She’s not the way I imagined her.

It took me a long time to say this out loud, but today I’ve accepted it: my mother is not the person I once imagined her to be.

As a child, she left me with my grandmother while she lived her own life with a man who was a stranger to me. Back then, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t the priority.

I must have been around 11 when my great-grandmother passed away, and I finally went to live with my mother. We tried to live together like mother and daughter, but in truth, we were more like strangers. That bond never really formed between us.

There wasn’t the closeness I had always dreamed of. We were just existing next to each other, not really for each other.

Then my younger sister was born. And inside me, the feeling of being an outsider only grew stronger. The more I tried to find my place, the more I just wanted to run away.

My stepfather didn’t avoid alcohol. The tension became part of everyday life—something I couldn’t even put into words as a child, I could only feel it. So many times I wished my grandmother were still alive, so I could just go back to her… but I knew that was no longer possible.

There I was at 11 years old, full of questions no one ever answered.

As the years passed, I slowly came to accept my situation. I began thinking like an adult while still just a little girl. I learned to stay quiet, to adapt—and in the process, I realized something that hurt deeply: I didn’t really have a place there. I wasn’t present as a child… I was just someone there—like a stranger in my own family.

I never truly developed a good relationship with my mother. And even as the years went by, that distance remained between us. To this day, we barely speak. Unfortunately, I was never really given the chance to have my mother present in my life as a true mother.

On Mother’s Day, it wasn’t her who came to school—it was my grandfather. The teachers knew what the situation was. It didn’t need much explaining… it was visible from the outside that something was missing.

Later, we had to move, farther away from the place I once called home. My school stayed the same, but everything else changed. I was never particularly outgoing to begin with, but after that, I became even more withdrawn. It felt like I was retreating deeper into my own world, trying to build something safe for myself there.

Time passed. My graduation… I was 14. It was held at my grandmother’s place. Somehow, the day went by quietly, without any real emotion.

Meanwhile, my younger sister was born. And I… felt even smaller than ever before. As if I was being pushed further and further into the background.

I started high school, but neither fitting in nor studying went the way they should have. I couldn’t find my place. I failed… and then changed my field of study.

I felt like I was always falling behind. Like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

But back then, I didn’t understand that the problem wasn’t me. The group of people I fell in with wasn’t the best. I couldn’t see it clearly then, but now I know they had a negative influence on me.

Parties, shallow friendships… people who have completely disappeared from my life by now.

Things weren’t any easier at home. The constant arguments, disagreements, tension… all of it weighed even more heavily on my already fragile state of mind.

After a while, I started to feel like I wasn’t good at anything. Like maybe it would be better if I didn’t exist at all.

I couldn’t find my place. Not within myself, and not in my surroundings. It felt like I was a stranger in my own life.

I often went back to my grandmother’s place. Something always pulled me there. Maybe because at least there, I felt a little safe. But at my mother’s… that feeling was never there. It didn’t feel like home.

My friends slowly disappeared too. A few people remained that I spoke to sometimes, but nothing was like it used to be.

And then came that point… which I now know I should never have reached.

I turned to drugs…

Many people say weed isn’t a drug. But for me, it was. Because it changed me. Completely.

I wasn’t myself anymore. I didn’t recognize who I had become.

I was 16…

And even though I wanted to study and do better, somehow I always drifted away from the path I had imagined for myself.

No matter which direction I tried to go, something always seemed to pull me the wrong way.