A letter I wrote to my mother that I never sent, six and a half years after our last hug. Dear mom, I used to cry. I used to cry so much that I just knew my pillow could feel my sorrow. I would spend my night rebuilding my life in my head, believing I did things I’ve never done, bringing people back into my life that weren’t actually there. I’ve spent countless nights wishing and praying and hoping that you’d experience an epiphany and realize that the void you’ve been trying to fill has all been in vain and that you’d come back. I’ve wasted so many moments imagining your embrace and the warmth of it. I’ve dreamed of my future milestones and forced your image beside me. But after wishing and hoping for so long and nothing happening, someone begins to realize something. Personally, I realized that you didn’t care. You had never made an attempt for me. So why should I hold out for you? You didn’t want me and never gave me a thought unless your mind was muddled and your thoughts entwined and tangled. So why should I waste a thought on you? I have people that love me, I don’t need you. I spent a long time thinking this way, feeling this way. Rage and frustration taking the place of my longing and grief. Now, I realize that you didn’t have much control. You were a prisoner in your own skin, an intruder in your own mind. I used to believe that there was a little part of you that knew what you were doing was wrong. That what you were consuming wasn’t helping you and that you loved me. I don’t think that anymore. I believe that you’re gone. Any memory I have of you smiling, laughing, and loving me is something I hold close and dear to me, but I’m wise enough to know that through your continuous addiction, the woman I loved and admired is gone. You brought me into this world but allowed me to be ripped away from yours. I remember how smart you were whenever you weren’t stumbling around our filthy kitchen, scraping for a fight. To think that your obsessive addiction, your ruined life, my stained childhood, was just a result of some entropic gene occurrence angers me. The idea that you were just a victim of a molecular accident lights a fire that frightens even me, that drives me to want to abolish that concept. Your tragic gene expression instilled a spark in me to study epigenetics to ensure that no nine year old girl has to drag her drunken mother back to their shabby duplex ever again. I need to eradicate the idea that young, beautiful people like you can be mutilated by the random entropy of the universe and our anatomy. Mom, you’ve been gone for years, but only recently have I found an unwavering grace that has allowed me to forgive you. Despite the screaming, the frustration, the daggered insults, the bodily harm, the cold, the filth, and the aching absence of you, I want you to know that it’s okay. I forgive you, and I want you to know that I don’t cry anymore.