Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I need to talk to you although I don't know that you'll listen. Talking to myself isn't helping and you're my mom right? You are supposed to be here for me.

I don't know that you are though. (Like that dumb sixth grade graduation when 95% of the other parents were there and you weren't.) I tell myself you are my mother of course you love me, but should I have to stop and think about it? 

My life is complicated now but then again, aren't all of our lives? I live online. Not in a selfie taking, twitter obsessed teenage girl kind of way. Its more like my place of comfort. Where I lay wrapped softly in a thin blanket of anonymity, whispering my stories to the world safely. I couldn't read my stories to you. I like some of them, I don't need you bashing something that I care about. 

If I could show you, would you even be proud of me? Now I'm not good yet but... I'm improving. Maybe you wouldn't care about my potential to be good. And you know I hate that word, potential. Not great yet, too lazy to be great. That's me right?

You have called me a "lazy sack of shit" several times. I'm a lazy girl by nature, that doesn't make me an unhelpful person. Just tell me what you need me to do, clean, fix, and I'll help you. Just stop hurting me with that phrase.

I get enough hurt from myself. Have you ever sat remembering every thing that has ever gone wrong, every mistake, every problem that could have been avoided, every thing you wish you had done differently? I do that to myself all the time. Once a week at the very least.

You are asleep and therefore cannot here me crying at one in the morning. Where I lay curled up in the fetal position, crying my eyes out like a wimpy bitch. When I'm so filled with hurt from the world that I have to just let it out, or I'll never get to sleep.

I need some one to care about me. Mom, I need you to show the affection you showed me when I was little. I mean I was the mistake, the problem, however you have yet to tell me I was a happy accident (which I desperately need to hear), but I felt loved back then. 

Now I feel like I'm a waste. You don't care and I don't have any friends, not ones that would count to you. When you ask me if I'm talking to L, and I say yes, I'm lying. Do you want to know why? Because I lost all of my friends, they all stopped talking to me and I gave up. They weren't even nice to me! I think after a while, friendly sarcasm and banter need to take a break so you can address your friend's emotional problems. I had a friend once call me to talk about her new boyfriend and to say that she was going to go swimming with her friends later. She wasn't inviting me to anything, just telling me about her stuff. I've had friends call me marshmallow face, people that mocked me and my problems like I was three, and some who just stopped caring about me. Now the only friends I do have, I can't ever talk about. 

Number one, because you would want to know I became acquainted with these people, and that's not going to happen. 

Number two, because you would assume they are all really old men who want to kill me. Honestly I'm not stupid, I think I would figure out if they were, and if not...joke's on me.

So you can just believe I'm talking to L.

I suppose what you don't know can't hurt you. Like how I've never told you how much my great-grandma's death and deterioration affected me. Watching one of the only people who actually cares about me start to forget me. Do you know what having your only safe place go from being a oasis to being a big, depressing ball of blackness that makes you miserable? 

When I got upset when I was told I needed to visit her before she died, do you remember what happened? You yelled at me, and were so horrid to me the only thing I can say to explain how I felt was emotionally drained. I didn't want to move, I didn't want to exist anymore. All I wanted to do was cry myself to sleep. Terrible, absolutely terrible. We didn't go see her and then we couldn't anymore. No one told us until five days after she died. There are no words I can say that can make you understand what she meant to me, and you accused me of not caring that she passed. Her dying steadily, me losing all my friends, there are dozens of things that caused me to be like this. I can see the unsteady path that lead me to be the fragile girl I am today.

Fragile and shy right? Not someone with social anxiety, just shy. Mom, I've been shy and introverted my entire life, this is something more. Shaking, sweating, panicking over things, lots and lots of things. You don't help when you put me on the spot like that at restaurants. I can only avoid people for so long before I'm forced out into the real world again. But you don't believe I'm anything but ridiculous. 

I have an important question for you. Do you really think that your behavior is normal? You've pulled my clothes down and laughed at my underwear. I can't help that you yanked at the bottom of my pajamas or that you think my blue underwear is just so hilarious. You've grabbed me through my shirt. (And dumped things down it like candies.) You shouldn't refer to my breasts, (if they even count as that), as marshmallows. I am your daughter, that's truly not right. 

You pull down your pants and slap your bare ass in front of me. When I try not to see, you always seem to find it funny. I hate it when you walk in the room, and use your shirt to itch your chest. Its the same thing as flashing me really. I see your breasts nearly daily for one reason or another. There is a bunch of weird shit you do and I ask you if you think other people do that and then you get mad at me. 

Why can't I get mad at you too? I don't find it funny when I'm sitting at the computer, doing my school work, and you randomly call out my name. "Oh sorry. Your face just blended into the wall there for a second." You say. Well its not necessary, just leave me alone.  

If you are gong to randomly interrupt me, can it please be a compliment? Like a few weeks ago, when you said something nice about my hair. It really uplifted me, (and nothing does that except chocolate). Can we do that more often? 

"Go away, I don't want to look at your face!" Do you remember when you said that? How about when you say that you're going to kill yourself? Do you understand how that makes me feel?

It makes me feel awful like its my fault and I need to fix everything. There's a lot to fix around here.

I'm not saying you're the worst mom in the world. You have a tendency to be mean, overly critical, and other things, but you aren't always like that. We can have nice talks, if you aren't ignoring me. We have good days too. Peaceful days that I don't have any complaints about. Unfortunately its the bad days that make the biggest impact. 

In the end I hope you know that I still love you. 'Cause you're my mom and I'm still alive (and mostly well) so you must not be doing a terrible job. We have a lot more to talk about, if you're up for it.

Sincerely,