Letters from a Trashy Mother #1

I never saw myself as a mother
I think of this often now that I am a mother
I find it difficult to reconcile who I am
with who I was
 
I know they are the same person
I do
It’s just
 
she was fearlessly naive
she was a free spirit, without ties, without responsibility
she was broken and a mess and beautifully flawed
she was married to her work
she was having an affair with the party
she
was  
interesting  

I am terrified
I am woefully flawed,  
what once made me interesting
is now a threat to my daughter, to my sanity
I am tied down, weighted to this spot  
stuck in this time, in this place
I
am
cliche

sometimes, in moments of clarity
I see it
we are the same
I’m just looking at her from a different angle now
I have a new view of who I was
a view tainted by experience
by a change in perspective
because she never saw herself as a mother
 
she was brash and brutal and unsympathetic
she was unreliable, irresponsible and unscrupulous
she was was in a polyamorous relationship with the bottle, the powder and her job
she couldn’t be trusted to keep a plant alive, let alone a child
she knew who she was
and I don't
 
I am finding it difficult to reconcile  
who I was  
with who I am
because if I am her
I have no business being a mother