I Hate My Mother : How I Discovered the Hidden Care Behind Her Control

 

I hate it when she controls me, yet I love her for refusing to let go.

It’s a contradiction, isn’t it? I hate my mother — but I love her more than I love myself. To anyone else, it sounds impossible, like trying to hold fire in one hand and ice in the other. But if you’ve ever felt this, if you’ve ever had the storm of a mother-son bond or been tangled in the web of family love, you know what I mean.

Hate. It’s a word too sharp for this feeling. Too jagged. But what else do you call it when her voice, a single sentence, can slice through you like the cruelest winter wind? When her judgment, heavy as a thousand weights, presses down on your soul until you can’t breathe? When she says, “You should know better,” and it’s like a hurricane of disappointment, flooding every room in your mind, drowning you in guilt?

I hate her when she picks me apart, like a sculptor chipping at marble — except instead of revealing beauty, all I feel are the cracks.

I hate her when she criticizes the way I live, the decisions I make, as if she could see into my future better than I can. She’ll look at me, eyes filled with a love so heavy it crushes me, and say, “I just want what’s best for you.” And in those moments, I hate her. Not because she’s wrong, but because she’s right.

But oh, how I love her. I love her with a love that burns hotter than all the anger, a love that stretches across lifetimes, deeper than any ocean I’ve ever known. I love her so much it hurts in places I didn’t know could feel pain. I love her in the way a tree loves its roots, the way the sun loves the earth, even when it scorches it.

Because no matter how much she pushes me, no matter how many battles we’ve fought with words that cut like knives, there’s this magnetic pull back to her. She’s the gravity that holds me together. When my world crumbles, it’s her arms I want to fall into, even though she’s the very reason I’ve crumbled before. It’s confusing, messy, and raw, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When I look at her, I see a thousand lifetimes of sacrifice etched into her skin. I see the late nights spent worrying about me, the dreams she let go of so I could chase mine. I see her hiding her own battles to make room for mine. I see the softness in her eyes after the storm of an argument, a softness that says, “I’ll never stop loving you, no matter what.”

She infuriates me, like a storm that keeps rolling in, relentless and wild, making me want to scream. But she’s also the calm after that storm, the light that breaks through the clouds when I’m drowning in darkness. She has a way of making me feel like a child again, as though no matter how grown I get, I will always be that small piece of her she’ll never let go.

I hate that she holds onto me so tightly, but I love her even more for never letting go.

It’s complicated, this love. It’s fierce and tender, harsh and forgiving, all at once. It’s the kind of love that rips you apart and stitches you back together in ways only a mother can. I hate her for knowing me better than I know myself. I hate her for loving me more than I deserve. But in the same breath, I would give up my own heart, my own soul, just to see her smile.

So yes, I hate my mother. But God, I love her. I love her more than the air I breathe, more than I’ve ever loved myself. And maybe, that’s what real love is — messy, imperfect, and unbreakable, even when it feels like it might shatter.

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