I am a motherless daughter.

When your mother is absent because of drugs, addictions, and mental health problems ---> you mourn both constantly and NEVER.

You subconsciously weep. But you keep your daily composure.

I never felt like I was obligated to stay. To try hard. To bond to someone in a one-sided relationship.

I could not handle the erratic behavior. The mixed signals. The violence.

My mother terrified me, in a loop of her self sabotage and alcoholism which began way before I was born and has get to cease.

My mother did drugs and drank since she was a teenager. She was one of 6 siblings, with 2 that had died after birth [including her twin sister].

From what I pieced together over the years, she experienced trauma at home as well as in school. Her first boyfriend was older and r*ped her. Then she was in a horrible relationship right before meeting my father on a double date that was supposed to match him with her friend, not her.

Supposedly they fell in love. They got together in their early twenties, two high school drop-outs with drug problems on their belt and a loner mentality. The relationship moved quickly. They got pregnant, lost the baby in a stillbirth at 7 months, and shortly after tried for me. They divorced 2 years later.

During my toddler years, they fought viciously. In section 8 housing, my mom was a horror show in her anger and behaviors towards my father. She would throw his food or shatter plates. The day he decided to leave, was the day he finally swung at her after she broke a chair over his back.

My father was no better. Though he was afraid to step up to her, he was on pills and drinking. He dabbled, as she had, in other hard drugs. It has been 31 years and he has since died from an overdose and been revived, had several heart and organ problems leading to hospital visits as well as multiple rehab visits.

For both of them, healthy never "stuck".

My parents hated each other forever after. They each dated new people, several people, whom I mostly fondly remembered because I did not know half of them were addicts too.

My mother went on to marry my stepfather, a man with no interest in actually having kids or tolerating me. A man who looked me dead in the eye at 16 and told me no man would ever want to love me if I went through with having my baby at 16[obviously telling me that myself and my mother were a mistake].

A man who also physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused my mother in front of me all of our time together until I left at 16 and never went back. He had told my school social worker he knew I was pregnant because my breasts had gotten bigger [no one had actually noticed in my first trimester until finding out I was at 13 weeks].

I never really had a mom or dad. I had 3 adults in my life who were big children. Odd. Off. Sick.

I did not talk with my mother about much growing up. She was both a workaholic and an alcoholic.

One time in middle school I told her a friend made me cry. She told me that I was probably a b**ch and deserved it.

My mother became pregnant with her second husband when I was in the 6th grade. She lost twins at 5 months pregnant in the living room. I had flash memories of her crying and the blood pouring down. She had been on bed rest for the second trimester and had to have an iv. Her doctor had said it was "placenta previa". My stepfather said it was the Clorox, because she was obsessed with cleaning. She had OCD. It was cruel.

My mother also had anxiety, bipolar, manic tendencies, and heavy loads of unresolved sexual/emotional trauma.

Twice during my childhood, we were forced to see a counselor after I had reported her to my school. Both times, the professionals either shamed her or did a horrible job.

She hated it. She would never admit she had a problem. After all, she functionally worked as a manager in a store after climbing up in the chain for years. She dressed like a boss, in crisp suits and polished beauty techniques. She used to wake up at 4am to leave by 6:45 am by cab. She never had gotten her license and she did not want to.

Like clockwork, I would wake to the noise of the blow dryer. She would be so precise in her makeup. Perfectly lined dark burgundy lips. Perfectly counted, symmetrical eyelashes after mascara and liner.

My mom was also white-washed of her own Puerto Rican heritage because of her mothers' insecurities and fears. My own grandmother had married out of her culture for the purpose of whitewashing. It wasn't until middle school that I would find out her whole side was from Puerto Rico, and that my grandmother had MANY sisters who all spoke their native language and resided in PR.

I'm not sure if my mom ever really knew herself. Not truly. She hadn't had enough time to handle what was wrong with her and she self-medicated for all the years I knew her.

Though I got kicked out at 16, while pregnant with my first child, I was also fleeing for my life after so many dangerous encounters in that home.

Though it's now been 14 years, I have reoccurring nightmares that I am trapped in her house and it's a maze to get out. Sometimes with the added stressors of my children [ 2 she has not even met] trapped in the house and me having to choose only one to save or flee for the front door v.s. save them.

The anxiety of growing up in a home where I just knew to hide in my room and had very little interactions with anyone outside of school has stayed with me.

By High School, she was attacking me in her drunken rage.

One night she came after me with a knife and chased me around until I locked myself in my room. Not with a lock, but after pushing my dresser in front of the door. I reported her the next day and was sent to live with my father for a few months until I finally legally got sent back by CPS after she supposedly finished x amount of rehab and counseling.

All that happened was I got braver to run away when the fighting continued. When she screamed late nights and tore down the furniture only to not remember the next day. Or worse, treat me to a shopping trip on her credit card for something only she wanted.

Mother. Mother is a weird term for me.

