post crying in h mart
Jan. 18th, 2024 05:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nowiammyselfmy mother has never looked her age, has always had a youthful glow, sunlight bouncing off her face, a golden halo. she brags about the years in which she was assumed to be the sister, not the mother, of my older brother. now every time i see her i notice how time has changed her face. more wrinkles, skin starting to loosen. (she buys me new skincare products. rose toner, watermelon moisturizer, bronzer. i'm not afraid of aging, i say. she continues to pick up new items from sephora for me and they sit in a drawer in my bathroom). each time i see her she looks a little different as she glides through her 50s, leaving me surprised that she’s aging - she’s not the same woman as in my childhood memories. I see old pictures of her and she looks so young. my mother, a teenage mother. my mother, a divorcee. my mother, a single mother. smiling through the terror, smiling even when overwhelmed.
a strained relationship during my teenage years evolved into mild estrangement in my adults years. my mother is not my best friend. i was never a good daughter. too hot-headed, not doting enough. i developed a revulsion of being touched, of sharing my emotions. lunch conversations turn to arguments. why am i so angry? I am not the daughter she wanted. I am not the daughter she wants. she birthed two boys and then came me, the hoped-for daughter. I used to cry when she wanted me to wear dresses. (i miss when you were a baby, i miss when you were 3, she says, when you were a bundle of flesh i could hold and mold, an extension of me and not an aggrieved adult.)
my mother reaches out when she’s sad and i don’t know how to respond to her attempts at emotional connection. my mothers mother died and she tells me she’s sad. another strained mother daughter relationship. daughters are never good enough. daughter, what a loaded word. not simple, not like son.
i make a note to be nicer, to try harder, the thought of her dying scares me. I’ve already wasted 29 years.
(in the mirror i see a reflection of my father. his nose, his bone structure, his silence, his anger. i wish i looked more like my mother. i inherited her sentamentality, her longing for everything to remain the same even when we've fallen so far from what we were, to go back to how it was. these feelings don't know how to coexist with the unbridled anger, the rage burning with me.)
a strained relationship during my teenage years evolved into mild estrangement in my adults years. my mother is not my best friend. i was never a good daughter. too hot-headed, not doting enough. i developed a revulsion of being touched, of sharing my emotions. lunch conversations turn to arguments. why am i so angry? I am not the daughter she wanted. I am not the daughter she wants. she birthed two boys and then came me, the hoped-for daughter. I used to cry when she wanted me to wear dresses. (i miss when you were a baby, i miss when you were 3, she says, when you were a bundle of flesh i could hold and mold, an extension of me and not an aggrieved adult.)
my mother reaches out when she’s sad and i don’t know how to respond to her attempts at emotional connection. my mothers mother died and she tells me she’s sad. another strained mother daughter relationship. daughters are never good enough. daughter, what a loaded word. not simple, not like son.
i make a note to be nicer, to try harder, the thought of her dying scares me. I’ve already wasted 29 years.
(in the mirror i see a reflection of my father. his nose, his bone structure, his silence, his anger. i wish i looked more like my mother. i inherited her sentamentality, her longing for everything to remain the same even when we've fallen so far from what we were, to go back to how it was. these feelings don't know how to coexist with the unbridled anger, the rage burning with me.)
