The Push

by Ashley Audrain

She tried very hard to be the woman she was expected to be. A good wife. A good mother. Everything seemed like it would be just fine.

“She should want me. I’m her mother. She should need me.”

A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.

These things became too heavy and too hurtful, habitual abuses in what once felt like the safest place in the world.

She had a remarkable ability to make me hate myself.

I remembered that feeling, that tick of metronome that never quite leaves your hips when the weight of your baby is against you.

I was missing so much of her life.

“Why did she leave me?”