Inheritance and Rebellion

By Breckyn Forcey

My mother
taught me how to disappear
without leaving the room.

Taught me silence
is a survival skill,
sharp as a steak knife
hidden in a drawer
she never opened.

She called it love
when she left.
Called it sacrifice
when it was just
forgetting.

I learned early
how to parent
my own panic,
to braid my own hair
with hands that shook
from holding in too much.

She was always
too tired,
too busy,
too broken
to see
how I was crumbling
beneath the weight
of her absence.

But she had time
for mirrors.
Time for men
who left their names
on our bills
but never on my birthdays.
Time to make herself
the victim
in a story
she kept rewriting
until I stopped
recognizing myself in it.

My mother
loved herself
like a full-time job.
And I was the intern,
unpaid, unseen,
expected to clean up
her emotional messes
before anyone noticed.

She taught me
how to apologize
for my own existence
before I even had words
to name it.

How to say
“I’m fine”
when I was fractured.

How to grow up
like a weed in the sidewalk,
unwanted
but persistent.

People talk about mother-daughter love
like it’s universal,
a birthright.

But some of us
were born
into fires
and taught
to call it warmth.

Some of us
learned to walk
on eggshells
so well
we forgot
what solid ground felt like.

Some of us
memorized her moods
like survival manuals,
played therapist
before puberty,
cried into pillowcases
that still smelled
like her perfume
and broken promises.

She called me
ungrateful
when I wanted more
than survival.
She called me
dramatic
when I named the pain
she pretended
was love.

But I am done
naming my bruises
after her moods.

I am done
shrinking myself
to fit inside
the hollow version of daughter
she made room for.

Because I am not
a second chance
she never asked for.
I am not
her mirror,
or her therapist,
or the Band-Aid
she kept pressing
over wounds
she never treated.

I am not
the fire escape
for her regrets.

I am not
the explanation
for her absence.

I am not
her.

And that,
that is the real miracle.
That I grew up
without roots
and still found a way
to bloom.
That I turned
neglect
into language.
Loneliness
into a lineage
of survival.

That I am here,
whole,
honest,
hurting,
but still standing.

My inheritance
was silence.
My rebellion
is voice.

And I will never
teach my own daughter
to confuse abandonment
with love.