Mother's day

Mother's day is a rough day for me. As many people enjoy a day with their mother's and post their pictures on Facebook, I sit in the pain that I will never have that with my mom. A lot of people, especially my family, will argue that and say that I still can, but the truth is I can't. As many of you may know....my mom has Alzheimer's and it is very severe. She does not recognize me or my 2 sisters or anyone for that matter. It is a difficult thing. This disease that is slowly killing my mother has slowly killed my relationship with my family as well. I typically don't talk about all these issues, but I figured I might as well.
Growing up, my relationship with my mom was really difficult, let's just say her parenting was not the normal kind. She never gave me hugs and she NEVER said "I love you" to me. My mom was extremely hard on me and at some points extremely abusive. It was really different from the life I had in El Salvador where I was the center of attention and extremely loved.
As I grew older, my mom got tougher and more abusive. When I turned 16, I went through a very depressing point in my life and I could not bare the abuse any longer, so I tried to commit suicide and I ended up being hospitalized. After the hospitalization, my mom and I started going through counseling together. Things did not get better, they only got worse so I ended up moving in with my aunt, but that didn't work out very well because it caused a rift between her and my mom. I moved with my grandma, but that didn't work out because she was too far away and had no car, then I moved in with a boyfriend and that didn't work out. After bouncing from house to house for a year and a half and not fitting in anywhere, I decided the best thing for me was to join the Air Force.
In July 2004, I left for the AF. In the Air Force, I slowly drifted into my own life. When ever I visited Miami it was to visit my boyfriend at the time and very little time was spent with my family. It wasn't that I didn't love them, instead, I didn't feel loved. I really wanted things to be better between my mom and I, but I never really tried to mend things. As my first year in the Air Force went on, my sister would call me to fill me in on things going on at home. I remember one day she called me to tell me that my mom had gotten lost driving from our house to my sister's school. I thought it was strange and it worried me. I decided to come home and this is when I realized something was wrong with my mom. The crazy thing was when she would see me she would want to hold my hand or kiss my cheek or hug me. It was strange to me, but it was actually really nice. As time went on, my mom got even sicker. I hardly got to see her, but when I did see her she would want to be around me and she would talk to me.
I moved back to Miami in June of 2008 and it was rough seeing how much my mom had deteriorated. At first, it was REALLY difficult to have her love on me because she had never done it, but after a while I really started to enjoyed it. All my life all I wanted was to FEEL loved by her, it sucks that the only time she really ever showed me love was when she could barely recognize me, but I guess it's better than never.
It's hard because my recent memories with my mom are good memories, memories of us laughing or her kissing me and wanting to hug me. I know that if she wasn't sick we would have a great relationship, that we would be best of friends, that we could have spent a day like today rejoicing on how I will soon be a mother too. It breaks my heart that it will never happen, it breaks my heart that she will never be able to play with my kids, it breaks my heart that they will never have her as a grandma, it breaks my heart that I don't have a mother who I can call when I am feeling down or need a friend to talk to, it breaks my heart that my family thinks I don't care about her because they think I haven't let go of the past, it breaks my heart that my sister didn't have a functioning mother for as long as I did and it breaks my heart that she has missed out on seeing me grow into the woman that she molded. That even though she wasn't the best mother, I turned out okay and everything I do, I do to honor her. So that people will see that even though she was one hell of a rough woman to be around that she raised one hell of a daughter. It's a weird feeling because she is still alive in body, but not in the person she was. It's hard to see her lay in bed and not be able to move. It sucks. REALLY it does.
One thing I am thankful for is that before she got really sick, she accepted Jesus into her life. I am glad, that the day she dies, she will go to heaven and that we will eventually be able to have the good relationship that I know we would have today.

p.s Stay posted for a blog on the Adoption tomorrow...if you guys want to get email notifications of my blogs subscribe to my blog.