At twenty-five, I thought I had things figured out. A decent job, studies to keep me busy, and the tentative steps of building a life on my own. I worked as an assistant to the director at a logistics firm in Manchester—nothing grand, but enough to get by. Yet no matter how I filled my days, the ache in my heart never eased. Home wasn’t home anymore. And Mum… the woman who raised me, the one I knew all my life, had slipped away.
Mum brought me up alone. My father’s name was a blank space in my birth certificate, just a ghost in her hushed recollections. We were close, like friends, though it wasn’t always easy. I had my rebellious years—slamming doors, snapping back—but she never turned away. She had a way of listening, of loving even when I was at my worst. Even in the darkest moments, she was my safe harbour.
A few years back, I’d moved out, renting a room and fumbling toward independence. But then life unravelled—a surgery, a heartbreak, my confidence crumbling. Of course, Mum took me in again. I returned to her flat, the same walls that once meant security. But I soon realised it wasn’t the same place.
It began five years ago when she first mentioned Robert. A colleague, older, well-spoken. Then came the truth—he was married. It unsettled me, but she insisted, like a lovestruck girl, that his marriage had been over long before. They carried on, and eventually, he left his wife and moved in. A year later, they married.
The wedding was small, just family. I smiled, gave flowers, tried to be happy for her. But from that day, Mum began to fade—dissolving into someone else’s shadow. The changes crept in. Where we once talked for hours—films, my studies, the future—now there was silence. Robert never hid his irritation at my presence. The sharp looks, the snide remarks—Mum pretended not to notice. Or perhaps she didn’t care to.
Bit by bit, she became a stranger. Her voice colder, her mannerisms borrowed from him. At first, small things—phrases, opinions. Then came the criticism: my clothes, my boyfriend, my choices. She called him “useless,” said I was a fool for settling. Yet only a few years earlier, she’d held me when I sobbed over some hopeless romance.
The worst was the drinking. Every night, I’d come home to find them at the table, a bottle between them. Glasses clinking, laughter harsh and mocking, as if I were an unwelcome guest. Sometimes, in a drunken rage, she’d remind me I was “only here for now.” That the flat was hers, and if I didn’t like it, the door was open.
I tried to talk to her—calmly, desperately. “This isn’t you. Wake up.” But she’d brush me off, roll her eyes. “You’re just jealous because your life’s a mess.”
We lost each other without a fight. No final shout, no grand farewell. Just a slow, quiet drifting apart, like two paths that no longer meet.
Now I stand on the edge of something new. My boyfriend’s asked me to marry him. We’re looking for a place. I should be happy, but my heart aches. How do I leave her with this man who’s changed her? She was never cruel, never so cold. But that’s who she is now.
Leaving feels like betrayal. Staying feels like losing myself. And I still don’t know how to live with that choice.
