My Mother Ignored My Birthday.

And people keep asking how I feel.

I stopped speaking to my mother almost a year ago.

At first, she tried to contact me, but I blocked her on my phone, email, and social media. She sent letters which I didn’t open and returned back. Then she stopped trying.

As my birthday drew near, I was in an increasingly bad mood. I was going back and forth in my mind over what would hurt more. If she didn’t try to contact me in any way… or if she did.

I shouldered my mother’s emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse for my entire life. As a child, I endured physical abuse from her as well but I lied about it until after I kicked her out of my life once and for all.

Once she was gone from my life, I felt a sense of calm. She called me all the time under the guise of wanting to chat about something benign. A book she’d read that I might like. Comparing thoughts on television shows. Asking about my pets. Asking me questions because her cat had gone to the vet.

I never liked her vet. She would send me the invoices and an average biannual checkup was costing her over a thousand dollars at a time and it was because they were performing unnecessary tests. I’m a vet tech so she’d ask my opinion and I gave it to her. Get a new vet. There is absolutely no reason to test a solo indoor cat twice a year for giardia when he had no symptoms and wasn’t exposed. She informed me that it was routine and I didn’t get to say anything because I was a tech, not a vet.

Then why ask me?

Every conversation no matter how benign it began became a fight. A malignant ringtone in my mind every time she called filling me with a sense of impending dread. I was her punching bag. She called me when she needed someone to harm.

And she called me a lot.

It took a few months for the dread to stop but eventually, I stopped tensing up every time my phone rang. I started writing more and more of the truth of what she’d put me through. For the first time in my entire life, I was honest about the times in my childhood when the abuse turned physical. I started seeing a therapist once a week to talk about everything I’ve been through. My mother is no small part of that. Everything connects back to her.

She put me in the ballet boarding school where I was drugged, forced to dance on broken bones, forbidden to cry, pushed around, bent until I broke, and learned to keep dancing anyway. I still pay a large physical price for the 20 years that I danced for my mother. It was the only thing about me that held any worth to her. Worth that she only saw as bragging rights. She couldn’t be bothered to come see me perform.

My ballet leotards and pictures of me in poses I was placed in were used at the trial after I was brutally assaulted. Apparently, being a ballerina made it my fault.

My mother forbade me to talk about the assault. She told me to say that I’d been in a car accident. That would explain my time away from school and the parts of me that still hadn’t healed from the beating I’d sustained. She didn’t want anyone to know because it happened at her house. I was so terrified of her that her word was all that mattered. She said don’t talk about it so I buried it. I swallowed a gut-punching pain that no one should have to live with — especially alone.

My mother, ballet, the assault. The three major traumas of my life. And the other two are tied to her. She created a silent child, born in hatred, despised and unworthy of anything, and that child grew into an insecure perfectionist who still can’t find anything worth a damn about herself.

I am my mother’s daughter. Her creation. Worthless, talentless, pointless.

Week after week my therapist tries to break through the dysregulation of my emotions. Not only had I lived with a horrific act of violence in total silence but ballet had taught me never to show emotion of any kind. I could dance it or I could move on. Those were the only options. In the end, all that was left was anger.

I was a shell casing. Wrapped around rage that could aim anywhere, at any time. Anger was an emotion that I could handle and so it was the only one that I showed. I also have an intensely difficult time being bored. When I get bored, I get destructive. I will create chaos in my life because chaos is familiar. Boredom is not. I grew up regimented. I grew up to never stop working. I grew up without a childhood. Just chaos. Perfected chaos on an exacting schedule.

Without it, I am lost. Confused. And I find ways to create damage. I will go on shopping binges that make it difficult to pay bills. I will make a huge mess that I will then refuse to clean because I see no point. The mess that surrounds me reflects the mess that’s inside of me. This inhuman creature I was molded into.

There was progress in therapy. I was starting to identify emotions other than anger and rage. I was starting to question my impulses and give in to them less. And then, the calendar turned a page and it was November.

My birthday is November 27. Each day that passed by I wondered… ruminated… on what she’d do. Would she ignore my birthday? Would she send something?

My mother likes to buy me. Big expensive gifts were always her way of silencing anything I had to say in return for her venom at me. I wasn’t allowed to return fire — she bought me something.

I owed her.

She owned me.

I didn’t know which would be worse. If she ignored my birthday… I mean… she’s a monster but she’s my mother and I only have one mother. How much do you have to hate your own child to completely ignore their birthday?

If she didn’t and she mailed me something it would cost me money to return it or I’d be stuck with it. And she doesn’t send money. Checks and gift cards are not her style. Those are too easy to send back. It would be something major. Some big way of shoving in my face that she was better than me because I wouldn’t talk to her but she would still spend her money on me.

One would hurt. The other would only fuel the rage. And hurt is still something I feel as anger. So either way, I’d be angry.

I kept bringing it up. I was obsessed. What would she do?

My husband, my father, and my therapist all asked me why I was so hung up on it if I was going to feel the same way no matter what she did. Why dwell?

I honestly don’t know. But I was possessed by it. Part of me wanted to turn back the calendar and give myself more time to be ready. Part of me wanted to speed it up, know what would happen, and just move on from it.

So now, here we are. My birthday has passed.

She ignored it.

And people just keep asking how I feel about it.

At first, I lied. I said I didn’t care. It was what I assumed she would do. But when you say that while your eyes well with tears, no one believes you.

I did care. And it wasn’t what I assumed she would do. I genuinely thought she’d try to buy me back. I’m not for sale and it wouldn’t have worked, but I thought she’d try.

The day before my birthday was a Sunday and my brother came over to celebrate. He brought cake and a present and we talked. He told me how she calls him every week crying. Stupidly, I asked, “about me?”

No. About her cat. He has been very sick for a long time and the vet is keeping him alive even though he has no quality of life because that vet is a hack who knows she can keep making money off my mother.

My mother actually loves the cat. And my brother. But me? No. She’s never loved me. So she cries to the child she wanted about the cat she wanted and seemingly, has forgotten about the child she never wanted.

How do I feel about that?

The way she taught me to feel. Like I’m worthless. Like I’m nothing. Like there is something fundamentally unloveable about me because even the one person biologically predisposed to love me couldn’t find a way to do it.

The cat matters. My birthday didn’t. She’s my mother. She’s a cruel venomous monster but honestly, how am I supposed to feel?

I suppose there’s no “supposed to” in this situation.

I refused to celebrate Thanksgiving because of her and even I largely ignored my own birthday. I worked all day. I told my husband not to get me anything because I had screwed up our finances with my chaos-induced shopping and didn’t deserve a birthday.

If you don’t have a mother, do you still even have a birthday?

How do I feel about it?

For the first time in my entire life, I’m not angry. I’d give anything to be angry. The truth is harder to handle.

The truth is… it just hurts.