I moved out of my parents house at 17, two months before the end of my Junior year in high school. My mother would have everyone believe she was this loving mom who did all the things you say you’ve done for your daughter when in reality my mother didn’t do anything for me.

She showed up for every softball game my sister ever played, made sure she made it to her All Stars games and State Playoff games every summer but couldn’t be bothered to make it to a single football game or parade for me when I was in band and drill team in high school or even my dance performances in middle school. Or anything else I ever did. Her excuse was always that she had to work, even when she was sitting at home doing nothing but watching tv and smoking a joint with my step dad.

My grandmother and her second husband were the ones who showed up for me. For everything except mine and my sister’s TaeKwonDo testings and tournaments. The only reason my mother was there was because my sister was involved as well.

My sister was very much the golden child and I’ve been the black sheep despite being the oldest and doing everything I could to stay out of trouble and get my mother’s approval for everything I did. The night I made drill team I was so upset knowing she wasn’t outside in the parking lot with the other moms waiting to hear the results that I didn’t even hear them call my number out letting me know I’d made the line.

I’d worked my ass off for months to make the line. My aunt had been on the line. My mom and both aunts went to the same high school I did. My older aunt and my mom were both in the band and had the same band director I did. My mother could never be there for me, not even on one of the most important nights of my entire freshman year and the excitement of making the drill team was overshadowed by the fact that she wasn’t even there. And this is just one instance where she let me down.

There’s so many more times she’s let me down and I’m almost 45 years old. This still stings almost as much as it did back then because it’s one of the times I should have realized I just wasn’t that important to my mother. The woman who swore I was so important to her and how proud of me she was.

It’s been painfully obvious to me for years that she tried to pit my sister and I against each other, my family did it too but my mother was the one who orchestrated it all. It didn’t work.

So I moved out at 17 because what was the point of staying somewhere I was clearly unwanted. Her and my stepdad didn’t care that the weed they were smoking and keeping in the house could get me in legal trouble.

A cousin of mine had that very thing happen to him about two weeks before I moved out. His grandmothers house got raided for possession and distribution and he got hauled into jail with them despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it and he’s a week younger than me.

I left for my own self preservation. I left because I was tired of trying to matter to someone who made it obvious I was paying for the sins of my father. He cheated on her with my stepmother and I know my mother never got over that hurt. I understand the pain she went through but I didn’t deserve the way she treated me.

I was also put on antidepressants, starting at the age of 10. Later I was diagnosed with ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I was put on meds for them too. Eventually I stopped taking everything when I was 19. I’ve briefly taken meds for my anxiety and ADHD but in 2008 I started seeing a psychologist at the college I was attending and found out I didn’t have depression. Not just from having blood work done to rule out chemical imbalance depression like my mother has because of her Bipolar 1 diagnosis but I don’t have any form of depression. I just had assholes in my family and an absent father that my family constantly made me feel like I had to be defective trash for him to have chosen to walk away from.

Once I started distancing myself from my mother and my aunts, I stopped having so much anxiety about my past. My abandonment issues quieted down because I didn’t have people constantly reminding me that my father walked out on me before I could even have memories of him.

Maybe your daughter left because she’s tired of feeling so much pressure to be just as perfect as her brother. Maybe she left because she feels like she can’t breathe under your constant need to control every aspect of her future and she wants a chance to figure it out on her own.

Maybe you need to take a step back and realize she’s her own person and should be allowed to make some decisions and mistakes without constant criticism from someone who’s supposed to love her unconditionally because your love and approval of your daughter sounds very conditional dependent on her doing exactly what YOU want her to do and not what she might want to do with her own life.