a letter to my mother

dear mom,

people have divorced parents. this is something else. it's been eleven years since the last time we saw each other, and almost ten years since we last spoke on the phone. i was 7 years old then. i'm turning 18 in june. i'm on the honor roll and the student council. i got accepted into every college i applied to, mom! i'm going to be a clinical psychologist. i got a good scholarship too, despite missing about a third of my freshman year. i won't tell you why that is. my gpa took a pretty hard hit and i'll leave it at that. i work really hard in school, i think that's the only thing i have going for me. i won't pretend that i'm good at anything else. i'm not even half of what my stepmother and father want me to be. i like overworking my brain like that. this way, i can avoid thinking about all the stressful stuff like the fact that you aren't here. i still think about you every single day, crying all too often. decisions made on my behalf did not have my best interest in mind. coerced into skipping one call, i was forbidden from hearing your voice ever again. now, an almost-adult hope is quite frustrated with the implications of not once having a say. but my frustration is anhedonic and dull, no longer passionate. there’s a reason things are this way, and i know for a fact that it isn’t blatant carelessness. you have to care, right? i know it isn’t your fault. i often ask myself what i could’ve done to be so undeserving of your love, but then i remember. it's just the same in the present. i am strange and i don’t fit in. in elementary school, i was an inside joke to the kids. the electricity would shut off sometimes, and dad could hardly pay rent. but they didn’t care to consider such a scenario. i carry so much guilt for not helping dad enough. i have guilt for everything, truly. i consider myself to be chronically sorry. i am a problem in need of correction. i've been trying to fix myself for so long. i hardly answer texts now—not because i don’t want to, but because i’m better off being alone. dad says i’m a burden. i agree. with that aside, i would rather not speak to anyone than to have a one-season character enter my life. i am aching for a friend. i don’t have any friends, mom. i had to change schools because of how bad i was being bullied. the police man wanted my permission to investigate the girls, but i could never. he told me they would probably go to jail. i cannot have contempt for someone else's sake. maybe we would’ve been friends. i wish i could go back to when i was a little girl and give you the longest hug, because that day was the beginning of what would be the most painful thing i’ve ever had to feel, lingering every day after. maybe if i had hugged you longer, that would make it hurt less now. i’m becoming a persistent, quiet, careful adult. i wonder how long it will take for my inevitable burnout to set in. ’the world doesn’t stop for my sake, it keeps spinning. i suppose, somewhere along the line, i realized that i needed to move not with the world, but somewhere so far ahead of it. i can’t bear making insignificant conversation knowing that another eleven tearful years will go by. i will not be telling you what my fucking favorite color is. i will not be telling you what the weather is like here. you live one state over, and you know damn well there isn't much of a difference between massachusetts and connecticut. i apologize for my angry words, i don't express these things too often. i’m asking you to be in the picture i’m painting. i want to know the things i don’t, and i want to love just as before. i want my mind back, i want to be a kid again. if we get in contact i want that to be between us, mother and daughter. not between others, and most certainly not between overstate courts. there’s a reason, i know it.

with agony and a lack of further words,
hope