...when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

In honor of Mother's Day next week, I've decided to pen a letter to my mother, darling mommie dearest, to thank her for everything she's done for me...

Dear Mother, 

I say “mother” and not “mom” for many reasons. When I think of you, I think “mommie dearest,” strictly an authority figure, a dictator, an abuser. Do you even know what makes a good mom? Or what the difference is between a dictator and a mom? Can you differentiate? I’ll lay it out for you.

I want to thank you, mother, for teaching me how to never treat other people. We learn by example, right? My whole life, you treated me like I couldn’t do anything right. Nothing was good enough for you, no matter how hard I worked my ass off for your approval. I don’t remember ever hearing you say “I’m proud of you,” or “I love you,” just because, or for doing something however remarkable or ordinary.

Thank you, for convincing me I was a shitty kid and a terrible human being, just for thinking for myself and being the independent woman you told me I needed to be. 

Thank you for never listening to what I had to say with all sincerity and turning every conversation into how bad I made you feel. Or for not hearing me when I told you something hurt me, or made me upset, but only ever criticizing and telling me that it wasn’t ok to cry, that it wasn’t ok to be upset or get angry, that it wasn’t ok to feel.

Me and my mother, circa. 1987

Thank you, for bragging about me to the neighbors, to the people at church, to everyone but me. You’d tell them how proud you were of me, or are, but to me, you’d make me feel like I was doing something as awful as working street corners, dealing drugs, having a baby daddy or two, or coming home in the back of cop cars.

Thank you for taking credit for every single one of my accomplishments. You kicked me out of the house right after I turned 21 with barely a penny to my name. You gave me absolutely no financial help after I left. I'm the one who put a roof over my head, who fed me, clothed me. I bought myself a new car when the old one died, the one who paid for the repairs and insurance and gas. I'm the one who put myself through grad school, the thing you definitely can't take credit for since you were the one trying to convince me not to go back to school. But obviously once I was there it was because of your good parenting and not the fact that I worked my ass off in spite of you to do it.

Thank you, for making me believe that if you died tomorrow, I wouldn’t feel anything.

Now I’m going rewind a bit to tell you all the things you did throughout the years that you thought were helpful, but fucked me up more than you know...

Each time you went on a diet, which was throughout all of my childhood, into my early adulthood, and probably even now, you taught me that women can never and should never be comfortable in their skin. Everytime you didn’t allow me dessert even after I finished all of my peas, or didn’t let me have seconds after a really grueling swim practice and I was really, honestly, still hungry, and told me that I needed to stay little and thin and not gain too much weight, you taught me that to be beautiful meant to be hungry. To be beautiful meant to be skinny. Mental and physical health didn't matter, but what you look like does.

That being said, it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise when I became anorexic and bulimic. But it was fine, right? I was thin. So I was beautiful. I was your thin, beautiful daughter. You should have loved me because this is what you taught me to be. You should have seen that I did that for you. I did that because I could control what I put in my body in a way I couldn’t control our relationship or how you treated me. I starved and made myself weak because you wanted me to be beautiful. I was constantly hungry. Hungry for attention. Hungry for affection. Hungry for a mother’s love that would never be reciprocated. Hungry for my failure of a mother. 

Me, my mother, and my sister, circa. 1991

But I thought I was the failure. I thought I failed when I had to give in and start eating again because I was about to pass out. I thought I failed when I started putting weight back on, something that you told me I shouldn’t be doing (“Hey, honey, you’re porking up a little there. Maybe you should go for a run before dinner or maybe after dinner…”) I needed to be punished. I failed. I couldn’t as thin or as beautiful as you wanted me to be. I was a bad daughter.

I have the scars on my arms for everytime I was bad. For everytime I felt I needed to be punished because I couldn’t live up to the ideals of the daughter you thought I was supposed to be. Ironically, one night, in a manic state, the word “HELP” ended up carved into my left forearm. Even in a place I don’t remember too clearly, I was screaming for help. Love. Attention. The first line of the “H” and the vertical line of the “L” are all that remain as evidence, but the scars are telling and still burn everytime I look at them, no matter how faded they are now. I’d be embarrassed when people asked me what they were from. But how do you tell people that your mother hated herself enough and took her insecurities out on you enough for you to hate yourself so much that you started taking razor blades to your arms and other parts of your body?

