Dear Mom #2

 Dear Mom,

    It's been over two months since we last spoke. Sometimes, I really miss you. You're not all bad - no one is. I miss your sense of humor and your cooking. There's a lot I don't miss, too. I think about you all of the time, trying to figure out why you are the way you are and unpacking all of the hurt you've caused me. Sometimes I think about the good times, too. This isn't natural. Our relationship isn't supposed to be like this. If anything is proof that adults who cease contact with their parents aren't just ungrateful brats, it's this. It was the hardest decision I've ever made.

    I really just wish I had a mom. Going No Contact basically confirmed what I always knew was true - I don't have a mom, I never did, and I never will. I have a lot of older women in my life who advise me and provide me with emotional support, and I have a husband, a daughter, and friends who all love me, but none of it fills that particular void. There's no going back to my childhood and fixing the fact that I never really knew maternal love and warmth. Even when we used to talk regularly, I felt like I was constantly begging you for something you were incapable of giving me. I kept trying to jump through hoops and figure out what would finally make you love me and accept me. It's such a handicap in life to not have a real mom.

    The only way we could have continued communicating was for me to make myself small, neglect my own emotional needs, and ignore the elephant in the room, like I had been doing for the past 26 years of my life - except, this time, the well-being of my baby daughter was at stake. I knew she deserved better than how I grew up. I needed to be emotionally present for her, not constantly preoccupied with the latest way you've caused me pain and essentially pleading with you to consider respecting a single boundary of mine. I couldn't stomach the idea of her being in the same room as my dad or the woman who enabled him to molest me. I could go on. Enough was enough.

    I've had a couple of dreams about you in the last couple of weeks. In one of the dreams, we were taking a road trip to Washington DC with my daughter, and all was going well until it turned out I didn't pack her bottles and her formula had spoiled and turned brown. In the dream, you weren't exactly sympathetic about this problem - you just sent me back home. I remember calling my godson to come rescue me. It's strange how similar to our real life dynamic this dream was... you were great to be around during the fun part of a road trip, but as soon as I had problems, I was on my own.

    Something I really wish I could tell you is that it hurts my feelings that you didn't even try. It's not that I'm playing hard to get, or that I think you should be chasing me, and I have a feeling you think that's what it is. It's a suspicion I have that comes from the way you've talked about other people my whole life. The reason it hurts me is that it's just another way you've essentially told me that I'm not worth it. I'm not worth the self-reflection, the apology, and the changed behavior that it would take for us to have a relationship. Deep down inside, I knew it. It just hurts to be confronted with the reality of it. It's another reason why I have to leave you in my past, whether I want to or not.

    I still love you. And I hate you at the same time. If this has to go on for the rest of our lives, it's going to break my heart over and over every day, but also feel incredibly relieving when compared to the emotional turmoil that every day with you was. And the only thing that could fix it - a genuine apology and change in your character - is as good as impossible. I guess I have to get used to feeling this way. I'm not happy about it, though...

    Love, that unpleasant tough girl - the one who's always showing off and playing macho.