home for a week or so every few months when she was fighting with her boyfriend. Then she got groceries for us.

Now I am middle aged. I live on the opposite side of the planet and don’t talk to her.

My brother lives a few miles from her and barely talks to or visits.

Her boyfriend died years ago.

She thought only of herself when we were young and needed parents and now she is lonely.