Confessions of a Horrible Daughter

Dear Mom,

It has been years since I have spoken to you. My last in person memory of you was shortly after my final suicide attempt and involuntary hospital hold, walking in with my then husband from my hospital stay hearing you on the phone with my first husband, agreeing with him that I was the problem, that I was the sociopath.

I kicked you out of my house and out of my life that day.

I don’t regret it.

All my life what I remember of you is not what you’d like me to see, or repeat. You treated me as problematic from my first memories to my last one. You reveled in me being sick, because then you could appear “good” to the rest of the world. You robbed me of any type of privacy by searching through my backpack when I was just 10 years old, convinced I was on drugs because I sassed you – nevermind that I was a scholarship kid in a private school you insisted me going to and always had good grades, was shy and sensitive. You would read my diary. You robbed me of any type of identity as everything I ever did was never good enough, it was never as good as “you” could do it. You always had to be bigger, smarter, better and I always had to be the problem.

Because the truth was that making me the problem made you feel better about yourself. Because you were the problem. You’d accuse me of stealing, when you stole yourself, spending my grandparents money when you were entrusted to take care of them. Manipulating, always doing whatever was in your power to hold me down, hold me back. Trying to take my kids away from me when I was a teenage mother and being stopped in your tracks by the state, stealing the money I won from an essay contest and lying about that until you were finally confronted by an attorney.

And when I was a victim, when I had been physically, emotionally and verbally abused, you protected that abuser. Not once, but twice. The first time, protecting my father, the second time protecting my first husband. And still made me out to be the villain, the problem, the issue in it all.

I know in your mind you raised a spoiled, entitled brat. You live to claim you gave your daughter the best of everything. And certainly not every memory I have of you is tainted. I have good memories as well. Memories of vacations in the Bahamas, memories of the time we went to New York City, memories of me believing you were trying your best. And perhaps you were. Perhaps you did the best you knew how, and perhaps you believe that. But whatever your truth is and my truth don’t mesh, and honestly mother, they never will. You weren’t there when it mattered. You weren’t there when I needed you. And even now, me a grown woman with her own life, her own friends, her own career, you still have to try and be bigger and better, you still have to try and impose your savior complex on me, leaving me minute long voicemails telling me stories of who I am that aren’t true, because I was always a problem in your eyes.

Yet, I confess, I let other people read what you have written. I’ve let other people listen to what you have said, and the truth is it makes them sad. The first thing they say is that, “She doesn’t know you at all, if she ever did.”

While you believe me to be cold, insensitive and uncaring, I confess that cutting you off was a last resort. I had to for the sake of my own sanity, my own healing and my own wellbeing. I don’t believe you will ever understand that, and I have made my peace with that knowledge, I reside safely in that truth. I confess that I do love you, I have forgiven you more times than you know, without your even asking for it, every time you didn’t deserve it, and even now when you deserve it the least. But forgiving you doesn’t mean that you will ever be in my life again. You’re toxic. You’re judgemental, cruel, narcissistic, but most of all, you have never known me, not really. You never saw me, you never encouraged me to be myself. And despite the misguided attempts you try to make toward reconciliation, what you have given me is confirmation of this knowledge, this fact, this reality; you don’t want to reconcile with me, you want to reconcile with the version of me you’re comfortable with, and that version of me no longer exists.

I never told you this, but I feel sorry for you. You choose to live in a fear based and tragic reality where everything has to be dramatic and problematic so you can feel good about yourself. I feel badly for you that you never learned what real self love or self acceptance is. I’m sorry you have never learned how to be self aware, and I’m sorry that you missed out on knowing me, because from what I’m told I’m a pretty awesome human being; a human being I get to take all the credit in becoming and, what gives me the most peace, a human you had no part in creating.

It is possible to love someone and not want them in your life. There comes a time in some lives where cultivating their peace is a priority and anyone who would disturb that peace is not welcome. And this is where we are. But, I do confess I love you, and I hope, that one day before you leave this Earth you make peace with that.

All my love,

S