I’m not even born yet, and I know this because my body is curled up, cooped up in fluid. I’m upside down in a water globe. Though I still don’t fully exist, I already am a daughter. From outside the globe comes a voice, and the voice sells me on the idea of having a mother. It tells me what love is, but the words reach me before love itself does.

As I grow up, I listen to my mother tell stories from before me. They’re happy stories and sad stories, and sometimes they’re stories like this one:

A mother walks the hallways of her workplace carrying a big round belly bump, bigger every day, and a gloomy face. The bump is me. The mother, my mother, is 41 and she’s pregnant and doesn’t want to be. Walking the same hallways there’s another lady, who wants to be pregnant but isn’t. The lady looks at my mother’s belly—big—then at my mother’s face—sad—and asks if she can keep the baby once it’s born. The answer is a brisk no. This is ~my~ child, my mother growls. I am not wanted, but I am hers.

Every time my mother tells me this story, and she tells it often, I’m puzzled. Part of me feels it’s meant as a compliment: See, I let you stay. Another part feels it’s a complaint: See, you shouldn’t have come. I ask myself if my mother loves me. The more I ask the less I know the answer.

But they say No Love Is Greater Than A Mother’s Love.

My mother insists that we call her Mommy, all three of us, even as adults, and we all comply. We comply like children do; we paint our voices in childish tones to accent our acquiescence. Even after my eldest sister turns fifty, she doesn’t drop the Mommy. 

Mommy says I have to respect her because I only have one mother, whereas a mother can have as many children as she pleases. As a kid, I think that’s a very logical thing to say, even smart. It takes me years to realize this statement makes no sense except inside a water globe. It implies respect needs a reason to be spent. As if respect is rare currency. Children, on the other hand, are the opposite of rare currency in my home: Mommy can make as many children as she wants; even more than she wants, as was the case with me. In this house, children are expendable, and respect is expensive.

But they say Mother Is A Synonym for Selfless Love. 

I go away for college. In the first years, I often jump on a bus and ride fourteen hours to my hometown, where it sometimes pours so violently it feels the rain is still and I’m the one floating. I always get there on a Friday. I open the front door to see my mother walking toward me, smile wide open, arms wide open. The two of us meet in a hug, but the hug is awkward: my mother has one arm wrapped around my neck, pulling me closer; and the other arm against my belly, pushing in the opposite direction. There’s me and her, and, in the middle, there’s a forearm. Her forearm lowered, stiff, defensive, hidden between us, pokes against my belly button, making sure our bodies unmerge. Her forearm aborting the embrace. 

After the hug, there are pleasantries, then squabbles, then fights, then barbed words and poisonous looks. Then comes Sunday, with its good-bye hug. This hug has the forearm, too, but it also has tears and the promise we’ll get along better next time. I miss you already, I say. And mean it. Only I don’t yet know that what I miss is not the mother I just hugged. I miss the idea I bought of a mother. 

But they say There’s No Safer Haven Than A Mother’s Arms. 

I exchange yards and yards of emails with my mother, way more words traveling through ethernet cables than through the phone. Every family has its language to express love, even when love is imbalanced, even when love is insufficient. In my family, the syntax involves reaching out to my mother for advice or reassurance. This is the correct form to express affection even—especially—after I leave home. Argument with a roommate: Mommy will know a good comeback. Stage fright in school: Mommy will know a technique. Heartbreak: Mommy will know he’s not worth my love.

Good news is something else. Good news is met with either exhilaration (This is my girl, exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark), or apathy (mostly silence). I hope for exhilaration every time. 

When I land my first job, as a trainee, I’m twenty-two and beaming. After my first day at the office, I write her a short email that starts with Hi Mommy, and chronicles the exciting world I just stepped into: people with sweet eyes, fridges stocked with sparkling water, the newfound feeling that I wasn’t out of place. Her reply comes ten minutes later: Can’t read this right now. I’m too tired from my own day job.

This isn’t the last time I share news of growth, nor is it the last time it is met with apathy. For years to come, I will still expect to be loved by a mother who taught me not to love myself. No matter how much the world opens up to me, I’ll still be viewing it from inside a water globe.

But they say A Child Can Outgrow A Mother’s Lap, But Never Her Heart. 

My mother never says I’m sorry. Never I’m sorry for not picking up your calls, never I’m sorry for forgetting your birthday, never I’m sorry for trying to kick sixteen-year-old-you out of the house. Never I’m sorry, this was a tough week, I just need to be alone tonight, I hope you understand.

She never says I love you, either. Not to me or to my sister or to my brother. But she often accuses me, and only me, of not loving her, and in fact, of hating her. I don’t want to look in the mirror and face a daughter who hates her mother. I want the mirror to show me the perfect daughter. I know I can be this daughter; I so badly need to be this daughter. So I make a constant and conspicuous effort to display affection for my mother, to the point of devotion. 

I cut off contact with my father at her command, then I phone her on Father’s Day and thank her for shouldering the dual role.

When nothing produces the three words I so need to hear, I blame anyone but her. I mostly blame myself. For too long, I read this relationship through wishful thinking: I so desperately want to be loved by my mother, I believe I am.

Besides, they say A Mother Is the One Who’s Still There When Everyone Has Deserted You.

Look at this water globe. Closer, now: look at this house, this family, this girl. This girl is me. I live my whole life inside a water globe and I don’t know it’s not normal. I see the world from inside the globe and I don’t realize the water distorts light. I don’t ask myself why all lines are warped.

Instead, I know this: a mother’s love for a daughter is the biggest there is, and if the one I got was a meager breadcrumb of love, then I can only expect less from everyone else. At every moment. While I’m ringing the bell at a friend’s place, while I’m hitting send on a work email, while I’m swiping my card at the bar—I expect the person on the other end to reject me. I expect people to say I shouldn’t have come, and to write me painful replies, and to push me away.

But it doesn’t happen.

It takes me thirty years to notice that no one’s pushing me away as much as my mother does.

It takes me thirty years to notice that, in my story, a mother is the one who deserts me when everyone else is still there.

It takes me thirty years to understand that my whole life I’ve seen the world through a distorted perspective, one that left me unable to tell a trope from the truth.

It takes me thirty years to break out of the water globe.

I wake up, and I email my mom. I write: Mommy, we’ve always been friends. But I feel our relationship has caused me pain, and can we talk it out? I write: This isn’t an attempt to make you feel guilty. I write: I want to improve our relationship, little by little. I sign off: a kiss, with affection. She replies: I understand your point of view. Best, Silvia.

I call my family. I say, I think Mommy maybe, probably, definitely harmed me. They remind me this is not possible, because A Mother’s Love, The Biggest Love, Only Moms, Be Thankful, Sacred Treasure, The Heart of A Mother, A Blessing, Eternal Love, Unconditional Love.

Their words splinter in the air and crumble to the ground before they reach me. Their words say love, yet they aren’t made of love. Their words are just glitter.

As I walk away from them, their tiny voices muffled in the background, I feel the air touch my skin for the first time. I’m not marshy; I’m not trudging in water; I’m not inside the globe anymore. I’ve arrived, and I am the only one out here. 

I go for a walk, just before dusk, and I see the late afternoon sun painting the façades. The hard, yellow light comes in filtered through the geometry of the city, then lands in thick, angled stripes that climb from the asphalt to the sidewalk to the wall. I stare at the sun-striped wall. I see straight lines run perfectly parallel to each other. That is how I know I’m free, but lonely, but free.