"Leaving Home and Still Caring for Family" by A TAO Counselor

    He said, "I just wish it was just "us" to worry about, but it's not, it's your Mum, Dad, siblings, animals, kids...." She said, "So what?" He answered,"That's a lot. You remember what you always used to say to me? Well I am saying it to you." She replied, "You are the most important thing to me."

    I sat there and stared at the screen. I am almost 22 years old but at that moment I felt like a small child reading those words and feeling abandoned. Very selfishly abandoned. Something inside me flew far away, it felt like my childhood was finally leaving and adulthood was riding in on a large black horse to take me away.

    My mother had raised me for most of my life, well, pretty much my entire life. My parents had divorced when I was younger and she had raised my brother and I as a single mom. Her main focus in life was her children. She taught my brother and I to read, she brought us to the library everyday, she took summers off from work to spend with us and we would take day trips to the city and the ocean. She involved us with programs at the library and she was there for us every single day.

    By the time I was a teenager, I felt very suffocated. I wished she'd find a man that would treat her right. Maybe it would end everyone's suffering. I wished my mother's focus was on someone else, somewhere else. Many men seemed interested in my friendly, fairly attractive mother over the years but she was never interested back. She continued to wear her wedding ring and seemed to not be over my father even though they had split many years previous and he had remarried.

    My mother and I went through some very rough times when I was a teenager. I loved her but was often very angry with her. My mother's ways were not normal and I had grown up enough to see this, to understand and to be embarrassed by it. I couldn't wait to be on my own, to have my own place, to date who I wanted and to do whatever I felt like doing. I mostly stayed out of trouble but everything I did seemed wrong in my mother's scrutiny. My mother had done a lot that any parent should do but there were other factors I wanted to escape.

    College finally approached. It was like pulling teeth to get my mother to fill out the paperwork needed for financial aid. I commuted the first year to my college and then after that I moved into the dorms. For the first time I felt physically separated from my mother. For the first few weeks I called her everyday, I wasn't sure why but I couldn't stop myself. She sometimes seemed surprised to hear from me, like she was in another world and very busy. I almost felt close to her again like I had long ago because we didn't argue on the phone. We weren't at each other's throats.

    When I saw that I was no longer the most important thing to my mother, I felt sad. I felt selfish to think that I would always be the most important thing to her. I felt ashamed for taking the idea for granted. I felt angry that I was no longer the top thing on her list of priorities. I felt confused because I should have been clicking my heels that she had found someone at last! Instead I felt cheated and alone. I felt that I had been replaced somehow and that she had forgotten she had ever had children.

    I am not a little girl anymore. and my mother is an adult and she can do whatever she wants. I have told many people this but its harder to swallow your own advice I guess. Maybe this is the push I needed to finally grow up. To finally see that I am still a person without my mother's word. Honestly, it is all very frightening. My mother may even end up leaving the country with this new man, now her fiance. I just cannot imagine it and I don't want to. I know sooner or later I will have to move on. My mother will always be a part of me, a part of my life but now we will each be living our own lives. I don't think anyone is really prepared to grow up but when the time comes it comes fast. I believe it will get easier as time passes but that is all I can really hope for.

A TAO Counselor

source: www.teenadviceonline.org