Member-only story
Sometimes estrangement is the only healthy option
“I don’t like you, but I’ll always love you.” My mom stood next to me as I put on my shoes. I was seventeen and had only lived with her, my step-father, and two-year-old brother for a few months, and I didn’t feel like I belonged. They had their family…and then there was me — the daughter my mom had at nineteen while married to my dad.
I don’t remember my response, but her words wedged into my heart and brain and still sit there nearly thirty years later.
A deep sense of loss has always hung over me. As a young child, I was quiet, shy, and timid, and as a teen and young adult, I struggled with making close friends and believed if they saw the real me, they’d leave. I exhausted myself giving everyone the version of me that they wanted: a good wife, a good mother, a fun friend, and a dutiful daughter.
But mostly, I wanted my mother to like me.
My parents divorced when I was around six, and the preceding two years were filled with court hearings and visitation arguments that my younger sister and I had front row passes to. Ultimately, my dad won sole custody, and my mom left Michigan to live with her family in California. She was only twenty-six or twenty-seven at the time, divorced, and had no job. I believe she made the right decision, and I don’t blame…
