I haven’t spoken to my abusive mother since October of 2007. Haven’t laid eyes on her except for the day I visited my grandmother on her deathbed.

It’s fantastic not having to deal with her. While pregnant and when my son was young I mourned not having a mama around to help with things and let me know what to expect, but then she wouldn’t have been that mama anyway, so it was no great loss.

I moved from an area of town associated with a gang I ran with and never looked back. Any time I’m over there for any reason I can’t avoid, I’m looking over my shoulder for someone comin’ at me.

It helped me because I’d have been in the gutter with all them living a life of crime, addicted to meth and dragging around poor little kids, or getting beat every night.

No – the bad situation left me.

Yes I have, toilet at work after i’d done a…ahem, number two, bloody flush was busted.
Walking away here, whistling while we go…nowt to do wiv me.

Yep, left a long term marriage 11 years ago this month. Best thing I ever did. I am starting over again now, for the 2nd time in the last 11 years, and when I’m ready to move on I do it with ease. I am a future oriented personality, let go of the past pretty easily. This newest shift has been really hard, but, onward and upward.

I have never left a situation and obliterated it from my memory. I am the sum of all my experiences, good and bad.

I share @marinelife‘s sentiment. Everything that’s happened to me in my life, both good and not-so good, makes me who I am today, both good and not-so-good. And the memories that I think I’ve buried have a way of bubbling up at odd moments and in my dreams/nightmares.

Yes, loaded everything I wanted into the trunk of the car and left, never looked back.

Moved to Florida after graduating college. Actually, I moved back home after college and was a miserable mess being back in the same city my exboyfriend still lived in. I somehow found the strength to drive to pack up my car, drive to the autotrain (just over an hour away, I barely made it there on time) they loaded my car on the train and I took a seat. I was pretty nervous. It leaves the station in the afternoon, so you travel through the night for the most part. After getting eating dinner, watching a movie (in the cafe car, this is a long time ago, we didn’t have personal computers or dvd players) I tried to relax and sleep a little. The next morning when I wome and as the sun was streaming I realized my stress had gone away. It was like a whole chapter was closing.

When we finally got to the destination and I got back into my car, and I drove a few hours to a friend’s house, and then proceeded to live almost two months on “vacation” in FL with friends and a cousin, and then finally I got a job.

I never thought about moving back to my hometown. I think what helped most was loving the new place I lived. Except, once my husband had a possible job opportunity in that area, but it wasn’t that we sought moving there.

I had a boss that decided to be a real jerk from time to time. Anyway, he decided to rip in to me about trivial things and I simply left. No regrets.

Every single one of them.

1. It was called my marriage.

2. When I moved from Illinois where I couldn’t find a job because I had upset some of the political movers and shakers, to Texas where I didn’t know if I could find anything or not. Went into business with a friend of mine who lived down here – that went well for a while until I got tired of doing all the work while he didn’t do shit – dissolved the partnership and found a teaching job at a local community college within weeks, then moved on to the teaching job I have at a university 10 years later. The only times I’ve ever even glanced back is during these ungodly hot Summers and what passes for Winter and those have been quick glances.

My significant other’s parents demanded one day that he tell me to “get the fuck out of [their] house”. They meant for that week, but I packed my things and I have never been back. I have not seen or spoken to them in over a year now and I do not foresee that changing. I have no desire to forgive them for the way that they treated me or the way they continue to treat their children and pets.

Have I obliterated them from my memory? Certainly not. I still have nightmares about seeing them every now and then. My significant other still lives at home with them, so I cannot exactly ignore their comments and behaviour. And when people ask about them, or my relationship to them, I do not brush their inquiries off.

I also do not want to forget how terrible they were to me. I want to remember so that I will never be tempted to forgive them or make excuses for them.

The kids I hung out with in high school. They weren’t exactly bad people, just really irresponsible, unmotivated, and immature. We spend all our energy on “drama” (petty squabbles), killing time (running the streets, playing video games, smoking weed), hating our parents, and feeling sorry for ourselves.

A year ago I went back to visit, and almost all of them are preoccupied with the same stuff. I don’t care about how outwardly successful you are, like having a high-paying job, traveling to cool places, or having a fancy apartment. What I mean is, none of them cared about anything. They didn’t feel strongly enough about anything to devote their time and energy to it.

Only one of the girls had changed. Her dad was very sick, and she moved back home to help take care of him. She was working two jobs and thinking hard about her future and the direction for the rest of her life. She’s on the other side of the country now, but we’re closer now than we were then.

If you read my response on this thread, that’s the bad situation I left and haven’t looked back once.

I’ve moved quite a bit in my life and that’s one place I have no interest in ever going back to, not even to visit. I rarely am willing to let the good memories go to get rid of the bad ones, but the bad ones from that place were enough that forgetting the entirety of that experience would be welcome.