No Feelings for Her Anymore

by Patrice Anthia
(Hartford, CT, USA)

My story is a long one.
My mother left me to be raised by my aunt at 5 months old.
She came to the US and did not bring me to where she lived until I was 10 yrs old.

I would often see the neighbourhood children playing with their mothers and I would just sit behind the window looking and sometimes finding myself smiling and laughing as if I were playing with them too.

All my life I have tried my hardest to get my mother's love.
She however would always criticize me and put me down. I went through my teens, and 20's seeking her love. I would go to her for advice and there would be nothing. I would've jumped through fire just for her to see me and my accomplishments. I graduated from college and my mother did not show up.

She kicked me out of the house for the first time at age 18 because I wrote in journal that I hated her. I had no place to stay, I was back and forth with friends. She divorced my Dad and he would come to visit up taking the bus because he had a car accident and would stand outside to see us; he live in another town.

I felt like I had to choose sides and of course I wanted mother's love therefore I choose her side. I developed an eating disorder because my mother wanted me to be thinner. I spoke like she wanted me to, dressed like she wanted me to, and acted like she wanted me to. I developed a nervous breakdown, I attempted suicide more than once, I was close once that if it weren't for my brother I would have died.

My mother never once told me that she is proud of me, when I told her I loved her it was as though is was painful to respond. After graduation from college she told me that I could not live in her house. I begged her to stay so that I can find a job, but she looked me in the eye and said no.

My little brother was in his room on his bed looking at me. I packed the things that I had and my dad took me to a friend's house. I was homeless and considered a shelter.

Thank God for sending people to help me; I ended up obtaining a great job with benefits and got an apartment all within 5 months, God is good.

I have tried since to develop a relationship with my mother, but the pain was still there. I sought therapy to work on relationships because I would never have relationships that were lasting due to my fear of abandonment and rejection.

I am going to be thirty in a week and my mother and I are at it again, this time I am established and accomplished thanks to God and have realized that she does not need to be in my life. She began to pick and pick and there is but so much a person can take.

Society makes it that just because a person gives birth to you that you must have them in your life, I don't feel the same. I have spent so many years fighting for her love that I have lost that battle and war and I am ok with that. There is not pleasing her.

Her problem is not me, it's her. I want to move on with my life and have a family, I want to love my child unconditionally. I do not want my child to be in their 30's sitting in a therapist office crying because I (as a mother) did not know how to love them.

I don't hate my mother. I just don't have any feelings for her anymore, period.