Mother Was My Virtual Private Network

As part of my daily digital hygiene regime
I use the anti-virus/cleaning programmes
downloaded to my laptop, and every time,
which ever one of the three programmes I use,
it always tells me to sign up to their VPN
right away, as if my survival depended on it.

I never do, but find different ways to make sure
that what I do is safe, sane, and secure
by what I refuse to let Google remember.

Google does not need to keep the numbers
on my credit cards, only I need to keep them.

I decline to use VPN because their urging me to use it
reminded me of my mother, who placed great store
by saying she was the acme of my personal security
whilst never letting me know what was really going on,
outside of her or with regard to all the choices I might make,
emotionally, socially, and financially/with employment.

And because she was my example of evasive protection,
that unawares of me was most engaged with protecting itself.

I only learned much too late why so many events in my life
'went wrong', why paths that seemed right at the time
closed down long before I could reach the most rewarding part of them. 

VPN is a source of profit and consumer control
for many of the biggest internet protection providers
that it is in their commercial interest to keep secret,
the better for them to scare the nervous and gullible.

My parents operated an information apartheid,
where, like VPN, they told me well disguised lies
that kept me passive, compared with what they knew about each other.

The longer mother strove to 'sound so nice', the harder it got
for my parents to admit the depth of their lies about me,
or unpick the falsely founded relationship they had set up as my future.