Are You Tired of Reading About my Mother, Because I’m Tired of Writing About her… And Thinking About Her, and Crying Over Her. A.K.A This Again?!

This is a post I found in my drafts bin fully completed, never before published.

I went to see my new therapist and he said that as a response to me feeling sad about not talking to my mom anymore, I should ask one of the amazing women I already consider to be mother figures to formally be my surrogate mother. I said that I thought that was kind of weird, and not the kind of thing that one equal friend asks another equal friend, even if one friend is a motherless child and the other is an incredible, loving mom that the motherless child looks up to and relies on for mother style advice and stuff.

Then I thought about the mechanics of asking any one of the amazing moms in my life to be my surrogate mother and how my looking up to them in that way is already such a burden I couldn’t possibly burden them further with my need. And then I thought… who would want to be my mother anyway? And then I started crying.

I work so hard, and people pat me on the back for breaking the cycle of addiction, of abuse, for putting myself through school. I work myself to the bone and I hold to such high standards of behavior, of production because there’s a tiny part of me that thinks, if I could just prove to her I’m worth it, that she would stop this nonsense and be my mom.

I don’t even like her, she’s an abusive user, but I live my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for her to see how great I am, waiting for her to love me. And my need is so palpable that I’m afraid if I told anybody the truth, if I opened up and let them in, I’d suck them into my chest like a genie lamp and they’d disappear forever into my misery.

That being said:

Motherless Child to Highest Bidder

• $38,000 in unpaid student loans
• Bachelor’s Degree in English
• Flashy sounding communications job with vague ties to the entertainment industry, and “Hollywood.”
• Fully self-supporting
• Fashionably overweight
• Excellent vocabulary
• Attractive, equally flashily employed long term boyfriend, the amazing Ben Bateman
• Soft well behaved cat, willing to rename her after your favorite flower
• Modest and eye-catching wardrobe
• Winning personality
• All orthodontia and dental work completed
• Fancy haircut
• Not picky about food

I promise not to steal your soul. Or at least not to do so on purpose.

*I also want to point out, lest this be misconstrued, that I have no intention of blaming my mom for my current state. Even if it sounds like this is about her, it’s not. I take responsibility for my apparent lack of self worth. As soon as I turned 18 and left the house, this ceased to be her problem and became mine, as an adult. It’s just that I never knew how deep this ran, and the realization I came to tonight kind of swept me off my feet.