The other day, I was thinking about my birthday coming up next year and what trip I wanted to take. I was thinking of taking a solo trip to New York. I’ve never been but have always wanted to visit…see the Statue of Liberty, go to the Natural History Museum, see a show on Broadway perhaps, and then wander off into the Adirondacks for a couple of days to see what mountains they have to offer in a cozy cabin.
I’ll be twenty-six and that’s when I realized that this will be the tenth birthday I’ve spent without my mom. A whole decade has passed where my mom wasn’t there. It will be my tenth birthday I’ve spent alone. I’ve spent every birthday since I was sixteen alone. It’s my day—my day to do whatever I want, whenever I want. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to enjoy my birthday… at least that’s what I think for now.
I think sometimes, when you don’t have a parental figure in your life who makes you feel important, you have to dedicate yourself to making yourself feel important. So, I spend my birthday alone, untouched by reality. I make it a point to be alone so that nothing could possibly go wrong or anyone could affect my mood. But that’s not the point of me writing this.
The point of me writing this is because sixteen-year-old me would have never thought I’d go ten years without my mom in my life. I always thought somehow, some way, that everything would go back to normal and she would be in my life again. That thought is starting to become very untrue. She doesn’t even know who I am anymore.
That’s not a bad thing. I used to think about my mom a lot—like every day, multiple times a day—and it used to ruin my mood. I always thought that if my mother couldn’t love me, then no one could. But this past year, I started writing, and my writing was heavily based on my thoughts and feelings about my mom. Slowly, as I continued to write, she started to matter less and less.
I used to think that thinking less about my mom would be the worst thing in the world, because some part of my identity felt like it came from her. Like…who am I if I am a daughter with no mother? Who will ever care enough about me?
So, I continued to write…and slowly began to heal the parts of myself that my mother broke. She no longer looms over my mind, making me feel like I’m nothing anymore. I started to realize that I care about myself, and that I am a person without her—a beautiful person, learning and growing far more than I ever believed I could.
So no, my mother no longer knows me…but who’s to say she ever deserved to know me at all?