my mother's daughter

many times i feel that i am not the daughter mom hoped i'd turn out to be. she likes secret sharing sessions (i'm too secretive), girlie afternoons (i like being alone), food swapping at meal time (don't eat off my plate). She is day and i am night. she wants to be oprah and i want to hide in a hole. you feeling me?

she always (to this day) excitedly tells people that i'm her daughter - i stand by the side smiling sheepishly as she introduces me to strangers. she tells the taxi driver, the hawker, the butcher who doesn't speak english. and i'm like "who the f*ck cares!" ... sigh ... she does.

i grew up wanting to be her, but as i developed my own character, i wanted to be different. mom and i have not found our middle ground (yet) and we get on each other's nerves a lot (and i MEAN a lot) but i would defend her with my life. it's like (and i mean this in jest) no one bullies my mom ... except me : ) everybody else better speak to her with respect or else i'll keropok you nicely.

i have problems showing mom that i love her. i do, i really do, love her. and i appreciate her so much, but i dun have the spoken words for it. i wish i could write her, but mom hates reading ... unless it's celebrity gossip. i'm sure we'll see the light in time ... else we have "golden girls" moments to look forward to. trust me, you don't want to stick around for that.

i got this from discovery.com. i think it's just so freaking true.

When you're five, she's a goddess. You smear your face with her lipstick and model her earrings and high heels, wanting to be just like mommy. That's the way it is until you're about thirteen, when she suddenly becomes the most ignorant, benighted, out-of-touch creature on the planet, and you can't get far enough away from her. Your primary form of interaction for the next five years or so will be a single word, "Mooooooooooooommmmmmm!" And then, somewhere between your twenties and your thirties, if you're lucky, she becomes your best friend again.

Mothers and daughters who struggle with their relationships as adults often repeat the old patterns of control and rebellion from childhood, says Dr. Tracy. "They can't hear each other. The daughter will hear the mother say something and she'll think, 'She wants to control me.' And the mother is saying something that absolutely is controlling, but is not meant to be." Meanwhile, when the daughter speaks, the mother hears nothing but anger — in a comment that does indeed convey anger but also "I love you, and can't we do this differently?"

No relationship is quite as primal as the one between a mother and her daughter. "It's the original relationship, and it's also a relationship that has been sentimentalized but not honored," says Lee Sharkey, Ph.D., who directs the Women's Studies program at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she teaches a popular course in mother-daughter relationships. "Women grow up and our energy is largely turned toward men, but the original love relationship is with a mother. If we as daughters don't acknowledge that, we're closing ourselves off from a great source of power and fulfillment and understanding of ourselves.