[UPDATE/OPINION NEEDED] Cutting Ties with Toxic Parents?

I wrote in several times about my parents and their abuse. I received an incredible amount of support and advice on how to move forward.

To summarize: I’m Chinese-American and was born/raised in California my whole life. My mom physically abused me from grades 1–10 because I wasn’t getting straight A’s in school. She’d beat me with household items such as rulers, pipes, hangars, umbrellas, and other items. As well as her bare fists all over my body. There were several instances where she’d lock me in her closet for hours on end without food, water, or light. She attempted to suffocate me a few times as well. My dad was the verbal abuser and would intimidate you with his loud roaring voice and would eventually get up in your face making threats of death and/or beating me to death. Throughout my entire childhood, he’d call me names such as shithead, loser, garbage, burden, and other low names.

In 7th grade, I ended up in foster care because I had managed to escape the house mid beating and my classmate’s parents called police. Judge released me back to my parents because they hired a really good attorney and court-ruled them to take anger management classes as well as a full year of supervision. The abuse stopped for about a year. However, it resumed at the end of 8th grade.

In my adulthood, they continued to treat me negatively when I didn’t do something along the lines of what they wanted. This specifies towards a degree in school, to the job I was working, to what I was wearing, to how my hair looked. If I didn’t agree or do actions along the lines of what they wanted; I immediately got Thor’s Hammer on me and they’d berate me. I never stood up for myself as I feared the anger wrath of my dad and the degradation of my mother.

I moved out a while ago, but attempted to maintain contact in hopes that visiting them and providing love, happiness, and kindness to them would help minimize or reduce their negativity towards me. No avail. 98% of the time if I tried to do the “small talk” and ask them how their enjoying their retirement, I’d get just basic answers. As soon as I brought up any subject non-related to them, such as when I tried telling my mom about my experience of adopting a puppy (this was recent). Instead of really listening, she commented, “Yeah you care more about a dog than me.” Then, they immediately went to ream me about my weight. My dad tried to coerce me onto a weight scale and it 4 minutes of back and forth, “No, I’m not going to stand on it” to “Come on! Get on the scale! We want to see how much weight you haven’t lost.” My mom OUT OF NOWHERE wanted to point out the “flaps” of my arms.

Fast forward: I recently wrote a very deep letter expressing my feelings towards all the abuse I’ve experienced in my life with them, which I’ve never EVER talked about. I was respectful and at the very end of the letter, I wrote “So, until you can be parents to me, I will be cutting all forms of communication. I cannot continue to walk on eggshells in my life any longer.” It took about a full 24 hours for them to see it as I e-mailed the letter to both my mom and dad. I did not hear from them at all and instead my sister had reached out to me.

I asked my sister to respect my decision and that I needed her support. I advised that I didn’t want her mediating or being in the middle of it because it wasn’t her job and wasn’t fair to her. She said that my mom was really upset and didn’t know what to think because she thought everything was okay. She had asked me what I was going to do about her visiting during the Holidays and I simply stated that we could meet elsewhere. She said, “Ok, we will do that” and she said Love you too. That was the last thing she said to me. I knew 100% for fact that my sister was going to reach out. However, I didn’t know if my parents would reach out and my sister as well, or if it was just my sister that would reach out. The latter became true and I still have not heard anything from them.

I still had my cell phone that they provided/paid for and I recently purchased a new phone/number under my fiance’s plan. Since the other phone was the only means of communication I had with my parents, I thought it would be best to start over with a new number and not notify any of my family of it. My fiance has since removed the battery from the older phone and hid the phone somewhere. I originally wanted to wait a month before shutting the phone off completely to “maybe” hear back from them, however my fiance and many of my friends advised that there would be no point. I didn’t want to set myself up for failure in case they did reach out to continue spewing out guilt trips, hateful remarks, and ugly messages to me.

They saw the letter on Thursday. I got rid of the phone yesterday, but prior to that they had not reached out at all. The only way they can reach me now is through e-mail. I will not be telling any of them (including my sister) my new number.

My question to everyone is: Do YOU feel I did the right thing? Would it have been best to keep it open for longer or was it good that I “burned the bridge”?