Somebody's Daughter

by Ashley C. Ford

Or worse, I’d be drawn into her fantasy that we were already close. If my mother and I shared anything without having carefully considered it, it was this undying ember of a dream that we will someday, somehow find ourselves reaping the bounty of a blooming mother-daughter bond, the roots of which we both refuse to tend in the meantime.

It was never my intention to hurt or frustrate my grandmother, but it felt so important she know, that all my family know, I was not coming back because I was not the same person, and I could not, would not pretend. Really it was for their own good. I complicated the narrative they wanted to live by, and it didn’t bother me until it bothered them. I didn’t want to run from my family. I wanted to be who I was, and I didn’t know if that person fit among them anymore. I was afraid to find out that I wouldn’t. My lessons hadn’t always come the way I wanted or hoped, but I was not ashamed of how I had changed, and I was determined to remember that. Sometimes, when I was with my family, I forgot.