I honestly kind of regret talking to my mom about her using me as a therapist; because even though I’m glad she’s been doing it less I miss the connection we used to have, even if it was bad and unhealthy.
I miss being my Mother’s “best friend.” I miss being emotionally exhausted because I had to listen to her vent about her “problem-of-the-week, I miss when she used to cry on my shoulder about how horrible things were and how badly she wished things were different, wished that she hadn’t made the mistake of motherhood.
She still does this—vents to me, treats me like a therapist—just not as often. There are glimpses of what we once had but they’re only momentary, fleeting like an up-tempo heartbeat.
When I told her that it was wrong—for her to tell me all that, for her to treat me as a therapist, as an adult, as her best and closest friend— it was in the hopes that she’d start treating me like her daughter.
Now she treats me like a stranger.
I begged and pleaded to be treated like her child, and now she doesn’t even treat me like an acquaintance.
I was chilly in the shade she basked me in, where I was treated as her best friend and listening ear; now I stand basking in this dark shadow of distance—Now, I’m getting frostbite.
