Just feeling a lot
I lost my mom to addiction + mental illness just before my 8th birthday. It’s been 20 years and the pain/sadness is less frequent, but still hurts just as much every time it hits me. I think I attribute a lot of it to a strange sort of survivor’s guilt — I got to leave the streets for a home and an education, while she lost her child. My parents were abusive, homophobic, hated my mom, and only saw her in me, but I turned out alright.
As I get older, every milestone comes with the feeling of looking around the room and not finding her there. I know she never will be, but I think the pain of knowing that she’s somewhere out there is worse than if I knew for a fact that she’s dead. I hate that I even typed that out, it sounds so horrible to say.
Mother’s Day is this weekend — which is normally a sad day for me, but I’ve spent it with my partner’s family the last 6 years and that definitely helps distract me/soften the hurt. We got in a big argument a couple days ago, and today she told me that I’m uninvited from Mother’s Day with her family. In the moment I shrugged it off, but now all of these emotions are hitting me.
It felt very intentional, like my grief was being weaponized against me. It was as if she tried to find the thing that would hurt me the most in that moment, and I hate to admit that it kinda worked. I try to desensitize myself from sharp-tongued comments or people saying things in the heat of the moment that they might not truly mean — but I can’t bring myself to forgive that right now. She hasn’t taken it back or apologized, but even then, I don’t know if I can bring myself to go.
For now, my plan for Sunday is to peruse this sub with a bottle of Sauv Blanc — upvoting each post as I go. Thanks for listening♥️