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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/kubrador on 2026-01-16 11:04:47+00:00.
obligatory this didn't happen today. about 3 weeks ago and ihaven't slept right since.
so mom passed in octber due to cancer. about 4 months from diagnosis to gone. she was 58 and im an only child. dad died when i was 9 so it was just us my whole life basically.
as i've been going through her stuff slowly, i found a box in her closet with old journals. around 15 of them going back to her 20s and thought it would be nice to read, like getting to know her as a young woman not just as my mom. i was partly hoping that i maybe find stuff about my dad.
i should have stopped after the first few.
she didn't want me :(, like she really didn't want me. she wrote about how dad wanted kids and she didn't but she "gave in" because she was afraid he'd leave. she made an appointment to end the pregnancy and didn't go through with because dad found out and cried and begged.
after i was born it gets worse since she wrote about "mourning who i was supposed to be." she wrote about holding me and feeling nothing. and there's an entry when i was around 3 that just says "i don't think i love him the way mothers are supposed to. something is wrong with me."
there's one from when i was 4 or 5 that i can't stop thinking about. she wrote that i asked her why she looked sad. she told me she wasn't. and i said "but your eyes are sad mommy." she wrote "i don't know how much longer i can keep doing this."
she also wrote about grieving dad but a few months after there's a line that said something like now there's no one watching so she doesn't know who she's supposed to be anymore. she called being my mom "performing."
i keep telling myself to stop reading them but every night i end up back in her closet at like 2 or 3am going through them again. i've read some pages so many times i have them memorized. i don't know what i'm looking for. proof it got better? proof she eventually loved me? i don't know man
i found one entry from when i was 16. i'd just gotten my license and i drove us to get ice cream at friendlys. she wrote that she was proud of me. i've read that one maybe 50 times and i keep it on my nightstand now. i sleep with my dead mom's journal next to my head because one entry about ice cream is the only evidence i have that she might have actually loved me.
that's crazy right... i lowk dont understand but she was like a really good mom. she showed up and helped with homework. she came to all my games and told me she loved me all the time. when i was going through a bad breakup she drove 4 hours to bring me soup and just sit with me.
was any of that real? was she sitting there with the soup thinking about the life she gave up for me?
the thing that really disturbs me is that i can't ask her since she's well dead. she took the answer with her and i'm never going to know if she actually loved me or just got really good at faking it.
i miss her so much and i'm so angry at her. i don't know how that works .
anyway. sorry this is so long. just needed to get it out of my head.
TL;DR: mom died. found her journals. found out she never wanted me and called raising me "performing." now i spend every night reading her old journals looking for proof she loved me and the only thing i found was one entry about ice cream.