Dear Mom,

Dear mom,

Full disclosure, I’m really emotional while writing this and it’s going to come off like one of my famous rants, and maybe it is, but just buckle up. Ever since I was in third grade taping angry letters to community center doors about the ‘unfairness’ of not letting nonmember children play on the center’s playground after hours like some sort of tiny, demented version of Martin Luther, you knew I had a flare for the dramatic.

So...I am thirty years old and your grit still terrifies me to this day…

Your strength and no nonsense attitude towards life has molded me into someone that is reasonably functioning as an adult. I have no clue where I would be if I’d been raised by anyone else. Anyone else that would have been harsher would have definitely broken me. We both know I’m more sensitive than I ever want to admit to-even though I don’t hide the fact very well. Anyone that would have coddled or spoiled me would have ended up with a lazy dreamer that would be the epitome of the starving artist still living at home...oh wait. Yeah, never mind.

Ok, I may still be living at home like the typical millennial, but I pay my part, dang it.

Above all else, you’ve instilled a sense of purpose with the common denominator being ‘survival’.

I remember all of our talks about how you struggled with me and my sister. I know how we are still struggling. I’ve always wondered what dreams you gave up, and if you have any regrets, but I never ask because your answer would most likely be that you have none. That me and my sister are worth the late nights, aching bones, and tired muscles. You do what you have to to make ends meet and that strength- that pure, unadulterated strength you exude daily awes me constantly. You taught me to take whatever work there was to grab.

There's no honor in starving, and that’s why you work.

To be honest, it’s literally the only reason I work so hard-to make you proud. I could lie and tell myself that it's because I have champagne taste on a beer budget, or that I work so hard so I can feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with it, but the honest truth is that the sense of accomplishment only comes when I think about how proud you'd be of me if you knew what I had done.

You are my literal hero. Wonder Woman, Capt. Marvel, Wasp, and Hawkgirl all rolled into one.

I think about how hard the entire family works and I struggle to play as a normal functioning adult in order to keep up, and do my part. I know we've had this talk before also, but the end result is the same for me. I hate that I'm a statistic-a stereotype. I don't want to be the typical adult child living at home and reverting back to adolescence because of it. I could write an entire book of ramblings of how much I look up to you. I do the back breaking work of moving furniture and packing people’s houses for crap wages and crazy hours because I know you, sis, and dad are working just as hard. I need to keep up. I need to make things easier for you guys, even if sometimes I can’t even get out of bed.

I’m stuck in this weird limbo of feeling like a responsible adult and a lazy teenager. I don’t know if I’m reverting back to a teenage state while simultaneously trying to take care of you guys, or it’s just my own emotional and mental struggles making my efforts feel herculean. But I think about it nonetheless.

I guess what I really want to say is that I see you. I see you working every single day to help pay the bills. I see you tired and hurting, but you keep going. I see you walk stiffly from loading another load of dishes to your chair. I see you vegging out like the rest of us in the house: reading your Kindle while you stream Walking Dead. I see you, exhausted and worn down with no end in sight. We poor folk don’t get retirement… that eats me up so much when I hear you say you’ll be working till the day you die, because it’s true. We will all be running this rat race until the day it kills us, and it shouldn’t be like this.

I may not know what dreams, specifically, that you gave up just so you could give me a better life- I know you sold your prized barrel horse when I was a baby, but I don’t think you planned on barrel racing as a career path-but I do know that the ethics you’ve instilled in me are going to push me further.

If I have even a quarter of the grit and moxie you have, I know I can do this. I know I can finish that novel. I know that I can help make life just a little bit easier for us all with doing what I love. Because although I’m the wistful, airheaded dreamer of the family, you never once told me I wasn’t good enough. You always believed I could do whatever I set my mind to-even going so far as to use reverse phycology on me.

I’ll never forget the time when we were all watching the homecoming basketball game half-time show the cheerleaders were doing, and I was sitting next to you being my ol’ emo self-full of teenage angst, and just being a general miss know-it-all. The girls were all out of sync and just had no rhythm. I wouldn’t shut up about it. I thought I was so edgy and cool while looking down on them from the safety of the bleachers. I know, cue the eye rolling.

