Happy Mother's Day
There are a couple things that make me want to be nothing like my mother.
The fact that she wears shoes in the house. That she can’t throw away expired food. That she types her text messages like they’re emails and cannot take her phone off speaker.
That my struggles become her failures. That, in a way, it is her fault.
I hate that she wants me to marry and have children and forget my life, the way she forgot hers. I hate that she never taught me how to put a tampon in or how to know if a boy likes you or what sex is. I hate that she thinks my dreams are unachievable. And trivial. And selfish.
I hate that I don’t know if that is true.
But I’ve watched this grown woman give up every piece of herself for everyone else, including me, and receive nothing in return.
My mother is kind and caring and selfless, all of which I am not. I am not angry with her for having good in her heart in a world that should have made it dark. I am angry that I am like every other normal teenage girl who would like to be nothing like her mother.
The fact that she will never know this.
The fact that I have her eyes.
The fact that we will never be close.
The fact that she believes she is nothing more than a mother.
The fact that I am most likely wrong about everything my mother is and is not.
That she is me and I am her.
That one day she will be gone, and one day I will look in the mirror and see the creases around her eyes and the lines around her lips. All while wearing my shoes.
The fact that I hope that I am wrong about who my mother is.
I am 16 again. I am begging my mother to not make me go to school because I am sick. I am not the kind of sick that shows up on a thermometer, or the kind of sick the doctor can fix. I have been picking.
I have picked at my skin, and now I am bleeding.
My face is freckled with open wounds, like craters on the moon. My skin is olive, I do not have freckles. My skin is now pink, and it’s wet. I have cried, I do not cry. I do not show weakness, because I am 16 and for my mother to know that I have feelings is for her to know that she can get to me.
I do not recognize my face, I do not have her eyes anymore. My skin is bubbling under the surface, like my enemies have crawled under and are trying to break through.
I have picked at my mother again. I wonder if her face, much paler than mine, gets pink when she cries. I wonder if she still loves me, even when she can’t see herself in my eyes.