I wish my mother loved me.
I wish I had pretty words and beautiful prose to translate my mommy baggage, but I don’t.
Her absence still haunts me.
I’ve tried telling people she’s dead, but that finality doesn’t fit, as she is quite alive yet painfully distant.
I don’t have pretty words to adequately describe how much I hate how this unfinished business lingers in my psyche. I’m tired of the merry-go-round that hits me when I think I’ve moved on from feeling cheated out of a healthy mommy-daughter relationship.
A hint in a social post or Mother’s Day meme knocks me on my emotional ass. Seeing other happy mom/daughter relationships doesn’t bring me tears. Instead, there’s only melancholy regret, envy, and, lately, annoyance.
I mean, if your mother doesn’t love you, you’ve gotta be a pretty fucked up person, right?
And that is precisely how a child interprets abandonment. So surely, I’m unlovable and damaged because the woman who gave birth to me couldn’t stand to keep me.
My mother deposited me with my great-grandmother when I was six or seven. There wasn’t a conversation about why she was gone or when she was coming back. I bounced between my mother and great-grandmother for several years before my mother accepted the full weight of raising me, coincidentally just after my younger brother was born. There’s nothing like having a live-in babysitter, am I right?
My life wasn’t completely void of love and attention. I had love from my family, but I always felt like an outsider and didn’t fit in. I blame my mother. She was supposed to shield me from harm and make me feel loved and accepted.
My mother should have guided and protected me from all dangers. I shouldn’t have grown up feeling scared and alone, and worthless. My mother’s mission should have been to be my fierce mama bear. But instead, I learned to dance with the wolves and slay my own damn dragons.
Fuck her. It’s her loss. She missed out on some pretty cool shit in my life.
I desperately want to feel those words, but I don’t. My heart won’t let me.
I miss my mother. I miss the sliver of moments when, as an adult, we became friends despite our history. I miss watching Star Trek together and playing Scrabble. I long for what we could have had, still could have if only she were willing.
I could say her religion separates us, but truthfully, her adopting the JW lifestyle was just another opportunity to leave, a skill she perfected long before her faith interceded.
I’ve talked to my younger self to manage grief and make sense of my abandonment issues, a useful exercise I learned in therapy.
I learned to explain to 7-year-old mini-me that her mother’s leaving had nothing to do with her and everything to do with our mother’s own demons. I tell mini-me that she is good, kind, thoughtful, and talented and will grow up to be beautiful, strong, and successful.
The rational, all-growed-up me understands the importance of positive self-affirmations, but deep inside, the little girl is still hurt and ashamed.
Some wounds never heal. Instead, they scab over only to bleed and ooze remorse, pain, guilt, and shame.
I wish my mother loved me enough to stay with me. I wish forgiveness was a fix-it-and-forget-it kinda deal because there are days I can look in the mirror and not cringe at my mother’s face staring back at me. And that feels like a win.
But more often, anger, resentment, shame, and sadness for my mother’s absence live where comfort, love, and appreciation should be.
Some days are easier than others.
Most days, I don’t look at the world through a dark lens of trauma and emotional despair. No. There’s nothing to gain from keeping a stronghold on painful memories.
There may come a day when I’m unaffected. Maybe the day will come when my mother’s ghost no longer roams my waking world. Or I’ll find some pretty words to wash over the pain of her absence. Maybe, someday.
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Thanks for reading. 💛 Jae
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