Not everyone hates their mother. My mother is conservative, hypocritical, and nosey and I love her to pieces. All else being equal, it sounds like the difference may be that your mother did not live up to her responsibility to love you and take care of you while you were growing up. So she is or was selfish and unloving to the point of cruelty, on top of everything else. But she's still going to be part of your life no matter what. You can ignore her, you can change your number and your locks, you can get a restraining order. She's still going to live inside your head, which I think Cary said. So it sounds like therapy for the purpose of accepting that she is your mom and you are you, and everything that means. Good luck. My mom never intentionally hurt me, and it's still hard.

I thought this article was going to attempt to answer the question why we can't have smart right-wingers in the US.

Cheers to that, NYU Student. She's awful.

Wow, I really have not been single in a long time. Is this what single people have to contend with? You meet someone who seems great, go home with them and they turn into Mr. ooh baby do you like that baby? That's awful. It's up there with finding out someone's a Scientologist, or likes hunting. I don't remember this being a problem when these adventures were mine to have. Sometimes I would go home with guys who turned out not to be that cool by the light of day, and sometimes it was awkward having sex with someone I didn't know too well, but it was never as dehumanizing as the experiences depicted in this article. Sometimes I envy single people and their adventures but right now I'm glad to have spent the last ten years cozily shacked up with an average lover.

Cary, I love you. You are the one who taught me how to empathize with others. It is you who taught me how to see the pain behind their words, and how to connect to it through my own pain instead of trying to fix them. I stumbled across your path when I was ready to learn this lesson, and you taught me well, though I never contacted you. Please get well, dear wise man!