Denice Marciner

I didn’t realize I had an absent mother for a while. I honestly didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. My dad was my parent, he married my stepmom(which is another story for a different date – she’s literally the best). But my dad had done a good job of allowing me to form my own opinion. And I think I chose to disassociate. I truly didn’t realize I was abandoned by my mother until I was 19 and I was damn near homeless. By this time my dad and step mom were divorced and my relationship with my dad was almost non-existent. And my step mom was no longer around.

As a child, I would see my biological mother in passing when I would go back home to visit, but it was like running across a distant cousin that you say hi and bye to in passing. And even in these moments I still didn’t FEEL like I was missing anything.

As I got older, people around me started asking me more about my mother. And for some reason every time they asked, I would get teary eyed. It wasn’t because I wanted her, or missed her, or needed anything from her. I was pissed I had no answers for the questions I was being asked. And I wasn’t sure why I was being asked, did people see something in me that just made them wonder where my mother was? These questions made me look back at the times when I was younger and see the times when I needed a mother and masked so much everyone thought I had everything under control. I was afraid of my dad growing up, and there was only so much I could talk to him about. I couldn’t talk about boys, getting my period, being molested, being one of the only two black kids at school. I wasn’t an outspoken person when I was young, and definitely not with my father. I spoke with my older step-sister but even then I could only speak so much to her, because again she didn’t look like me, we couldn’t relate on a certain level.

Everything above this line was written when I was in my 20’s. Now that I’ve made it to 30 I’ve realized the first time I noticed I didn’t have a mother wasn’t when I was 19. It’s been engrained in me since birth. While I’ve never used being a daughter without a mother as an excuse for anything in life – it still doesn’t stop the fact the signs were there.

Difficulty with women, with abandonment, with processing emotions, having emotions. It was always there. The first notice isn’t one specific thing it’s everything. And there are no words to describe it because you don’t even know the extent of the loss.