My Mother

I find myself becoming more and more like my mother. 

It's a mixed feeling. Sometimes it's good but I can't help but cringe when someone points it out. I grew up promising my reflection I'd rather be shot than spend a day as my mother. Becoming my mother has been off limits. 

And now as I sit here, smoking a cigarette on my computer, letting the smoke circle around me like a predator, the lights dim, my back hunched, checking the time only to see its 1am... I realised. It's inevitable. 

I remember walking into her study back in the 2000's and she would be smoking her cigarette typing away to her online friends or doing work. Back hunched, lights dim, cigarette in her hand. Just like I am right now.

I remember seeing the way she walked, hips swayed, foot crossed over the other. I see the way I walk. Hips swaying, feet crossed over the other in a swift feminine movement.

I look at the way her body curves, how I used to dream for them as a girl, and now as I talk to my reflection I see the same curves that I died for, except now I despise them. Isn't it ironic? 

Loving them on someone else but once you get it, you want the greener grass.

The more I end up looking, sounding and acting like my mother the more it hurts when she insults me.

Everyone else can see our similarities like looking at a reflection of each other. So when she calls me fat, ugly, disproportionate... is she only doing so to insult herself? 

Is her confidence completely diminished?

Is she actually talking to a mirror and not me?

Maybe so.

I love my mother.

But she doesn't love herself.