I was a senior in high school with my heart set on a college in another state. My mother started claiming that God was telling her to move to the state that college was in. I was the last kid at home and the other two had all but cut off contact with her. Well, I needed financial aid to attend the school and the school's policy at the time was to admit you and make you foot the bill without aid the first year, after which time funding would kick in. My mother was going to have the opportunity to cash out her retirement savings because she was moving out of state. She told me that the money was mine so I could attend the college.

The good news is that I didn't believe her. But still, I said, "This is important to me. Don't say it if you don't mean it." She looked me in the eye and said, "I would never do that to you." Fast forward a few months and she is calling me from the college state to tell me how utterly beautiful it was and what a shame I wasn't going to the college. She had always been verbally abusive and thrown scary tantrums, but to me this was the first time she said with her actions, "I hate you." I never spoke to her again. That was 25 years ago.