You got tired of the holier than thou routine and said, “If you think you can do better, then go try out for the squad.”

You also mentioned later, that you never would have thought that I would have up and done just that. Honestly, I’m glad I did. Those girls gave me some of my fondest memories of high school that didn’t make me hate life too much. Surprisingly, the cheerleaders were actually the misfits in a school full of jocks, and it made me realize that being feminine wasn’t a bad thing. Again, I have you to thank for that. It’s an amazing thing to teach your daughter that being physically strong, and being able to haul hay, and work horses made you a badass, but then it was ok if you wanted to get cleaned up after as well, but not a requirement.

Honestly, I wish I was more ‘country’ for you-just so you had someone to ride horses with more often. I know you love it, but you're not that crazy kid that used to jump on the back of her barrel horse with nothing but a bailing wire bridal and start jumping fences at full gallop anymore. Nor are you the woman that lived in a camper on a ranch working cattle on horseback even in the dead of winter. The stories you’ve told me of the antics you’ve been up to over the years are straight out of a ‘horse girl’ movie.

It's a wonder you're still alive.

One example being that time you broke your tailbone while trying to ride Crazy Mary, the wild horse that had been living in your boss’s field at the time for over a decade.

Best believe it’s a project of mine to get them all written down. There's so many things you haven't told me, and I just have know about.

I just want you to know that you’re still the coolest mom in the drop-off line. Peeling out of the gravel parking lot after dropping me off for cheer practice; gravel pinging off the metal siding of the gym with a haphazard ‘love you!’ yelled out the window as you sped home to start dinner. The fact that everyone in the gym would know it was you just by the sound of the truck and the spray of rocks just made me proud. I literally could not understand how some people could be embarrassed by their moms.

You gave me an extensive education on movies to the point where we talk in movie quotes so much, we forgot which movie they came from.

And I really hope that I inherited half of your sense of humor. The memory of when we were late for the bus and had to wake you up to get us to school is a favorite of mine. You were technically not even awake yet:

“Mom...we missed the bus.”

“Hmm?”

“We need you to take us to school. In your truck. We missed the bus.”

“I don’t have a truck.” you mumbled and then rolled over to snuggle deeper into the covers. Ally and I just looked at each other, not having a clue what to do.

Also, the time you had to have surgery, and flipped everyone off while being wheeled back into your room. Your own mother included.

And I can’t let it go without mentioning the mannequin you got for your birthday. Had it loaded in the bed of your truck and drove to your sister’s house, who was training to be an EMT at the time. You busted through her front door panting and crying about how you had hit someone with said truck, she had to help you hide the body, and it was in the back of your truck. Her first response was, “WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BRING HER HERE!?” rather than any other normal question a person might ask in this situation.

She ran outside with you trailing after her carrying her EMS bag, and it took her almost a full minute of her staring blankly down at the obvious mannequin laying stiffly in the bed of your truck before turning to chase you around her yard. The problem was that you both were laughing so hard that you guys weren’t really running, per se, more like shuffling weakly in circles with tears running down your cheeks and holding your stomachs.

Honestly, it makes Ally’s and mine’s day whenever we can make you laugh so hard you cry.

You’ve taught me that laughter is a love language.

Your strength, wit, humor, and general badassery deserves awards. I swear I start crying whenever I think about the fact that I may have disappointed you in some way, or fell short of your expectations. I want to make things better-easier- for you, mom. I want to make you proud. I want to show you that I can do this. I want to prove to you that you didn’t raise a lackluster dreamer. I want to be able to rise above this situation we all find ourselves in so you won’t have to struggle as much.

You deserve rest.

You deserve the world. You have taught and given me so much. I overflow with this need to give back. If you read this, just know that you are the reason I am strong. You are the reason I’m such an advocate. You are the reason I write like Hamilton; like I’m running out of time. There are endless ways to tell you that I love you. Whenever I think of the embodiment of what it means to be a woman, I think of you.

You terrify me, but you also inspire me. You terrify me, but you encourage me. You terrify me, but you love me.

You’ll probably wave this away and act nonchalant about it, but I’ll know the truth.

I just want the woman I’m most proud of knowing to be proud of me.

With all the love, your daughter.