My mother has treated me worse than anyone I know. My whole childhood, she refused to take me to the doctor if I wasn’t deathly ill. I had very painful conditions and a lot of anxiety disorders as young as 6 years old, but I was never diagnosed until 21. She treated my older half brother like a king while she ignored me and my two other full brothers and verbally abused my father. She drank at least a bottle of wine every night, and would insist she was a great mom because she couldn’t remember 99% of her nights. When she found out I was cutting myself and attempting suicide, she said I was only doing it to get back at her for no reason. I didn’t speak for four years, and she never noticed. When I ended up in an abusive relationship, I told her eventually that he had raped me and her immediate reaction was “ew, how could you let him do that?” If a friend betrayed me, it was another opportunity to say “I told you so.” When my brother died, she screamed at me every night that I was worthless. And now, living a thousand miles away from her and finally having escaped her horrible abuse, I miss her. I know logically that I don’t actually miss her, I miss the idea of having a mother that might love me, but she’s proven countless times that she doesn’t. I hate her, and I hate that I love her and want her to love me. My best friend’s mother is basically my actually mom, and now she has cancer and I never get to talk to her. It kills me inside that I never really had a mother. Just a woman in my house that drank until she abused my dad and myself.