She is my mother… Yet how it stings to hear nothing but reproaches from her.
I am forty-one. By all accounts, I am long since grown—a woman with a husband, children, a home of my own, a profession. Yet inside, I am still the little girl who used to gaze into her mother’s eyes, hoping for some scrap of warmth, some gentle word, some hint of encouragement. Just once. A single time. A whisper that she was proud of me. But no. Even now, all these years later, I carry the searing wound of a mother’s withheld love.
There were three of us girls in the family. I was the eldest. From childhood, I believed it was my duty to earn my mother’s pride, to be her rock, her “clever little daughter.” Being the firstborn meant I was the most responsible, the most diligent. But for Mother, it was never so. She made no secret of it. The middle sister was “difficult”—rude, skipping school, causing scenes—but all was forgiven. “She has spirit,” Mother said. And the youngest? She was the favourite. Quiet, docile, neat as a pin. Mother would confess she lay awake at night worrying, tiptoeing in to check if the youngest still breathed, so fragile she seemed. And me? I might as well have been invisible.
Do not mistake me—I bear no ill will toward my sisters. They have their own lives; none of this is their doing. But the hurt clings, not for them, but for her. For my mother. All my life, I laboured for her approval. Top marks in school—I even retook exams for mere B’s. Not once were my parents summoned; I was the model child. No tantrums, no greed for toys. I only wished to make her proud.
Yet every visit, the same refrain. “You turned out plain.” “Foolish girl, must you always bungle things?” “Heavens, where did I go wrong with you?” I told myself it was merely her way—she was tired, perhaps, or simply didn’t know better. But when you have years of toil behind you—sleepless nights with children, backbreaking work, a marriage fought for—only to hear, “You keep a slovenly house,” “Your cooking’s fit for pigs,” “Those children run wild,” the weight becomes unbearable.
When my son was born, Mother near shoved me out the door: “You’ll thicken your wits lazing about! Back to work with you.” Yet when I returned, the scolding shifted: “Now you’ve found your precious career, the family can go hang. Vain, empty thing! And useless besides—what good are you at anything?”
Round and round it goes. The comparisons. Again and again. The youngest was the beauty. The middle one, “plucky as they come,” had landed a good man. And me? A mistake. Each time, I bite my tongue, lower my gaze, swallow the tears. If I utter a word, she’ll snap, “Oh, there’s gratitude! Never satisfied, are you?”
Sometimes I want to scream, *Mother, why don’t you love me? What did I do? Why must you always cut me down?* But I cannot. I lack the courage. I fear that if I lay bare all these years of hurt, she’ll turn away, vanish from my life—and I could not bear it. However she wounds me, I cannot sever that last, frayed thread between us.
My husband says, “Have it out with her. Might shake some sense into her.” But he doesn’t understand. For him, it is simple. For me? She is not just a woman. She is the root, the air. Without her, I am but a stump. Even if she breaks my heart, she is my mother. And like a child, I still hope—foolishly, endlessly—that one day she will say:
“You’ve done well, my girl. I am proud of you.”
So I wait. As I have waited all my life.
