Man, this hit hard.

My mom is actually remarkably well adjusted, considering what she went through in her own childhood. In addition to enduring severe mental and physical abuse, she was also heavily parentified; when she was still a child herself, she was expected to look after her extremely young siblings — which included having to teach her 2 year old brother to conceal food when shoplifting, due to that being the only way that she could acquire food for her and her siblings when they were expected to occupy themselves out of the house for an entire day. As a result of this, she wanted nothing more from life than to be a mom — she wanted to give it a proper go at it, and do a better job than her parents did with her.

She did succeed at that, but that’s an extremely low bar. It’s quite tragic how, despite her desperation to rise above the circumstances of her childhood, the trauma she endured followed her into adulthood, until a ghost of it was transferred to me.

I haven’t spoken to her in years, but I still feel a mess of emotions:

• Resentment for how I was a suicidal teenager who had to be her emotional support pillar
• Unconditional love, despite all that
• Respect for what she did manage to overcome;
• Gratefulness for all the ways that her efforts did pay off and she was a good parent
• Grief for the life that both she and I could have had (Things might’ve looked quite differently if she could’ve gotten therapy before having kids)
• Pride for the progress I’ve seen her make from afar (she seemed a lot happier after getting a dog, and she seems to be on better terms with her sisters nowadays)
• Hope that she will continue to improve.

I don’t expect we’ll ever reconnect, even if she does improve a lot. That’s the thing about going no-contact — it’s pretty final. I tried doing low contact, but she didn’t respect boundaries and I ended up having to block my little brother’s Xbox live account because she even messaged me on that to tell me about how much I had hurt her. I suppose I might consider it, if I knew that she had been 100% sober for multiple years — but alas, I’m unlikely to ever find this out, even if she does reach this point.

I still wish her all the best though. I can’t go back in time, and neither can she. But we can both do our best to heal, loving each other from afar.