Why I Can't Cry Like The Other Girls

Mom,

The only way I can tell you the truth about how you make me feel, is with letters on a page. This way you can't scream at me, cut me off, call me a little shit or an idiot, and wish me ill. This way, you are quiet. This way, you have to hear me.

I'm scared to talk to you about anything that matters. Especially if it means giving you advice that you don't want to hear. There's no picking battles with you. I know I'll get slaughtered every time. When I hear your ringtone, I get instant anxiety. It takes every ounce of strength in me to answer your calls. Because I know it's just a matter of time before you start screaming, or threatening, or making demands. And at the end of the call, when you say I love you, I feel like the idiot you say I am for saying it back.

Once, I described our relationship to a writer/director I was working with, and he said you sounded like an emotional tyrant. I thought that was the perfect way to describe you. Another time, a therpist told me when I interact with you, I have to prepare myself like a fighter, by putting on my gloves before getting in the ring with you. And that's what I do, but now I walk around with a wall inside my heart I built to protect myself from the pain you give. I realized this when I started acting and couldn't access my emotions for classwork. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't cry like the other girls.

You know why I haven't let you read the script I wrote, even though you've been harassing me for years? Because it's about an emotional tyrant who torments and manipulates her daughter, even after she's a grown woman. She's viscious and shamless, and even though her name is different, you're going to know that it's you. And it's going to hurt you.

It's a confusing feeling, hating someone you love. I try to remind myself you had a traumatic childhood and that you can't help treating me this way because that's how you're father treated you. But even the idiot in me isn't convinced that's reason enough. Couldn't you make an effort to change if you wanted to? Maybe if I didn't always forgive you, you would.

When you yell at me that you hope I have a daughter who treats me the same way I treat you, I think to myself, I would NEVER EVER treat my daughter the way you treat me. When you brag to your friends about what good daughters you raised, your credit lies in that you showed us what we don't want to be. The silver lining of your dysfunctional mothering, is that it brought my sister and I as close as two sisters will ever be. She said she will never talk to you again. And that makes me feel even more responcible to keep forgiving you. Because you only have one daughter now.

When I made the difficult decision to transfer nana into hospice care after she suffered for 46 days in the hospital and you said I was just sick of taking care of her and wanted to get rid of her, I didn't know if I could ever forgive you. Those words will always haunt me. I haven't seen you in two and a half years and I don't miss you. I feel bad for you, but I don't miss you. I'm sorry for that.

When I was a kid, the thing I would be most jealous of my friends for having, is a kind, fun mother. Knowing we will never have that kind of relationship makes me feel lonely and yearning to be loved. I'm sad that all my letters to you will be like this one. And like all the rest, I will never let you read it.

I do love you.

Jessica