“You never understand me! You always do this! I don’t want to talk to you!” I yell, my voice trembling with frustration as I slam the bathroom door shut behind me. Inside, I collapse against the sink and a lump begins to form in my throat. My hands shake as tears blur my vision, and I let out a sob. I feel a mix of anger and hurt that I can’t even begin to untangle.
Why is she like this? My mind races. Mom always does this. I hate it. She never listens, she never even tries to understand me.
I wipe my face furiously, though the tears just keep coming. God, when will I finally move out of this house? I think bitterly.
Ten minutes later, I come out of the bathroom with my eyes red and swollen and my heart still heavy. I could feel the weight of our argument linger in the air, it was suffocating. I can barely look at her as I walk past while my mind keeps replaying the moment.
For context—because maybe I’m not crazy—I had asked her for something simple, something that wasn’t even urgent. I just needed a little help, and instead, she throws the biggest fit like I asked her to move mountains. I know she has work, but it’s not like I wanted her to do it right now! Why can’t she ever be normal?
Fine. I’ll do it myself.
I head to the attic, determined to prove I don’t need her. As soon as I step inside, the thick scent of dust hits me, and I cough. The dim light and old furniture stacked haphazardly makes the place feel eerie, but I push the feeling down. I’m a girlboss. I can handle this. I repeat to myself, though I’m not entirely convinced.
I started digging through the boxes, looking for whatever it was I needed. Instead, my hand brushes against something strange. An old, worn-out journal with my mom’s name scrawled across the front. The cover is frayed, the pages yellowed with age, and written in faded ink are the words, Don’t open.
But there’s something about being told not to open something, right? The forbidden fruit syndrome or whatever. My fingers hover over the edge of the cover.
I flip it open.
Inside are journal entries. The first one is from when my mom was a teenager. The handwriting is neat but hurried, like she was trying to get all her thoughts down before they slipped away. I flip through a few pages, watching her life unfold before my eyes—memories of growing up, stories about her parents, her early marriage, her struggles as a new mother. The more I read, the tighter the knot in my chest becomes.
I barely notice the room spinning around me until everything goes black.
When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in the attic. I’m somewhere else entirely, somewhere…familiar. The journal is beside me, open to a page I hadn’t yet reached. I stand up, feeling disoriented, and walk through the doorway into another room.
There, sitting at a small table, is my mom. But not as I know her. She’s younger—much younger. Maybe my age. She’s hunched over, writing furiously in the same journal I had just found, the same one now tucked under my arm. Her face is tense, her brows furrowed in concentration. I try to speak, but the words get stuck in my throat. She doesn’t see me, doesn’t hear me. It’s like I’m invisible.
And suddenly, I’m not just watching her. I’m *feeling* her.
I see her as a teenager, standing in the kitchen, her mother scolding her for dreaming too big, telling her to focus on learning how to cook and be polite because that will ultimately matter more when she becomes someone’s wife. I watch as she keeps quiet, the dreams in her eyes slowly dimming.
I see her as a newlywed, in a house that isn’t her own, trying to adjust to the weight of expectations. Her hopes of finding a balance between her career and family crushed under the pressure of being “the perfect wife.”
I feel her pain when she has me, and everything she thought she could still hold onto—her dreams, her plans, herself—slips away. It’s not that she didn’t love me. She did. Fiercely. But somewhere in becoming a mother, she lost the woman she once was.
And now, here she is—writing, pouring her heart into a journal because that’s the only space she has to speak freely. No one else asks. No one else listens.
My heart feels like it’s breaking as I watch her silently suffer through things I never knew. I never bothered to ask.
Suddenly, the room spins again, and I’m back in the attic, gasping for breath. The journal falls from my lap, landing with a soft thud on the floor. I sit there, staring at it, my mind racing, trying to process everything I’ve just witnessed.
My mother wasn’t just my mom. She was a woman with dreams, with struggles, with pain that I had never even tried to understand.
I find her downstairs, sitting on the couch, her face still glum from our earlier argument. My throat tightens, but I manage to speak.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice barely audible. “I… I never asked. I never thought about what you went through. I’m so sorry.”
She looks at me, confused at first, but then her expression softens. There’s no anger in her eyes, no resentment. Just the quiet understanding of a woman who’s been through more than I’ll ever fully know.
And in that moment, I realize that loving my mother means seeing her, not just as the person who raised me, but as the woman she is—the woman who has carried more than I ever knew, who has sacrificed so much, often in silence.
We tend to forget that our mothers are women first, shaped by their own lives, their own dreams, and their own battles. They love us fiercely, but they’re not invincible. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time we start seeing them for who they truly are.