Chosen Family

My mother was the most beautiful woman in our neighborhood. Her doe eyes, the hair that always fell perfectly into place, the way she laughed louder than anyone else in the room. She had made a personality out of being gorgeous, naive, and clueless. She married my father when she just turned 18 — two months before I was born — and she would give him everything only for him to become a little too fond of every blonde he encountered. And when she realized that she would never have that man to herself, she just pulled him a little closer. As long as she had him by her side, everything would be okay. She loved him more than she loved herself.

I inherited that laugh of hers, and the long, brown hair. Not a bad genetic legacy, you would think. We were alike in many aspects, and people loved to tell us. You would expect a daughter to take after her mother to a certain degree, but what my mother and I had was more than that. For all my life, I looked up to her as if she had created the universe. When she would talk about me to other people, she would lay her left hand on her heart and say: “Eleonora and I, we’re like this.” She meant to say we were one and the same, we were entwined. I grew up with the comfort of knowing my mother would always do everything she could to protect me, and I would later understand this was a luxury that not all people had. I knew my mother’s love and support would never waver and that she would never abandon me.

Under one condition.

As there was one crucial thing my mother and I did not have in common. She loved men and I didn’t.

My mother was a traditional woman. She believed women should cook dinner for their husbands, look pretty to keep them interested, and submit to a life of being in their shadow at all times. She also believed women should marry men and men should marry women, and she particularly believed her daughter should find a nice husband and procreate as the good Christian she was raised to be.

Unfortunately, I was more interested in the women I saw on TV than the boys in my high school class. So I did not just grow up with the comfort of knowing my mom would always be there, but I also grew up with a millstone around my neck, aware that I could never be myself if I wanted to be worthy of her presence.

For many years, I went along with her narrative; if my mother wanted me to marry a man, I would do so. I sincerely believed that this option would make me the happiest, but I knew it was the lesser of two evils. The price I would have to pay for starting a family with someone I did not love was that I would never truly be happy. I felt like there was a flaw in my system that had corrupted my life.

Then Victoria came along and the ability to love a woman no longer felt like a curse. There was something about her piercing blue eyes that made me believe I would be depriving myself of something magnificent if I did not let this run its course. I was 21 years old, rebelling against my mother for the first time in my life.

I was asking a girl on a date.

One date, to be exact. I asked Victoria on one date. "Just once, just to see what it would be like." I still believed that this was something I could do once and then never again. Victoria said yes; she and I had been friends for a while and she had been waiting for me to make the first move. She knew about the situation with my mother, she knew that I meant it when I said one date, but she went out with me anyway. She was like that: scared of all the little things but brave in all the big things. I could not make Victoria small, insignificant, forgettable — she demanded a more prominent space in my life, in the way real love grabs you by the throat and does not give you a choice.

I started lying to my mother about where I was, what I was doing, who I was doing it with. The stress was eating me alive and my mom was getting increasingly more suspicious, and one night she cornered me. Asked me who those 'friends' were that I was spending all my time with, why she had never met them. Then she asked me, "It's a girl, isn't it?"

My mother had always known I was a lesbian. She knew me too well to not know. Ultimately, I have never blamed her for not being accepting or understanding, I knew why she was not. I wasn't accepting of myself either in the beginning. But I changed. And it hurt that she wasn't willing to change with me.

My relationship with my mother had now degraded to brief text messages we exchanged every two months or so. The past three months had been exceptionally bad:

How are you, Mom?

She hadn't replied. Two weeks later, I sent: Hey Mom, are you okay? Can we call tonight?

She replied: I am fine. I can't tonight.

I cried that night. I sent: Glad to hear you're doing well. Hopefully we can talk soon.

She did not contact me afterwards.

Three months later, I reached out once again:

Hi Mom, do you happen to know where I could find that kokkinisto recipe from Christmas two years ago?

Four days later, she sent the link to a website and nothing else.

To be clear, I was 24 now and long overdue for some healthy emotional distance from my mother. I would be perfectly content with just the occasional phone calls or texts, I just couldn't handle the complete lack of interest. I could not live with the constant awareness that my mother was out there ignoring my existence because I fell in love with a woman. I had warred with myself for too long, I could not war with her as well.

Hey Mom, I have been trying to reach you. I have tried to communicate that I want you in my life in whatever way you're comfortable with. You have made clear to me that you have no interest in maintaining a 'normal' relationship with me whatsoever. I just wanted to let you know that I'm done trying. Not a day goes by that I don't miss you, but I deserve a happy, healthy life, and I can't have one if I keep hoping for you to change your mind. I am done.

All the best,

Eleonora

I blocked my mother's number immediately afterwards and retreated to the couch in my new apartment. I curled up next to the love of my life. She made me tea and held me until I felt nothing but tired, and I realized, if I had briefly forgotten, what I was doing this for. She was my family.