What I fear most is that my relationship with my daughter will turn into the relationship I have with my mother. There’s a sense of detachment between my mother and I and it has trickled down to my relationship with my daughter.

Throughout my entire life I sought acceptance from my parents. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and my maternal aunt as a teen. I am forever grateful that I had such strong, intellectual, and fair women in my life to mold me. No matter how much I loved them, it never compared to the amount of love that I had for my mom.

It never felt abnormal, to not have my parents living in a household with me, because I have never really known any better. My father was in college, so when I saw him it was ‘Disneyland dad’ time. My mother was in the military and she lived across an ocean for a good three to four years (five if you count basic training and technical school).

As dysfunctional as my grandmother’s house was, it was home and I had everyone there. I was dropped off and picked up at school every day. I couldn’t do anything until my homework was finished, and we didn’t have cable, so creativity was mandatory. I knew I was loved and I was a well behaved kid – well, I never got caught when I did act up.

I moved in with my mother in the middle of a school year, when I was nine years-old. In addition to moving across the country, I was moving into a house with a woman I had never really lived with on my own before. A woman who never really had to be 100% responsible for me. She was also five-months pregnant.

I was a professional latchkey kid. I was the kid who would ride her bike miles away and race back home to make it seem like I had never left the house, because I wasn’t supposed to. I was the built-in baby sitter for my baby sister, while my mom was out with friends.

While I should have been in bed myself, I was waking up to change a screaming baby’s diaper and warming milk in a pot on a stove, trying to focus on the sound of the crickets outside because I was so sick of my sister crying. I was 10 years-old and I could barely remember to put deodorant on every day. Here I was making bottles for a teething baby at 2 a.m.

That summer, I left Georgia to visit my old home in California. I came back home to a walking baby sister and a new future step father I had never met before. And we were moving to Germany that winter.

To this day, I only remember bits and pieces of my life from ages 9 to 14. I know I lived in a very volatile environment where I was constantly walking on eggshells.

My need to please my mom reached a turning point in Jr. High. Why was I trying too hard to please someone that only saw error in everything I did and never took the time to put any effort in really being a parent mentally and emotionally? I ran away from home three times. The final time, when my mom picked me up from the police station, she told me to pack my bags because I was leaving. I didn’t know I was going to be living with my aunt, until I saw her face waiting for me when I got off the plane.

My bad relationship with my mother reached a climax shortly after I had my daughter, and I came to visit her one summer. She decided she was going to go out and get a boyfriend that was only five years older than me. She also felt threatened because she saw the way some of his friends looked at me.

I vowed I would never live with her ever again, unless I was damn near homeless. Well, that happened. Yet again, it was hell. I decided to move in with her to reconnect (is what I told myself), only to be shot down, brow beat and made to feel worthless. There’s nothing like hearing your mother tell her friends that she wanted an abortion, with you sitting right there.

In some weird twisted way, I tried to justify the comment. After all, I was a young mother and I know how hard it is. But breaking down what she said and how I had been treated over the years…the light bulb went off and I refused to subject myself to a toxic relationship. Why are you trying so hard, for someone who doesn’t even want you?

Over the course of the last eight years, five soap opera worthy incidents, TMZ drama, therapy, a gazillion gallons of red wine, and being in a long ass relationship with someone who gave 40% when you gave 60% — I’ve finally reached a place where I don’t give a fuck. Not one, or two or TEN. No fucks have been given for the last three years.

I think I feel worse saying it, because I know it isn’t a social norm…but I have no feelings towards my mother. I don’t hate her…but I’m numb. I respect her as a human being, but my feelings towards her are like those you have towards a stranger. You say hello and keep it moving. And I feel content with it being that way. My life has been richer and I have begun to attract spiritually and mentally healthier people in it. And I owe that to my rejection of toxicity.

I honor my mother by wishing her well in all her endeavors, but to have a relationship with her is walking into uncharted territory and I’m no longer willing to take the risk of drowning again.

Moe