Evoked

I'm laying in bed right now, trying to settle before my final tomorrow morning, and grabbed my phone so I could make sure I had alarms set. I still had the camera app open, on selfie (hush), and noticed something different about my face now that my jaw is more prominent. (I'm still losing weight, my face is getting skinny.)

I took a couple pictures and looked at them and realized I could see the way my mother holds her jaw in the way mine was in that moment. I don't see her terribly often when I look at myself, which is a relief since that would be painful, but I have these little moments where I miss her, or more that I miss the her she was, the person she is not. I miss the concept of a mother, I think, more than anything else. It would almost be easier if she had died - there would be sadness and closure, instead of knowing that she's out there somewhere and knowing that there will come a time when I can no longer keep track of her and she will disappear forever. It's tough realizing again and again that I lost the relationship with her that I deserved to have, knowing that she either missed or didn't care about most of my milestones growing up, and now that I'm an adult, she's not here to watch me go to college, or promise me that I'm still a worthwhile person when I fail every test this semester (this semester has been delightful, by the way), she's not going to be around when Matt proposes, or to watch me get married. She won't be here to get excited and cry at the thought of becoming a grandmother when we start expecting a baby. She's missing everything, and I'm missing the conceptual her that lives in my head, that holds me and gives me advice and tells me she loves me no matter what happens because she's my mother and that's what mothers are supposed to do. It just breaks my heart, especially when I see other women and their mothers and their closeness and it hits me again and again that I will never, ever have that relationship, no matter how much I wish, and even if I try to ignore that missing part, it's there, reminding me that she's not there and never will be.