âwe mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far theyâve come.â
since iâm starting my senior year, my mother handed me the scattering of writings and pictures sheâd written sporadically in a baby book until i was 4 years old.
(apparently when i was one, i called them by their first names just like i do now. some things never change.)
i looked at my mother for a long time on this first page: it was the only picture iâd ever seen of her pregnant with me. she seemed so happy, and that was almost what broke me.
the wish for my life that my mother had written for me nearly 18 years ago was that she wanted me to be healthy. that no matter where i went and what i did, that i would pick myself back up again when i fell. that she wanted me to always remember how much my family loved me. above all, she had written that she wanted me to be happy.
that entire book drips with so much love, it doesnât go a single page without saying it. calls me a bright girl. advanced for her age. so smiley. always happy and glowing. a fast talker. a faster walker. their beautiful baby girl.
just an hour before, my mother had told me that she didnât think i was turning out to be a good person.
my mother has broken my heart many a time. i could count instance after instance, scene after scene like i was living in some terrible drama. everybody knows it and nobody wants to talk about it. and neither do i; do you honestly think i want to make my parents my personality as much as i have?
i donât really have to, anyway. those who have issues with their parents wear it like a dog tag, like an underage flier with their ticket strapped to their chest. i have issues written across their back in place of a kick me sign.
i keep wanting this heartbreak to happen for the last time. for all the fights at 16 about depression to be it. for the screamed rant at 12 about how i wasnât lonely and i was being dramatic to be the one. for all the times in my childhood where iâve ever sought my dadâs arms instead of my motherâs to be the tipping point.
i want to stop caring; because jesus, i know i donât exactly love her, but itâs not an indifference towards her words. it hurts, still. sheâs still my mother. my mom. i called her momma at one point.
but it is not so simple. it will take a long time and a lot of work for me and her if i ever wanted to love her again, much less love her in the way that she loves me. and yet knowing all sheâs been through in her life, i can work to hold her in a kindness that i know she will never hold for me. a holistic understanding, rather than picking and choosing what i want to understand.
yet that hope is dangerous. and i am reminded of it every day when i find that small child in my heart curled into a ball at my feet. discarded and weeping.
i remember when i pick her up and set her on my hip, wiping the choppy bangs out of her eyes and pressing a kiss to her forehead. holding her gently as she curls into me and sobs.
iâm just as lost as her.
because in every single thing i have done every day of my lifeâevery achievement, every failure, every action, every movement, every relationship, every wordâi have pleaded i want my mommy.
and today she finally told me that if iâm not a carbon copy of her, she does not want me back.
that if i am not their beautiful baby girl, if i am instead just their baby, they arenât interested.
the dejection and sorrow you feel from knowing that the people who are supposed to love you the most in all the world donât like who you want to be is unimaginable.
jbbartram-illu
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