"Mom",
Giving birth makes a woman a mother. But it doesn't mean she is a real mother. What did you do when I was born? Were you happy? Did you care?
Why didn't you show me love? I don't remember you saying "I love you". I don't remember you ever being proud of me. I don't even remember hugs. But I guess when you're treated like dirt and emotionally neglected for over half your life, you tend to forget anything good that ever happened.
Why didn't you leave? You've used the excuse of being afraid he would take us or you said that you stayed because of us. So...you stayed so we could be abused even more? Sorry. That makes no sense at all.
Why weren't you there for me? Yes, you were physically in my life but you weren't THERE for me. Remember when I won that award in high school? You wouldn't even come to the ceremony to see me accept it. That hurt. A lot.
Why do you still talk to him? That might be what infuriates me the most. It's as though you have no problem whatsoever with what he did. You have a relationship with him just like nothing happened. You say you hate him but you make it really hard for us to believe that. Maybe it's because you two are so much alike.
But you want to know what hurts me the most? The fact that you are still the same distant, emotionally unavailable, unchanging person you have always been. You seem unwilling to own up to your part in it (and yes, you did have a very big part in it). You are unwilling to talk about it in a serious tone. My whole life, you have been cold and near-but-far-away.
It should come as no surprise that I have decided to stop hoping for a relationship with you, although I knew it truly in my heart long, long ago. I've finally faced the truth that you can't be the mother I deserve. You're the same mother I had when I was a child and I'm not sorry to say that that mother isn't good enough for me anymore. I'm done dreaming of "what-ifs". I'm accepting that you can't and won't be that person.
So someday if I have children of my own, they won't know you. And it won't be my fault. I'll be the mother to them that I never had in you. I'll hug them. I'll go to their events. I'll read to them at night. I'll tell them I love them every single day. And I'll hope that I can have an impact on their lives so that when they have children, they want to tell my grandchildren about me.
