Mother's Day is the day that we tell our mothers we appreciate them for all that they do: giving birth to us, nurturing us, raising us to be the best we can be.

However, not all of us have that. Some of us have never known what it feels like to be unconditionally loved by one of the two people who should love us no matter what. We think about that lost love every day. We wonder why we were not blessed with a mother like everyone else. We question why we don’t deserve having a mother there for us. Why we are defective because we lack something we should have had from day one.

My mother is a narcissist.

She tears her children down because it makes her feel better. She thinks she walks on water like she has never done anything wrong in her entire life, but somehow I am a mistake she could never get right. If she envied something about me, she’d insult me about it. She’d ruin my self-confidence to make herself feel better for lacking something I had that she didn’t. My mother doesn’t know what I major in, or my friends’ names. She couldn’t tell you my best personality traits or what makes me laugh. She could tell you what she hates about me. What my worst features are on my body. Why she thought I would never be loved. Why I’d be alone the rest of my life. She built herself up by destroying me.

My mother is a manipulator.

Everything she says is twisted to make us, her children, feel guilty about something we should not feel guilty about. I once felt guilty for existing because my mother said she would have been happier without me—something no child should ever feel guilty about.

My mother is an alcoholic.

A day and night alcoholic. She would drive drunk with her children in the car. She’d blackout and forget entire nights. She’d cuss and scream and throw things, but in the morning, she’d wake up and have no trace of what she had done the night before. We wouldn’t enlighten her because we didn’t want to ruin the few sober moments we had with her. We would give her a pass because she was our mother the days she didn’t drink. She cared for us. She’d tell us she loved us, and we would believe her, and we loved her because, despite everything, she was our mother.

My mother is a prescription drug addict.

Everyone seems to think she’s normal when high, but she’s not. Everyone seems to hate me and my siblings if they know my mother because she tells them lies about us. No one knows she’s addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Despite it all, I love her.

I love my mother despite every terrible thing I have just written. I love her despite how much she’s torn me down or harassed me through texts. It’s Mother’s Day, and I spent it without a mother, and she spent it without her children. But, it’s for the best.

Some of us have mothers who really do walk on water. Who build you up instead of tear you down. Treasure that.

I love my mother, but I wish I didn’t.

I no longer want to have a relationship with her, and some people will judge me for that and others will praise me for being brave.

All I know is, the day she left, the day I told myself she’d no longer ruin all the progress I have made, I could finally breathe for the first time in my life. I will think of her on every Mother’s Day—the good memories, the ones where we went prom dress shopping and bonded over movies—but I will no longer think of her as anything other than a distant memory. She deserves no more and no less.