Oh Honeypig, I didn't know any of your background story and I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you.
Your stepdad is a monster and I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to receive that response from your mom.
I keep waffling on whether I think she's good or bad because it's hard for me to accept that she's likely both good and bad. For right now, I feel resentful and that means I don't want to be around her. I just want to feel my resentment until I'm ready to not feel this way anymore and I'm totally entitled to do that but in my mom's mind I'm not allowed to feel anything but grateful and loving towards her. I've surrounded myself with a network of catty, mean, drama mongers and none of them are happy about my backing away from them. I told my mom "no" this morning regarding her coming over and she's now asking "why" in a million different accusatory ways and has now started prodding about how things are going with RAH and myself. I can't just NOT want to have her come over, something must be wrong with me. Oy.