Motherlessness
Growing up, I always cringed when I had to pick out a card for my adoptive mother for Mother's Day. Nothing fit. We were not best friends like many of the cards suggested. Did people really talk with their moms, or was that just how it was depicted in the media? I couldn't tell mine anything at all. She often made me miserable. In fact, she was the main character in my nightmare that jolted me out of bed bright and early so that I could write this blog post.
Despite my penchant for the written word, the idea of buying a blank card and writing my own note was even worse. So, I always bought the most generic card and focused on the gift itself, something tangible to compensate for the words I didn't have for her.
In hindsight, we never had a relationship. I was simply not the blank slate she wanted. I was roleplaying and eventually doing such a poor job at it that she admitted she was looking forward to the day I would move away for college. She was my mother, but I considered her more my legal guardian who bought me. We haven't talked in years.
I always knew I had a mother in a different country. One who looked like me, maybe even thought or acted like me. As a child, I wondered if she thought about me on my birthday or other holidays. Would we have gotten along better? But it didn't matter: she gave me up.
Even though I don't fault her personally for her decision, it is difficult to shake the feeling of being abandoned by the person who was supposed to take care of me. It is difficult to not take it personally, to not think that I am somehow defective and to blame.
So, I have two mothers but also never really had one.
Was I not meant to be mothered in my life, for some reason outside of my own control? Or was it just random chance? Then again, maybe I am the root cause, the reason for not being able to have a mother not once but twice. Maybe I did everything wrong and simply cannot remember. Was I wired incorrectly? How do I correct this?
I'm fairly certain that my motherlessness contributed to my decision to not become a mother myself. To be clear, I don't regret this at all. I think I would have made that choice regardless of my upbringing. However, it probably would have felt more liberating rather than as a necessity to recover from what I did (and did not) experience as a child.
I don't always think I am a bad person fundamentally. These days, I find joy in my friendships, wondering how I became so lucky to have found them. I consider my friends to be my family. They make me feel worthy, and I sometimes come close to forgetting about all this.
But it's days like today that I cannot forget that I may have somehow missed the mark. Even though many of my friends don't have the most pleasant relationships with their mothers, I sometimes look at them and wonder what could have been. I hesitate to tell people that I don't have a mother because they might think something is wrong with me. At the same time though, they probably already sense this given that I never go away over the holidays to see family or talk about anyone related to me.
I am no one's daughter.