I am not my mother.

I looked in the mirror today and I saw my mother.

I haven't seen my mother in over two years. I haven't spoken with her in two months. I haven't even texted her in over a month.

My mother and I have never really gotten along. People claimed it was because we were too much alike, which has always terrified me. My mother is everything that I don't understand, that I don't want to understand.

She married at twenty-three, had her first child at twenty-six, never finished college, lived in the same town for over thirty years.

I've never wanted to marry. I'm twenty-nine and have zero inclination to date, let alone spend the rest of my life with anyone. I'm terrified of having children and if I were ever to get pregnant, which is only going to happen if I somehow end up mothering the Jewish Messiah, I'd probably terminate it.

I'm not a good person. I don't believe in God, only vaguely subscribe to the idea that there might be some higher power, but if there is, it's almost certainly not how religion says it is. I'd kill someone for too many reasons to count, and anyone who would murder someone in anything but self-defense is a monster, right?

My mother is, on the surface, the perfect conservative Christian wife and when I saw her looking back at me in the mirror, I wanted to cry.

Why?

Because my mother is a schizophrenic who is only intermittently medicated, a hypochondriac, and emotionally manipulative. I know a physical resemblance is only that and doesn't mean I'm actually turning into my mother, but that's been my greatest fear since I understood what my mother's mental illness is.

I don't want to be my mother.

I want to be me, whoever that might be.