I guess I'm gonna use "biological mother" for this one. I feel like it's correct: she's my mother by blood, no longer by bond, but, at least for me, there is no one else in place of her.

my family members have all been there for me, longtime family friends offering their condolences, all of them saying the same thing when I say I've been no contact with my bio mom: just give her one chance. they mean well, but deep in my brain I can predict how this stuff goes.

I met with her for what is probably the last time until... I don't know. just to know for sure, that the way we go is separate, after all this time. that maybe, somehow, I can be proven wrong about my intuition for once in my fucking life.

she still treats me as a helpless child, but when asked if she still considers me her own, fails to answer.

she still insists that I can't transition this young and I will grow to regret it, and begs me to stop taking HRT because it's dangerous for my health. I love these changes. I know what comes next. I don't care what you think.

she still cries on about how all her efforts as a single mom to bring up two children have all turned up for nothing. that's only if you think it is. and that's the path of thinking you've chosen.

she admits that on the night I left she was looking for a way to end her own life and the only reason she hasn't to this day is because she has to take care of my brother. ...again, get a therapist. you need help, but I'm not responsible for getting you it or fixing it.

if people were like movie villains, black and white, they would be easier to hate. my bio mom would be easier to hate.

I wouldn't see her in the food I cook. the ones she taught me to make so well I know them by instinct rather than recipe. the ones that come out tasting just like she made them.

I wouldn't remember resting my head on her shoulder, whenever I'm tired and taking the train or bus home after a long night. the ones she taught me to take and ride alone when I was younger.

and most of all, I wouldn't look in the mirror, my pictures, my hair, my eyes, my hands, my body, and silently admit to myself that I look like a version of my bio mother when she was my age.

I'll never understand how the broken pieces of life I throw out to sea always resurface and shimmer in ways that make them enticing.

if she doesn't want to be in my life anymore, that's okay. I won't have any parental figures, but that's okay. I won't have someone to bring my achievements to, but that's okay. I'll have to do all of that for myself, being proud, dishing discipline, picking myself up when it's rough. sometimes it's nice to have that external validation/push/whatever, but it's not a guaranteed thing now. I never expected life to be easy for me. it never was. the day I realized I was trans, I knew it was going to get insurmountably harder, yet I chose this path anyway.

I haven't been proven wrong about my intuition. I've been given one thing: certainty. I feel certain I will move on without her.