I cannot call my mother in law mom. I cannot call anyone mom.

In fact, I have select mutism and anxiety order that causes me to bring up vomit in my throat when in certain scenarios.

Most of the triggers are when I'm caught in a confrontation and have to explain myself. Or when I'm in the middle of a fight between others and feel frozen like a deer.

I learned all about my trauma last year after being diagnosed, in 2018 by a trauma specialist, with PTSD.

The last time I spoke with her was 2 years ago exactly.

Last year, this week, she began reaching out via texts [on and off she tried for a few years]. I had decided to finally meet her with patience and kindness in my replies.

The truth is, for years I went in waves of reaction. Anger. Cursing her out. Then kindness. Then understanding. Then disgust.

Every single time, she went from seemingly grounded to certifiably insane, both in her language and behaviors.

I'd remembered when 4 years prior when I was a single mother in college and not married yet, she had texted me hoping to just say hi and talk as if nothing bad had ever happened. She quickly went into showing me photos by text of my room, "spring cleaned" with baby items stashed for my daughter. My daughter who was fully grown. My mother hadn't realized how many years went by. She was having a manic episode.

I cut contact after that.

Until last year when Mother's day came along and my grandma died. My mom was destroyed. She had such a complicated relationship with her parents growing up. They did not like that she drank. They ridiculed her and told her she was constantly doing the wrong things.

She cared for them and was seeing them often. She spent a lot of time with her mom until the moment she passed.

My mother began texting me, in agony over the loss of her mom.

She said, "it's hard losing your mom."

My mother.... said it was HARD losing a mom, via text, like I was a friend.

And it broke me.

I kept up kindness and patience the whole week.

I allowed the texts.

I even sent a few pictures.

I'm angry that I did that. I'm angry I let her in.

That after my whole upbringing of never being nurtured, kissed, hugged, consoled, loved at all by her ----> I was showing her compassion and letting her know how my life was.

By the end of the week, she started showing signs of being drunk in her texts. The messages got angrier and more diluted. She got more aggressive with me.

I brushed it off and answered less.

Until she messaged me saying she felt like giving up.

Like, on life. On living.

I panicked and I began to have an attack, crying and shaking in my house. I decided to do something new. I called a suicide hotline in her town and reported it.

Then I hopped on my first Facebook live video to talk about it all. I decided to not talk with her about it but to send a professional over instead.

Several hours later, that organization let me know it took them many hours to even try and make contact. And no one in the home answered.

So they did nothing.

Shortly after, my mother texted that she was out grocery shopping and running errands. She wanted to know what was happening and why I was so dramatic.

She had lied. Led me on. Literally gave me texts saying she was done with life and felt cold.

I blocked her. Numbers. Any way I could think of otherwise I set my social media to private.

And I just imploded.

I did not cry properly when my grandma died. I called the hospice 3 times and finally found out she had been unconscious by the time I finally reached out.

It had been 14 years since I had seen my grandparents.

After being kicked out, my entire family on all sides cut me off with exception of my aunt and Uncle on my Fathers side [dads brother] who took me in from 16 to 20 before I left for University.

I'm now finally here.

One year since I decided to change my life around.

Face my trauma.

Say NO and cut the loop off.

I refuse to miss her. I refuse to want her healthy.

The truth is, I do not have a normal connection with my parents. Since birth, I've never had a deep connection with blood relatives.

I've felt off. Odd. Detached.

I've found love through strangers and friends.

Love of family and relationships in my own little family of 3 kids and a husband.

I do not feel it rational to say I wish my life had been different.

I am who I am because of my experiences.

And I love myself.

At 31 I can say that I really do love myself.

I feel really sorry for her though. Sorry for her as a fellow human. She had so much pain, she was a shell of a person by the time I was born. No medication, no doctors, no diagnosis until she was hospitalized when I was in my 20s.

I'd called the hospital as her only kin and let them know she was an addict. It didn't do much. The justice system never helped me. CPS and counseling never helped.

I was a child raised by my abusers, and my abusers were named Cathy and Charlie.

They were not mommy and daddy.

It's odd trying to heal from something I was born as.

PTSD + anxiety kind of ....is me.

But I'm working on myself, as a human.

I'm writing to advocate for mental health and spread awareness.

Mother's day was hard for me every single year of my life.

But at the same time, I am my own woman. I am a mother, by my own choice. I love my children more than anything and I'm so thankful I get to be their mommy.

I never actually saw her smile growing up.

But I recently found photos that I keep in a tiny album, from when I was a baby. My parents were still married. And in some odd way, we resembled a family.

It doesn't give me warm feelings, or longing.

It's more like closure.

I was born into abuse and got out of that abuse.

But that abuse never really left me.

My mom, in spite of everything she went through, carried and birthed me. The ONLY healthy pregnancy and birth she had out of 3 other losses.

That album reminds me I am no accident.

And that lotuses grow strongest out of the worst growing conditions.