"I'm sorry."
Those simple words were all it took, literally ALL YOU NEEDED TO SAY to me. Even after everything you've done, just one tiny little apology was all I needed to hear from you to convince me that we might be able to try making a start on piecing back together the crushed and broken fragments of what we have always pretended is a whole and genuine (if 'strained') relationship. It could, SHOULD have been a whole and genuine relationship, mother. But you broke it. You broke it and then you trampled on the pieces until it became unrecognisable, unsalvageable: discarded smithereens of what might even have been the most life-affirming and enduring friendship of both our lives.
"I'm sorry." How many times have I actually needed to hear those words from you, mother? Hundreds; probably thousands. Your cruelties towards me, since even before the divorce that ripped the heart out of our family, have proven innumerable. The scars are all on the inside. Some of them will never fully heal. But I will heal; I will recover from what you made me suffer in silence, and I will become stronger. You have tried to break me down, but you fucked with the wrong daughter this time. I will not be broken down, and I will not be silenced any more. Before I die, I am going to make sure EVERYONE knows what a neglectful, abusive, unloving mother you were, and what harrowing, indescribable sickness exists underneath your crumbling, counterfeit veneer of spirituality and self-righteousness. I am also going to make it clear that these revelations no longer come from a sense of moral outrage or wounded injustice - they come from a place you have not visited for a long, long time: Truth. They come from my heart; the one you broke, over and over and over again.
Can you even name one motherly thing you have done for me? Just one? There is a gaping hole inside me that I thought could only be filled with your love; with the genuine, abundant, pure and precious love of my mother, and so I did whatever I could to try to get that love, including ignoring and suppressing my own needs and feelings in deference to you and yours. I didn't even realise that I shouldn't have to try to win your love. I didn't realise that I was fighting a losing battle all along. I will not allow you to hurt me ever again. I am worth so much more than what you are prepared to give me.
I've learned a lot over the past 30 years. How to survive the fallout from my parents' bitter, devastating divorce, when both of you were far too depleted, antagonistic, SELFISH and mentally compromised to even consider how much your two young daughters might have been affected. I've learned that the person I really am, and whoever I've tried or pretended to be in the past in my various fruitless, pitiful attempts to please you, will never be good enough in your eyes. I've learned that that isn't my problem.
I've learned that you have only caused me such pain in my life because there is so much pain within you, and you didn't know any other way of dealing with it. I've learned that I can, and I will, forgive you for that.
I've learned, from scratch (because it certainly wasn't from you) how to be a good mother: warm, receptive, responsive, empathic, with a heart overflowing with unconditional love. My children will never, EVER live in fear of me. My children will never, EVER doubt my love for them. No matter what happens, my children will grow up rooted in a family based on love, trust, acceptance and compassion, and I will give them the respect and the freedom to be whoever and whatever they want to be. Because THAT is what parental love IS.
All this shame, regret, self-loathing, guilt and negativity you've heaped on me over the years? Take it back, mother. Take it all back. The burden is not mine to bear.
I'm going to finish this letter in the same way I have finished nearly every letter I have sent you in the past: by telling you I love you. I love you mum; I always have and I always will. The difference now is that I no longer need you to love me back: that ship has long since sailed, and she won't be returning. So your final bastion of power over me - the withholding of your love - is now as redundant as it is tragic.
I hope you manage to find peace in your fractured husk of a soul before it's too late. I no longer want an apology from you, and I certainly don't expect one. But I do want you to look deep inside yourself, however horrifying that process might be (and yes, it will be), and search for that healthy, vibrant, real and beautiful part of you that my dad fell in love with all those years ago (and never stopped loving, right up to his death), that part of you that sees only beauty and worthiness in your daughters and rejoices in their happiness, that part of you that rejects jealousy and negativity and unkindness. I know it's in there, somewhere. I know it.
THAT'S the mother I needed, the mother I deserved. That's the mother I should have had. That's the mother you should have been.
With love,
Your middle daughter, the one who got away without having to die or acquiesce.
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