I feel like I am stuck in an endless loop of thinking that I have gotten farther in my mind of what I feel my relationship with my mother looks like versus what it actually is. After all, it is one of the most crucial relationships that any woman can have. Your mother is there to guide you, support you, love you, and coach you when you need it. Or, most mother's are at least. I wasn't blessed with the latter. In fact, I was the one guiding, supporting, loving, and coaching when she needed it. Definitely was a backwards relationship for sure. She is the kind who steals from you, then helps you look for the thing you have lost, even if that thing that you've lost is trust. When I was younger we would walk hand in hand through fields and mountains, hoping that one day we would find that thing that was stolen so long ago from me. I have the kind of relationship where I learned to defend her, even though she was clearly in the wrong. I would take down anyone who stood in her way, but thinking back, that's exactly what she wanted. She wanted someone to do all of the work for her. She wanted me to be alienated from the outside world so she could funtion properly in her own reality. She wanted my younger brother and I to suffer because it is how she thrived.

Each time I think that I can move past all of the emotional and mental damage she's inflicted, she always goes above and beyond of what I thought was possible from a human being to make me second guess my decision to make a mends of sorts. Now that I think about it, I don't believe it would be entirely possible to forgive my mother to a full one hundred percent. So really, why would I even bother to fix it in the first place? She doesn't care. She doesn't worry about the decisions she makes and how it effects others; her co-workers, her friends, her family. Every single person in her family has bent over backwards for her to help her succeed in life, but that was the trick up her sleeve all along. She will never succeed in life. She doesn't have the drive, the energy, or the purpose to actually become something greater than what she is. She enjoys living in the bottom of the ocean, not paying for her own electricity, but borrowing the light of the angler fish to brighten her home.

Everyone she has come across she evaluates on what she can get out of them. Including her children. She looked at us like secrured paychecks, not minding living with us until we almost hit eighteen and the child support ran out. Suddenly it became a huge disadvantage for her to actually support her children for a year and a half until we could legally break free from her.

"I do everything around here. You need to get a job. I am so tired of trying my best to support you. I'm sorry I could never give you the horse you always wanted, or the big house. I am such a failure."

So I got a job and I helped out, knowing now that it was never my job in the first place to help contribute. I was a child. I became so consumed with getting myself out of that situation that I missed a lot of school and decided to start saving so I could break free from her once and for all. I embarked on a huge road trip to Montana with a lot of friends. After that, tasting the sweet nectar of freedom meant that once I got back to her lair, I knew I couldn't settle for what she offered, which was next to nothing.

I moved across the country for a little bit, literally putting miles between myself and her. And natrually, she put up somewhat of a fight, yelling about how I couldn't just leave. Then mid sentence she stopped, clearly weighing her pros and cons here. I mean after all, she still had my younger brother she could leach off of. So she drove me to the airport and she sent me on my way.

I came back though after talking to my brother almost daily. I couldn't just leave him there, trapped in her disgusting house, filled with unwashed dishes and candy wrappers everywhere. She never ate well, nor did she clean. Ever. To this day I can't be in a mess of two dishes in the sink for more than a day and a half before I wipe down the entire house in a fury to keep that energy out of my home. I hatched a plan to get my brother out. He was going to move in with my boyfriend and I and live until he saved enough money to get out on his own. I was excited for him to explore the world just as I did. She somehow caught wind and faked her own suicide so she could get the attention of the hospital. Her cash cows were on the move out, so she had to get some kind of retribution. Years before she quite possibly faked a stroke, using that as leverage to get more hand outs. I mean, all she had to do was fake a slur for a bit, claiming she had a stroke. The doctors said she shouldn't smoke cigarettes anymore to encompass her newfound health and ticket on life. Strokes are so hard to trace. You can take a guess if the clot moved as to where may have been in the brain, but you can never really pinpoint it. She had a miraculous recovery, going from not being able to speak English to speaking it fluently again in a matter of months. At first I told people she had a stroke because I believed her. Now I'm not so sure anymore.

I went into the hospital on the eighth floor with my boyfriend's stepmother telling them that I wasn't legally responsible for her going forward. This was an attempt to keep myself and my brother attached, but it wasn't going to work this time. So she had her stomach pumped, the neighbors telling me that she ran outside after claiming to have swallowed all of her blood thinners from the stroke, telling them happily, she was going to kill herself. She left my brother a creepy note as well, ending it with a smiley face. She let people think she was completely off her rocker and wanted our attention, but I wasn't going to give in. She purposely moved into a homeless shelter so she could get assistance and after that we hadn't heard much from her up until the time she moved in with my grandmother. A year later my grandmother was in the hospital, sicker than I have ever seen her, ready to pass away into the great beyond. My grandfather was waiting for her, this much I know.

"I'm sorry I stopped calling, Grandma. I just can't handle her voice. It makes me sick. I understand that she is your daughter, but I can't let her affect me anymore."

My brother has since moved out to Arizona with his wife. He started his own adventure and for that I am grateful. I finally opened up my spirit to the greatness that is Mother Earth. I have started traveling again myself. I thought about my mother two weeks ago and in true fashion, her negative energy has attempted to seep it's way back into my life. It won't happen this time. My brother and I found out she was the same person that we broke free from years ago and all we can do is laugh. We have to see the bright side. As I have said before you either become it or you rise above it. We chose to rise above, far above, to see the city lines of Los Angeles, to be able to climb to the top of Bearhat Mountain in Glacier National Park. Each time I step foot outside of her realm, I am grateful that I let her go and I moved on. Sure, the thought of her makes me a little angry, a little hurt, a little tearful. But she will never change. And knowing this is all the closure I will ever need.

"But the best part is I have changed. I have grown and adapted. I have found my wings and I have flown far away from her."