I tend to keep all my shit inside…

I have always had a strange relationship with my mother. It had always been so complex and so convoluted that I wondered if all mothers were this way. They aren’t I have come to find out, which is fine now as an adult but it was not fine when I was growing up and needed direction and love.

I made a lot of mistakes due to no one telling me what was right or caring. I have chronic anxiety that I feel like I wouldn’t have if I had grown up differently. For sure I wouldn’t have picked up a drink at age 13 and descended into that ten year hell I was in. I dont blame her for my alcoholism or my drug abuse, that’s on me.

But I wonder if I would have cared more about myself if she had.

It’s very hard to understand, trust me I have tried all my life to figure out what I did. I was born I guess and that was enough.

I really thought I was too old to be hurt by her, but it turns out I was wrong.

To people that are not me, she puts on a good show and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who knows the real her. I was there for all her drunken tirades when I was a kid, I was the one she said she wished I had never been born to.

I am the one who had walked through life without a mother’s love though, but I gave it abundantly to my children. They have what I never had.

To people outside the family and even my brother, she is mother of the year. Some of my childhood friends don’t remember, a lot of people think there’s something wrong with me. She’s so nice and caring, to everyone else but me.

My brother is visiting my mother from NY state this weekend. I live in NJ and my mother lives 45 min away from me. My brother lives four hours away and we don’t see each other very much at all.

Tomorrow is my birthday and neither of them reached out to tell me he was coming to visit or even thought to invite me over. So now I get to see them tagging each other on FB about all the fun stuff they are doing. I took this weekend off because it was my birthday and my mother knew it…

She won’t hesitate to call me when she wants me or needs something though and she wonders why I never pick up the phone. And she tells everyone she just doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Kristin.