I'm Glad My Mom Died

by Jennette McCurdy

My life purpose has always been to make Mom happy, to be who she wants me to be. So without Mom, who am I supposed to be now?

The birthday wish is the most power I have in my life right now. It’s my best chance at control.

Mom reminisces about cancer the way most people reminisce about vacations.

How could I not have known better? What a stupid idiot. How could I have not sensed what Mom needed? That she needed all of us to be serious, to be taking the situation as hard as we possibly could, to be devastated. She needed us to be nothing without her.

The fragility of Mom’s life is the center of mine.

I can tell by their eye rolls that they think I’m bossing them around, but it doesn’t feel like bossiness to me. It feels like desperation. I want order. I want peace.

I don’t know how to trumpet like an elephant, purr like a kitten, or grunt like a monkey and frankly, I don’t want to. Let’s leave the animal sounds to the animals.

The emotions are the problem, the words aren’t. Forcing emotions into a thing is uncomfortable in the first place, but then putting on those emotions for other people to see feels gross to me. It feels weak and vulnerable and naked. I don’t want people to see me like that.

I don’t like to be observed. I like to do the observing.

hampsome.

Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.

Maybe people go to church because they want things from God. And they keep going while they’re wishing and yearning and longing for those things. But then maybe once they get those things, they realize they don’t need church anymore.

Who needs God when you’ve got clear mammograms and a series regular role on Nickelodeon?

I’m desperate to feel close with her, but also desperate for that closeness to be on my terms, not hers. I want her to know me for who I’m becoming. I want her to allow my growth. I want her to want me to be me.

I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with. Because once the context ends, so does the friendship.

I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.

the more I recognize that the body is hardly a reliable reflection of what’s going on inside it.

It’s a way of showing that I have value outside the box I’ve been put in.

Finally the service lets out. Hallelujah. This is the closest I’ve gotten to believing in God all day.

winodka

I believe him. He’s so sure. And an umless man isn’t sure of something for no reason. An umless man is sure of things that he is sure of.

“SLIPS ARE TOTALLY NORMAL. WHEN you have a slip, it’s just that. A slip. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you a failure. The most important thing is that you don’t let that slip become a slide,”

shame keeps us stuck. It’s a paralyzing emotion.

Is Dwayne Johnson God?

Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them? Especially moms. They’re the most romanticized of anyone. Moms are saints. Angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it’s like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.