“Mom, come watch the baby. I need to sleep.”
“Mom, stay with him tonight. We have an important dinner.”
“Mom, take him to the doctor. I have work.”
It was never, “Mom, thank you.” It was never, “Mom, how are you?” It was always, “Mom, I need you to do this.”
And I did it. Of course I did. I thought that’s how it worked. I thought that if I made myself indispensable, if I solved all their problems, eventually they would see me. They would value me. They would love me the way I needed to be loved.
But it didn’t work that way. The more I gave, the more they asked. The more I did, the more they expected. I became a resource, not a person. A solution, not a mother.
Robert wasn’t any different. When he and Lucy had their first child, the story repeated itself: calls at midnight because the baby wouldn’t stop crying and they didn’t know what to do; entire weekends watching the kids because they needed time for themselves.
They never paid me. They never really thanked me. They just assumed I would always be there, available, without a life of my own, without needs of my own.
And the saddest part is that I allowed that to happen. I trained my children to treat me that way. Every time I said yes when I wanted to say no. Every time I smiled when inside I was breaking. Every time I swallowed my pain so as not to inconvenience anyone.
I built this prison. I forged the chains myself.
I got up from the chair and walked to the window. Outside, the neighbors’ Christmas lights were starting to come on, bright colors trying to cheer up the winter darkness. But inside me there was only gray.
I thought about all the previous Christmases, all the times I had decorated this house alone, all the trees I had put up without help, all the dinners I had prepared while my children arrived late or didn’t show up at all.
I thought about last year when Amanda asked me to watch her three kids for four days because she and Martin were going on an anniversary trip. I accepted, of course. The kids got sick during those days—high fever, vomiting. I didn’t sleep for three nights, caring for them, taking them to the doctor, giving them medicine.
When Amanda returned, tanned and rested, the first thing she said to me was, “Mom, the kids look terrible. What did you feed them?”
She didn’t ask how I was. She didn’t thank me for staying up all night. She blamed me, and I didn’t say anything. I just lowered my head and apologized.
I also remembered when Robert borrowed money from me two years ago. He needed to pay a debt and assured me he would pay me back in three months. It was $2,000—almost everything I had saved for emergencies.
I gave him the money. Three months passed, six passed, a year passed. He never paid me back. And when I finally mustered the courage to ask him, he looked at me as if I were the selfish one.
“Mom, I’m in a difficult situation right now. I can’t give you that money. I thought you had just given it to me. You’re my mother. You’re supposed to help me without expecting anything in return.”
I was speechless, because he was right about one thing. I had always given without expecting anything in return. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It didn’t mean it didn’t make me feel used.
I went back to the table and opened the notebook again. I started writing a different list. It wasn’t a list of things I was going to cancel. It was a list of all the times I had been invisible.
