This Mother’s Day, I didn’t feel like celebrating. I didn’t feel like posting pictures. I didn’t feel like writing something beautiful about her. For a brief moment, I felt something I never thought I would admit:
Life would be easier if I could forget her.
Not because I don’t love her. But because remembering her makes everything else feel… insufficient.
There was a time when I wrote about how much I loved my mother.
There were also moments—ones I never spoke about openly—when I felt frustrated, misunderstood, even distant.
Both were true.
And now, strangely, both feel irrelevant.
Because when someone is gone, your mind edits the story. It removes the friction and amplifies the warmth. It convinces you that what you lost was perfect.
But that’s not the truth.
The truth is—she was human.
And so was I.
My mother didn’t just love me.
She understood me in a way I never had to explain.
She translated the world for me.
When people expected too much, she softened it.
When I didn’t understand others, she filled the gaps.
When emotions got complicated, she simplified them.
I never realized how much of my life was being processed through her.
Because I never had to try.
And that’s where the real problem begins.
Now she’s gone.
And I’m left dealing with a world that doesn’t adjust itself for me.
People expect things.
They communicate differently.
They misunderstand.
They react without context.
And I find myself stuck in situations that should be simple… but aren’t.
Not because people are difficult.
But because I never learned how to deal with them without her.
This is the part no one talks about when you lose a parent.
You don’t just lose a person.
You lose:
your emotional interpreter
your safety net
your default understanding of how relationships should feel
And suddenly, everything feels harsher than it actually is.
I’ve caught myself getting frustrated with people.
Thinking:
Why can’t they just understand?
But that question is flawed.
Because the truth is—they were never supposed to understand me the way she did.
I just got used to a level of emotional clarity that the world doesn’t naturally offer.
So when I say
“I want to forget my mother”
What I really mean is:
I want to stop feeling the gap between what I had… and what exists now.
Because that gap shows up everywhere.
In conversations that feel incomplete.
In expectations that feel heavy.
In moments where I wish someone would just “get it” without me explaining.
But forgetting her would mean something else too.
It would mean forgetting:
the way she shaped how I think
the values I still operate on
the version of me that exists because of her
And that’s not something I actually want.
The uncomfortable truth I’m learning is this:
She didn’t just love me.
She made life easier for me in ways I never acknowledged.
And now, life isn’t harder because she’s gone.
It’s harder because I’m seeing what I never built while she was here.
Maybe this is what growing up actually means.
Not independence in the usual sense.
But learning to stand in situations where no one is translating things for you anymore.
Learning to:
say what you feel instead of expecting it to be understood
handle expectations without feeling attacked
accept that most relationships are imperfect, unclear, and sometimes disappointing
I still don’t have this figured out.
Some days I get it right.
Most days I don’t.
There are moments I feel strong.
And moments where I feel completely disconnected from people around me.
But one thing is becoming clear.
I don’t want to forget my mother.
I want to become someone who can carry what she gave me… without needing her to hold it together for me.
And maybe that’s the only way she truly stays. Not in memory. But in how I learn to live from here.
