I've come here to rant about my mother. I'm not looking for advice as there isn't any to be given. I've withdrawn from contact as much as I can, but it's not possible to break it off 100%. Not yet. In the meantime I just want to try to talk about how crazy-making she is, as I'm not sure anyone else can see it.

When I was a child, she was very dismissive of my feelings and told me not to have them. She has never, ever listens when I'm upset - she panics and talks over me. I can put my fingers in my ears, cry and beg her to listen, and she'll keep talking over me. She's terrified of what she might hear. When I started SI, she never asked me what was wrong. When I tried to SU, she told other people "we didn't even know she was unhappy" but she still didn't ask. Like I said, she's terrified of what she might hear. My T says it's a management technique that enables her to live in denial.

She turned a blind eye to CSA. She neglected me emotionally and also practically. That's straightforward enough. Other people can see, objectively, what the problems are if I tell them (I was left with headlice, I had a poor diet, etc). Whereas her behaviour in my adult life sounds fine in theory, so it feels crazy-making when I try to describe the ways in which she messes with my head. For example, when things get difficult she just pretends they never happened.

In January, she took me out for tea and cake to celebrate my birthday. I started a conversation about my childhood, she said some dismissive things and I ended up screaming her in a rage that was probably delayed by about 17 years. Then I said I was sorry for spoiling the outing. And she simply suggested we go out again to the same place, the week after. So we went out again. And she paid, again, and she said it was my birthday tea, again, as if the first outing never happened.

Another way in which she messes with my head, but which sounds fine if I try to describe it to anyone else, is to tell me she loves me. This is a problem because it's so random and meaningless. Example: when I was a teenager, she ignored me self-harming, but randomly announced she loved me, as if that covered the whole parenting thing. It's like getting a kitten, shoving it in a corner, not cuddling it, not feeding it properly, ignoring it, kicking it once in a while - then sometimes saying you love it, as if that makes up for everything else. Except I'm not a kitten.

She'll put her head on one side and say: "I do love you," in this voice that suggests she's so lovely and caring. It makes me want to scream: "No, you freaking don't," but she'd just pretend I never said it. Her tone of voice belongs to a relationship we don't have. She's got everyone else fooled, though. People think she's so nice. We have new neighbours, one of them works with my mum and he was all: "Oh, your mum's great, she's really lovely." No. She just has this way of speaking that makes her sound lovely, so she has everyone fooled. She's not lovely. She just pretends to be.

I last saw my dad in January. I stopped speaking to him soon after. My mum must realise. But she sends breezy emails about their movements. She sends me postcards from both of them as if nothing is wrong. I know I sound insane: I'm complaining because my mum says she loves me and sends me postcards. But picture that kitten again. Imagine it's grown up into a sad, messed-up cat and you send it a postcard once in a while. Doesn't help, does it? When I told her I was in therapy, she said: "Oh, good," and started giving me money towards it. She posts envelopes of cash through my door with little notes saying "With love from mum," and I always want to scream and rip them up, as she seems to think it actually means something. Love is a doing word. You can't just say it and assume that's all you have to do.

I do see why my mother is the way she is. My grandmother is a bona fide narcissist. My mum was 17 when she met my dad, so she never learned to think for herself. Last time she came to my house, she asked permission to hang up her coat. I said she was being ridiculous. She said, well, your grandmother shouts at me for putting it in the wrong place. She's in her 60s, for crying out loud, and she's still enmeshed or insecurely attached or whatever you want to call it. The problem I'm having is that, when people think of abuse, they think of name-calling and an absence of love. I feel like I'm going crazy because I'm sure my mum has abused and neglected me but ultimately I'm complaining about the fact that she says she loves me and gives me money.

The worst thing is I really want to talk to her about the stuff that happened because I'm sick of keeping someone else's silence. But she won't hear it, I know she won't, and if I get her to come into therapy with me she'll probably just lie and twist everything and make me sound like a fantasist, she'll claim I had a lovely childhood and I'm just making up lies. She managed to convince everyone else of that, after all. And if my therapist points out that I quite blatantly have attachment disturbances and PTSD, she'll cry and make it about her, like she always does, and say he's getting at her. And then she'll pretend it never happened.

I could just stop talking to her as well, but that means I'm letting her carry on living in her happy bubble of denial while I suffer. How is that fair? I don't want to shatter her. I just want her to actually see me, and she's never going to, is she? Why did I have to get born into this load of utter absolute garbage when other people get decent families? I think I just want someone to tell me I'm not crazy, that they can see why this would bother me.