Confession:

 It happened again today. A friend posted on Facebook that tomorrow marks six months without her mother. 
And the voice in my head said "Ha. 6 months? Try SEVENTEEN YEARS!!"
Missing my mother only gets harder.
Is it harder because I grew up on my own, the kid whose father and stepmom couldn’t be bothered to raise her?
Is it harder because I’ve been trying to navigate the waters of being a strong, smart, independent woman making her way through graduate school, marriage and chronic illness on my own?
Who knows. It’s not like the answers would help anything.
God knows I’m grateful…for the mothers of two of my closest high school friends who did their best to step in, for my former boss who’s shoulder I cried on just two days ago.
My best friends’ moms were there to fix my hair for prom, to make me cups of tea when my car was at the mechanic, to share a cup of coffee with me while I realized I needed to break up with the boy I thought I’d marry, to catch my tears when one of my dearest friends committed suicide. My former boss taught me everything I know about professionalism, critiqued the syllabus of the first class I taught, exclaimed over my engagement ring, held my hand after my Crohn’s diagnosis. 
Grateful doesn’t even start to describe how I feel about these women – I’m not sure I’d be alive without them.
But at the end of the day….none of them were able to make it to my wedding. Odds are none of them will be there at my doctoral graduation. Because they’ve got their own lives, their own kids, and I’m the stray they never planned to take in. And every single one of them would rage at me for comparing myself to a stray animal….but, I still don’t have a mom, y’know?
And the more time goes by, the more it hurts, and the only person who seems to really get that is my mom’s sister. Who was pregnant with her only child when my mom died.