To my mother, who loves me.

I am incredibly close to my mum because she is an excellent mother. She swears and screams at me when I misbehave, and I swear and scream and cry at her when she is annoying as hell. I remember the first time I eloquently shouted "fuck off" at her in a fit of passion when we were driving in the car and she was probably discussing school work and I decided to untie years of etiquette that I shouldn't swear in her presence because it was the best way to let out how I felt. I think rather than being a moment of extreme disrespect for my parent it became another level of communication between us. Somehow it was a move into our more adult relationship. If being adult means speaking crudely in extreme situations. Or any situation. But it was certainly a move to being closer to my mother, which I feel happens each day, no matter how much we loath what the other may have done. Mum says that she feels safe in the knowledge that whatever awful thing we spit out at each other means absolutely nothing and that love still flows between us no matter what. I think she's correct. 

Why does my mum always know what to say? And yet, sometimes, when she asks for my help I am lost for words. Does she know me through some divine connection for having created me? Can she read my mind? 

My mum is the one person in this world who knows just as much about myself as I do. I tell her everything. I am not one to keep my secrets to myself, so to have another person who can absorb them for me is the best thing I've ever been given. I am never judged, never shouted at, never ignored when I go to my mother with my horrible, hurtful thoughts. I think she could be the only reason I haven't gone completely mad yet. 

I have the absolute comfort in knowing that wherever I am in the world even her voice over the phone can soothe my worried heart, my whirring mind, my fidgeting hands. She can cure my sickness if I lie next to her in her bed. She can take my biggest heartfelt concerns and store them away from my overthinking head when I tell them to her on sleepless, crying nights. 

There was probably a time when I distanced myself from my mother experimentally. Failing to recognise her importance, her vitality to my being. I don't think that everybody has the choice to come back to their mother in some intense and lovely attachment after those lonely teenage years spent rejecting her existence. I did have that choice, and now I sit with the pleasant acknowledgement that in my heart is some powerful, invisible line across two bodies that attaches me to her every hour of every day. It may be a little strange to suggest that perhaps my mother and I are soulmates, but I'm beginning to believe that the notion of such intrinsic connection to another person has little to do with romance and much more to do with the random and perfect compatibility of two people.