The Kid Who Lost Her Mom

It’s been fourteen years of living in this world without a mom.

It’s in ways become my identity.

In the beginning, it was my label. To so many people I was “The kid who lost her mom.” For those who don’t know I lived solely with my aunt after my mom died. For years after everywhere we went my aunt would tell everyone (and I mean everyone), “This is my niece, she just lost her mom.” This is probably a big reason why I can be an open book. I was forced to having strangers know this personal thing about me. So now I write all about myself on the internet.

It hasn’t been until recently that I realized how much my issues start with mom dying. It also wasn’t until recently that I started to mourn my mom.

Ten years old is a vital age when it comes to development. Even now as a twenty-four-year-old, parts of me developmentally are still ten years old. I don’t fully understand why I responded to her death so extremely. People who know me personally are probably listing reasons as they are reading this. There are so many contributing factors to why I am the way I am. I learn more about why nearly daily.

The thing is no matter how I lost my mom or when or how I mourned her it doesn’t make it easier living in a world without her.

My mom attempted to write in journals many times during her life. There was one journal where she had almost written on all of the pages. This was around the time where she lost her first daughter. One of the last entries in this journal was a letter to that daughter. She lost that daughter in a fire because of her drug addiction having control over her life. There is another journal where she only has a few days written down but it is written during my lifetime. These two journals are around twenty years apart. These journals are where I learned most of what I know about my mom.

I have a lot of things about my life that I question, but one thing I will never question is how extremely loved I was by my mother.

My friend asked me if there was anything I wanted to do to honor her death. I didn’t have anything since I’ve never had a thing that screamed mom. I just try to be happy and enjoy October 4th for my momma. She did everything in her power to make sure I didn’t have the life she had. Though that didn’t particularly happen, I can do everything in my power to make this life a good one.

She is the reason I fight.