Volunteer Firefighter.

Imagine living in the middle of nowhere and there’s only one fire station in your precinct. Imagine the first time you’re at your house and it catches on fire. You’re panicking and scared but never fear! You dial 911 for the fire department. Fire truck pulls up. Whistles, sirens, uniforms, the whole nine. You come running up to them. 

“Thank GOD! The firefighters are here and now I can relax because I am safe and the fire can be put out.”

The firefighters go in and come out, almost immediately. 

“Ma’am this fire is a little too much for us to handle.” 

“What!? You’re literally firefighters! My house is currently on fire and I need you to do the literal only job you’re here to do!”

“Look ma'am yes. We are fully grown adults who purposefully signed up to be firefighters but to be honest, it was really something our partners wanted us to do because it was their dreams but unfortunately they are all paraplegics so they literally can’t. But we’re the only precinct in town so you got what you got and we’re trying our best. We’re just people after all.” 

Eventually the house burns. Somehow you manage to put it out by yourself or along with other rag-tag normies who took pity on you who are equally unqualified but gave you resources from their own fire precincts. But there is permanent damage. 

Then next time, maybe there’s another fire but you know you can’t call your  firefighters for anything too big so you begin to just put out as many fires yourself as you possibly can. And overtime, you think you’re getting good at putting out the fires when really you’ve just become used to the smoke damage that everyone can see except you. And others are always asking you why you don’t just call the fire station. But to be honest, you’ve completely forgotten there was a fire station and firefighters in your immediate vicinity. You see them at the grocery store and they’re cool or whatever but you just don’t see them as firefighters. Just other people in the town. 

But then imagine your house is REALLY on fire one day. 

To the point where you can’t even manage it. So you as a last resort are like…okay, I don’t have any other choice but to call the fire department. And you know they’re not gonna be helpful whatsoever but the operator is gonna transfer you there anyway. So they pull up once again. They see your house is on fire. They see you standing there despondent. And your like,

“Look, I know.. But can you please…” 

And they look at you and say 

“Actually, we’re severely underfunded and here to ask for a donation. And to be honest, seeing as we’re your literal fire department, the only one in town actually, you owe us the money to be honest. Especially when you think of everything else the firefighter has to do besides managing fires.” 

And you casually mention. That while you are invariably grateful for the value added to the town just by being a firefighter, the only thing I ever asked you to do was put out a fire. And then imagine the firefighter becomes defensive. 

“Well, I'm sorry I couldn’t be the perfect firefighter.” 

So you sigh and close the door and sit there in you burning house and try to figure out who else you can possibly call for help. But then you think to yourself…

“Well if the fucking firefighters can’t help me put out a fucking fire…then who can?” 

That’s what having a mother like mine is like. 

And the hardest thing is that it took me twenty years to come to the conclusion that as a mom she fucking owed me the type of bond a mom should have with her daughter. I always humanized her. I thought things about her that were actually extreme flaws were just casual quirks that made her her. And to be honest, in overly humanizing her, I dehumanized myself. Because I knew I gave her a hard time growing up I felt like I owed her the freedom from being my mom. I thought if I didn’t require anything of her, or ask her for anything, she would emote to me on a certain level because maybe she would then see me not as a burden but as a person worthy of seeing the value in. 

But that NEVER happens. What does happen is you struggle in your interpersonal relationships, self worth, boundaries, and you implode your life because you're too scared to be a burden to the woman who at the ripe age of thirty years old, after being married for almost a decade decided to lay down and have you. 

But the thing is. It’s not her fault. I don’t know ANYTHING about my mother other than second hand lore from my grandmother or my dad. And the scary thing is I can see her in myself. 

But I want to be nothing like her. Because i’ve more or less told her that I struggle because I can’t connect to people because I can’t connect to the very person who gave me life and it was more or less met with. 

“Well, otherwise you’d have no personality.” 

And I suddenly realized why people don’t speak to their parents, or parent. It’s almost never about childhood shit. Yes, the scars from that time will forever linger but it's almost after making excuse after excuse for their behavior and justifying it because you love them and they are your mom but then it’s like a conversation with them makes you realize. Holy shit. My mom is the same exact person to me at thirteen when she was dismissive about my emotions as she is now that i'm twenty-eight and dismissive about my emotions. 

And as a damn near thirty year old woman who wants to be a mom and wants to be nothing like my mom. I’ve got some decisions to make. 

Anyway, while I love my mom and understand, even more so now that I'm close to the age when she had me, that she, like me, is experiencing life for the first time.  

But what she fails to understand is that I never wanted her to be perfect. The things I love about her are the things other people tend to find so strange. 

But what I wanted was for her to see me as worthy of seeing her as who she was. I didn’t mind that she was who she was. Because she was a mom. What I minded was that she was my mother and that fact often seemed lost on her.