Dear [———],

It’s Mother’s Day, and today i’m angry at you.

I didn’t expect that. I haven’t had you as a mother since i was seventeen years old, that spring you threw my things across the room, accusing me of things i hadn’t done, and then ran away with the kids until Dad finally came to his senses and told you he wanted a divorce. You weren’t my mother when i, the valedictorian, sobbed and believed i was throwing away my future in an envelope addressed to my last-choice college simply to get out of town and away from you. You weren’t my mother during the three or so years we didn’t speak. You weren’t my mother when i sat in front of your house in my warm car at Christmas until my baby sister — your latest target — came running out to escape your wild instability too. It wasn’t until we got to Dad’s that i noticed she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

Even before you broke, you taught me all kinds of terrible lessons. You taught me how to hate my body and depend on men. You had no ambition. You didn’t take care of your health and you stayed in your room for days and you lost friendship after friendship for reasons i was too young to understand. When you were on, you were electric! But those highs were fleeting and made the lows hurt even more.

Eventually you kicked me out and took my keys, literally and figuratively. Eventually i was strong enough not to come back.

I lost you long before you died. When you finally did go it was a relief, but people aren’t allowed to speak honestly of the dead, are they? As if death rights all wrongs and the pain you caused would go with you. The truth is that when you died you couldn’t hurt any of us anymore. When you died i could stop hoping that anything would ever be the way it was before. And that was a relief.

This holiday weekend the internet is gushing full of love for mothers, but there will be no postmortem praise for you today. I’m not the only girl trying to figure out how to become a woman without a mother’s guidance, but the ones writing Mother’s Day eulogies aren’t mourning a legacy of mental illness and manipulation. Their mothers didn’t teach them that the most fundamental relationship a person is supposed to have is just as fallible as any other. They aren’t thirty and single and scared that they don’t know how to trust anyone enough to create a family of their own.

I know it’s not your fault. You didn’t choose to be clinically depressed or have borderline personality disorder. I know. But i didn’t choose them either, and running away from you was probably the smartest thing i’ve ever done for myself, no matter how guilty i’ve felt about it since. Choosing to start referring to you by your first name after we’d stopped speaking, in order to preserve and honor the time when you were my mom, was probably the second smartest.

Because, [———], there was a time when you were my mom. We were so happy. I remember back when it was just the two of us and we’d dance together in the living room to Cat Stevens and Tracy Chapman. You had time off work and we were at the beach. It was cloudy and we loved each other more than anything in the whole world. I remember you waking me to see the first snow through your bedroom window when we lived in that duplex, before you met Dad and remarried. How old was i that winter — three? You made me cocoa in the middle of the night. I remember you teaching me what “work ethic” meant when i didn’t want to write my report on Helen Keller in fourth grade, and later holding me as i cried because i had no friends and middle school got to be too much to bear. We got through it though, didn’t we? We got through it together.

I haven’t had that mother for over thirteen years. Sometimes i get angry about it, more often i just get sad.

But i’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately. A lot of self-reflection about how to become the person i want to be, no matter what happens to me, and no matter who and what i have in my life. I think i’m finally starting to figure some things out.

I’ve been fighting for a long time against the damage you did to me. That’s how i’ve handled it: the person you became when you stopped being my mom is like a storm blocking out the sun and i’m running from room to room turning on all the lights trying to overcome your darkness. It’s hard to be myself or build new relationships when i’m spending so much time fighting this one. And worse than fighting you, i fight myself for feeling that way. Girls aren’t supposed to resent their mothers like this. If they do, they certainly don’t talk about it.

I waste so much time hating your memory. It’s exhausting. I’m sick of pretending to be grateful at all the right moments and glossing over your ugly parts. It’d be easier if i could walk away from you completely but this world is made of mothers + children and half of my DNA is yours so no matter how i measure it you’ll always be a part of me. Still. I’m tired of fighting. I’m so tired of being angry.

But… what if i could see it in another light? What if you are the one who made me strong enough to fight you? The things our family has been through didn’t break me. Far from it. Fighting you has made me a spectacular person: an independent, assertive, open-minded, vulnerable person who believes she can withstand anything. I may have become that person in opposition to you, but that doesn’t make her any less me. I’m amazing, and in one way or another, you helped create that. What if that could be your legacy?

There are things in my life i can choose and things i can’t. It sounds simple, but plenty of people make themselves victims of everything. You were one of those people. You couldn’t see that choosing to take responsibility is the more powerful option. I didn’t choose anything about you, [———], and i didn’t choose the good mother you were before that either. But perhaps now i can begin to choose which parts of your memory to keep, and which to disregard. I can choose to stop blaming you. Your love gave me a foundation. Your weakness failed to break me. The rest is up to me.

It’s going to take me a while longer to figure out how to have you in my heart on my terms. But i’m a strong person, because or in spite of you. Your life is over, but mine is just beginning. And i’ll figure it out.

Thank you.

— Your daughter, forever