I have always been at odds with my mother. We could never agree on what was right and wrong. We are, well actually were, the world’s greatest adversaries. We never understood each other. When I was really young and not fully capable of making well thought out assumptions or decisions, I gave into every word my mother whispered to me behind my fathers back. He was first my greatest adversary. It has taken time to realize that he was not the enemy in this situation; He was the hero. And she…she was the unspoken enemy.

To be clear this is not meant to be an endlessly hateful blob of words strung together to hurt my mother. It is meant to be an honest foreshadowing of the trials and tribulations of my youth.

I had two mothers and now I have one. It’s not what you might be thinking. I had the woman who gave birth to me and I had the women my dad married when I was 9. Both are my mother. But the woman that my dad married is my mom. My mother, on the other hand, has far past the opportunity to be my mom. She choose to give that up for her own reasons. In my opinion, her own selfish reasons. But that’s her prerogative.

She was beautiful. Long golden brown hair, the fairest skin, and piercing hazel eyes. She was beautiful on the outside, her smile radiated positivity, it was contagious.

I once heard somewhere that there is no sweeter sound than that of a mothers’ laughter. That is unfortunately true. You see, when that laugh isn’t around much, when it decides not to stay and that you aren’t worth hearing it, it starts to fade away, and slowly, over time, you can’t hear it anymore. Lucky for me, the sweet sound of a mother’s laugh returned to me.

It returned in a different form, with a different sound, from a different person. It came from my new mother and my true mom. I’ve never told her this but everytime I hear her laugh I think about that old saying that I heard from somewhere, and I can feel my heart warm with the sound of her laugh. However, I know in my heart that sound won’t last forever, after all nothing lasts forever.

Her beauty won’t last. It won’t outlast who she is. She is beautiful on the outside but on the inside she is rotting slowly. She denies who she has become. Maybe she will become who she once intended to be, or, maybe she won’t. Either way I had to learn how to separate my love for her from what was healthy for me. Deciphering that wasn’t easy but it was possible. Today as I sit writing this, I realize that I haven’t spoken to my mother in five years. To be totally honest, these past five years have been the easiest I’ve lived yet.