worldsaway

I hate Mother’s Day.

It arrives loudly—flowers, posts, smiling photos, captions about best friends and unconditional love. It asks for celebration, for gratitude, for something soft and warm.

And I have nothing soft to give it.

Maybe one day, if I become a mother, this day will feel different. Maybe I’ll understand it in a way I don’t now. But today—right now—it feels like being asked to celebrate something I have never known how to hold.

Because it’s not just about my mom.

That would be easier.

What breaks me is everyone else’s.

It’s the daughters who don’t hesitate before they call. The ones who say “I talked to my mom today” like it’s as natural as breathing. The ones who run home in pieces and are gathered up without question, without fear, without earning it. The ones who are known—fully, safely, consistently—by the person who was supposed to know them first.

I watch them and feel something sharp twist inside me.

Not hatred. Never hatred.

Grief.

And something that looks a lot like anger when it has nowhere else to go.

Because I don’t have that.

And deeper than that—I will never have that with her.

Not because it’s out of reach.

Because it’s not something I even want from her anymore.

And that realization feels like its own kind of loss.

Because the longing didn’t disappear—

it just… moved.

It lives in the quiet spaces now. In the way I notice other women who feel safe. In the instinct to reach for someone who isn’t her. In the ache to be held by a mother, to be comforted by a voice that knows how to stay gentle.

I want to be cared for in that way.

I want to be chosen, soothed, understood without having to explain why I’m hurting.

I want a mother I can run to.

A mother I don’t have to protect myself from.

Just not mine.

And that truth sits heavy in me.

It settles into my bones, into the spaces that should have been filled a long time ago. It shows up in quiet moments, catching me off guard, tightening my chest, stinging behind my eyes.

Am I jealous?

Maybe.

But jealousy feels too small a word for something this deep.

This is grief for something I never really had.

Grief for something I still want.

Grief for something that exists—just not for me, not in the way it was supposed to.

I don’t hate Mother’s Day.

I hate what it reminds me of.

That I want a mom.

Just not mine.