Grieving What Never Was
There is something in me that I always believed would fade as I grew older, a quiet ache I assumed time would soften. I thought maturity would grant me the grace to exhale fully, without the fear of having to return the breath. Yet even now, there is a stillness inside me that carries a familiar weight, one I have learned to live beside but never fully release.
For as long as I can remember, there has been a hollow space in my mind, grieving the absence of someone who is still very much alive. It is a strange kind of mourning, missing a presence that never quite existed in the way I needed it to. I never knew how to sit with that emptiness, so instead I filled my life with motion non fucking stop motion. I became an overachiever early on, believing that if I kept building and reaching, the quiet and hurt would eventually disappear. Instead, that shit got louder.
I collected the milestones I was told would bring peace. The dream car, the dream home, the dream job, becoming an author, creating a brand in which a community like me in a way was needed. The life that looks whole and well tended from the outside. And for moments, it does feel like enough. Very few moments. But when the night settles and everything is still, there is a knowing in my bones that no accomplishment has ever truly touched. And the realization of that is, there will never be one that will. Because no success can soothe the ache of not being wanted by the person who gave me life. The emptiness does not come from what I lack, but from the person I spent my life longing for and never had.
It has been more than two decades since my mother made a quiet, life altering decision to no longer be a mother. She did not announce it or explain it, she simply stepped away, and time only confirmed that her mind has never changed. It is difficult to explain to people that I have a mother who is very much alive, one I still see at family gatherings and holidays, yet she only exists outside of anything maternal. There is no emotional covering, no guidance, no tenderness to fall back on. In some ways, it feels as though she loves me only because she must, because she loves people in general, and I happen to be one of them. Even now, that realization lands softly but deeply, the kind of truth that doesn’t scream, but lingers.
I have navigated my entire womanhood through intense ass trials and errors, always hoping the coin flip would land on the side of greatness and possibilities - not lessons. What I have discovered though, is that as I get older, the longing for a mother, and not just any one, hell not even my own sometimes, is getting fucking louder. It shows up in those intimate coffee talks, or in your roaring thirties life experiences where all you want is wisdom and guidance. In the relationship woes where you wish you could lay on the bedside and hear stories about what fools had her messed up back in her day. That is what I grieve most, the part of the relationship that never formed, the part where I find myself questioning how I can miss something I never had, while also slowly settling into the truth that I may never have it at all. Both sides of the blade are sharp, and it is there that the blood leaks with no end in sight.
What I am grieving, or perhaps mourning in this season, is acceptance. Accepting that the phase of my life where I always desired a mother’s love is never coming. I have tasted the sweetness of other figures who have guided and carried me along the way, and for that I am grateful, but it has never fully drowned out the bitterness that still rests on my tongue, longing for a flavor I will never know. So what do you do with the shattered glass left from mirrors once filled with possibility and what ifs, when even the broom and dustpan feel just as fragile? Does the heart remain messy in the reality of being a motherless daughter, or does the future, with all its continued pain, eventually begin to feel lighter? That is the road I am walking now…