And now we move on to some of the things I did that you didn’t understand or attempt to understand. Some I did just to piss you off, but others just begged for attention and understanding, maybe even acceptance.

Each time I dyed my hair, you hated it. You told me so. I’ve been every color but blonde. I loved it. It was reinventing myself because the self I was wasn’t good enough for you and in turn wasn’t good enough for me. And ok, I get why you were pissed about the neon blue, in hindsight, that wasn’t the brightest color choice (especially when it turned grey after wash number three). But you should have been pissed at yourself. You should have thought about what would have possessed your eldest daughter to change her hair color less than once a month? To grow it out to extreme lengths. To chop it all off and sometimes hacking it off unevenly with razorblades. But you never thought about these things. You only thought about how I made you look to other people. To the other moms on the pool deck or on the softball field. To the people at church. I was a bad kid because I dyed my hair. I dyed my hair because you were a bad mother.

When I was old enough to do things (legally) without your signature, I pierced my ears. Many times. I lost track. Maybe twelve holes total in each ear. I pierced my nose. I pierced my navel. I got a tattoo. And another. And another. They were of things that meant something to me. You wouldn’t know this though. You never asked why I wanted that particular Bible verse tattooed on my wrist (it reminds me that God is there under the worst affliction, including that of your family). Or the cross on my back. Or the Chinese symbols saying “faith” on my hip. You never cared why those things meant anything to me. That was all I had to hold on to. My faith. Sometimes though, I really hated God for giving me a mother like you. No, you never asked "why?" You yelled at me for “defiling” my body. “What will the people at church think? My tattooed daughter?” You would spew the word “tattoo” like it was AIDS or another horrible disease. You got pissed for each piercing I came home with. I took joy in each time you got mad. You punished me for years for no reason at all, so it was only a happy coincidence that the things I did to express myself also punished you. 

Me, my mother, and my sister, circa. 1992

That was nothing compared to the night I was raped. I needed my mom. I needed hugs. I needed help. But I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk being criticized. I bawled. I scrubbed my skin raw. You weren’t there. You couldn’t know. You wouldn't give a flying fuck. I went to Planned Parenthood to make sure I got tested. I went to one hundreds of miles from home when I was at school so you wouldn’t know. So I wouldn't have to hear once again how much of a failure I was. 

When I finally did tell you, six months later, it was because you were mad I was staying out all night and not coming home. I was 20. I let you know where I was going to be, and almost everytime I was just with friends doing nothing special. I stayed out because I didn’t want to be around you. You're the one who drove me away from the house. I had no real desire to party, experiment with drugs, etc., but you wouldn’t know that would you? You accused me of wanting to just fuck boys and of being a slut and a whore. I told you that I lost my virginity a few months ago by being raped. You told me that if I hadn’t been a disobedient, horrible brat it never would have happened and that it was my own damn fault. I told you that you were a bitch and I hoped you died. 

I could go on for years about every single little influence you've had over my life. But the bottom line here is that maybe I do, in actuality, owe absolutely everything I am and have become to you:

I know how to stand alone and how to take care of myself because you were nowhere to be found when I needed you. 

I'm independent and outspoken because I got tired of having you walk all over me and I refused to let anyone else use me as a doormat. 

I know how to work hard for what I want and for the things that matter because I know I'm the only person who can make those happen since you never had my back or gave me any form of support, emotional, financial, or otherwise. 

circa. 1989

I know how to not treat other people, even those who aren't family, because I refuse to make anyone feel as worthless as you've made me feel. No one deserves that. Not even you.

I know how to love, because everything I ever wanted from you and everything I ever wanted to give to you is overflowing onto the people I do have in my life who have been there for me through the years and who have created the family I always wanted to have with you. I love because you could never love me.

I know that when I say "I love you" it really means something. Growing up, that phrase was only ever just words. Now in my late twenties, I've seen love. I've experienced it. I've seen it in action. I know that sometimes "I love you" is saying absolutely nothing at all. 

I know that I will only ever tell my future daughter how beautiful she is, because she's flawless, because she's my daughter, because I love her, and because I never ever want her to think of her body as anything but perfect. Why? It's hers. It's healthy. Because she's fucking beautiful and alive. Because her worth and her self-esteem should never be tied to the number on the scale or on the tags of her clothes. Because she is worth ever so much more than I can describe with words.

So thank you, mother. Thank you for teaching me what kind of person I never want to be and for helping me become everything you're not. 

Happy Mother's Day.