I'm just like my mother.

The same old cliché rings heavy in my ears: I never wanted to become my mother.

Lucky for me I’ve managed to shake off her selfish indifference to anything and everything that isn’t directly related to her dogs, and have used that notion to raise my very human children with love, compassion, and focus, from skinned knees to the inevitable question: “Mommy, what happens when we die?”

We were close once, before I was a fully developed person with my own opinions, some that differed from her own. That’s where things got hairy. I’m a problem solver; my mother is not. And so, the foundation for resentment was laid. I made a silent vow to stick to my open-minded guns.

But still, I’ve managed to become my mother all the same.

I make morbid jokes about being an orphan, although my mother is very much alive and well three towns over. I think back to me at thirteen, her with a too-full glass of wine in hand, joking that the next time she saw my grandmother, she (my grandmother) would be in a box.

On my son’s third birthday she sat behind dark sunglasses in a far corner of the yard, arms crossed, refusing interaction with the other quests who noticed her sour mood. When questioned, she said she felt left out. Misery loves company, even at a child’s birthday party. I made note never to make my children’s special occasions about me.

I begged for more time, more interest, as she stood in my kitchen and stirred a pot of sauce on the stove during Sunday dinner. My father folded his arms and stared at the ceiling. I asked them – no, told them – to leave, my son on one hip. If I dig deep enough, look hard enough, I don’t think she knew how to navigate this. I feel sorry for her and hate that I do.

I won’t bother with the entitled entity that is my father. His story doesn’t belong here.

I flail to figure out where things spiraled, but it’s as if it happened in slow motion. I asked for more and was given less. They’re not obligated, I suppose. I don’t think they ever knew how.

Between pathetic sobs I tell my therapist there is a void, an aspect of motherhood I feel I’m missing out on, not having my own to sit back and be proud of the job I’m doing. No cheering section to let me know I’ve got this thing figured out. My mother went to her own therapy on Saturday evenings, singing karaoke until her lungs gave out then crying in the bathroom. Catastrophic confusion over the absence of her own.

She refused to admit she needed her mother, as I can’t yell into the ether that I need mine. I cry to my best friend on the phone, as her own mother rocks her baby in a neighboring room. No one is listening. No one cares. They can’t possibly, unless they have the same hole to fill.

So, I’ve become her, my mother, hurting behind closed doors. In heavy, suffocating silence just three towns over. So close we could run into one another and stand silent and awkward in the cereal aisle, looking at our feet like unsure children. I’d peer into her cart, wanting to know what she’s picking up for the week. My own blood, so close, such painful disconnect. The word mother hasn’t left my mouth in years now; it feels like marbles on my tongue, foreign.

I stay busy raising two perfect, hellish boys, forever on my toes, battling demons that would ever allow me to sweep their hearts under the rug. I can’t fathom a day I don’t know where they’re going for breakfast, if they have a good winter coat, if they’re coming over for Sunday dinner. My own blood, so close, I lay my head on my son’s chest as he sleeps and try to memorize his heartbeat. I am tethered to him.

“Mommy,” my seven-year-old asks, “do you have parents?” A lump catches in my throat. “Of course,” I say. He looks at me, surprised. I redirect. He loves to swim, that beautiful boy of mine, but I can’t tell him about the childhood home he’s never seen, with the big swimming pool, the diving board, the slide. The treehouse in the back where I climbed up with friends and peered into the neighbor’s yard. My attic room with the sloped ceiling. The streets where I rode my bike and skinned my knees. My sons will never laugh at my third-grade soccer portrait on the living room wall or thumb through old albums.

Once, months ago, my mother sent a text offering to box up photographs and my old prom dress and ship them to my doorstep. Days, hours, minutes, a childhood condemned to a cardboard box, slapped with a FedEx label. Memories worth as much as shipping costs.

I wonder if my photos are still up, stark reminders. More depressing than the face of a ghost hanging on the wall is the death of the living.

I imagine my seven-year-old thinks I was never a child at all, just a fully grown mother all along. I like this thought better. If I am gifted grandchildren someday, I will walk them through every nook and cranny of their father’s childhood home, watch them bound up the same stairs and take hold of the same railing and run barefoot across the same grass and I’ll breathe in every moment before its gone.

My mother and I will leave each other with a few blurred memories and more hurt than we can swallow combined. I believe this is true.

So, I’m just like my mother. We are damaged just the same, but I am reshaping the trauma. I won’t let the past take me whole; instead, I’ll prop open its gnarly jaws and heal by facing the darkness inside. And I’ll hold on to those sweet boys as long as they’ll let me.