December 13, 2001 | 7:31 PM

My mother gave me piano lessons when I was four. While I took baths she would tell me the plots of all the Shakespeare plays.

My mother let me play with her tarot cards and would make up stories with me about all of the different archetypes.

My mother told me that I didn't have to believe in God if I didn't want to and that it was important to come up with my own interpretation of God if I chose to belive in her/him/it.

My mother had a record of a famous Brittish actor reading The Hobbit. She would make hot chocolate and we would listen together.

My mother always had time to play board games with me. She taught me how to play chess when I was 9 and encouraged me to love it.

My mother told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. If I was ever interested in any hobby or artistic pursuit, she encouraged me to follow my dreams, and signed me up for all of the drawing/music/acting lessons I wanted.

My mother told me that I was brilliant and special and beautiful. She told me that I was a gift and she was so happy to have me. She told me I was perfect exactly the way I was.

My mother always asked my opinion on things and never said the words, "What do you know? You're just a kid."

Once when I was about eight, my mother woke me up at 10PM because The Blues Brothers was on tv, and both she and my dad thought I would love it, and since I would be up so late, I wouldn't have to go to school the next day.

My mother made me huge elaborate birthday parties and was always happy to have my friends over at our house any time of day or night.

My mother bought me lots of books and clothing and took me to movies and plays and concerts. She made a point of trying to take me on an outing at least once a week. She did this from the time I was very young until I graduated from high school.

I love my mom and she is the best mom in the world.

On and off from the age of nine, my mother weighed me once a week and would get very upset if I didn't lose any weight. She came up with all kinds of threats in order to get me to lose weight, even though at most I was what you might call "a little chubby."

"Fat girls can't have long hair," she told me once. "If you keep gaining weight we're going to have to cut your hair really really short."

"Boys don't like to date fat girls. How are you going to feel when all of the boys ask your sister out for dates and no one asks you?"

After my dad died, I wrote a poem for my English class about how sad and empty our house felt with my father gone. I read the poem to my mother. She became very angry and told me that I was never to show that poem to anyone.

"You only wrote that poem to show me up," she said. "Now everyone is going to feel bad for you which is exactly what you always want. You always have to be the victim"

When I was a junior in high school, my mother and I got into a fight because I hadn't been taking out the garbage regularly, as was my assigned chore.

"You are such a little creep," she told me. "I can't wait until you go to college."

My mother remarried when I was 14. She remarried a man who turned out to be a borderline psychopath. He stole a lot of her money and hardly ever worked. He would tell her he was paying the electric bill and would let it lapse for months until it was amost shut off and my mother would have to fork over the cash. He was verbally abusive on a regular basis towards me. He regularly told me that I was fat, ugly, would never amount to much, and that I had no character. It took a phone call from a school guidance counselor who had spoken with my friends about their concern over me committing suicide before my mother kicked him out.

My mother let him come back a year later.

I hate my mom and she is the worst mom in the world.

I love my mom. I thought I was over all of this conflict but I'm not. I want to stop dwelling on it, but there are so many ways it has affected my life, behaviors I exhibit that I want to let go of, and choices I make that are based on past feelings of inadequecy and hopelessness.

I have forgiven her for all this. I thought I had let it go, but it's in me so deep and I've gotta root it out.