Originally Posted by
thotful 
It is ABSOLUTELY ok to take care of myself. Reminder, reminder, reminder. I'm not a bad person when I walk away from abuse. Not at all. I deserve to be treated with respect. period. No excuses, no "i'll let that slide". Respect.
Yes, yes, yes.
What I keep coming back to is the idea that I would never (ever) let a friend treat me the way my mom has. Never. If someone yelled at me, cut me out, and then came back to yell some more while I was there to help, with a complete disregard for my feelings or the consequences of that kind of treatment, I would say, yeah, no thanks, so long. And I had the same feelings with my sister when she laid into me.
Just because I shared the first portion of my life with these people doesn't mean they have an automatic pass to stomp all over me. And they don't have to be a part of my life now. I feel like this idea goes completely counter to what a lot of people say about "family matters the most" and "blood is thicker than water." Somehow you're supposed to just take what's dished out, because it's coming from the original family. Better to surround myself with chosen family. It's just really hard to do. Hard to drown out the noise of conditioning and triangulating and rationalizing and minimizing.