Becoming a woman is realizing that you are becoming your mother.

My mother is an incredibly beautiful woman, aging with grace, year after year, though timidly unaware of said grace.

She gazes into the bathroom mirror and analyzes her exterior. Sighs over sparse flecks of gray that sprinkle her head. Moisturizes her face in upward strokes, careful not to massage down in fear that she may find it sagging one day. Worries that the bald patch at the nape of her neck will spread into something serious and irreversible.

On her best days she is keen of her beauty—the days in which she is done up for church in her flowy, colorful dresses. She never leaves the house without the glimmer of her earrings. She spritzes her eau de parfums onto her wrists and behind her ears. A rich scent of rouge follows her around the house, leaving a trace of her wherever she steps foot.

Becoming a woman is realizing that you are becoming your mother. 

I spray similar french perfumes of less expense onto my pressure points before an evening out. Earrings have always been an essential for me, the difference they make is drastic and I realize this more and more with age. I dig inside of my mother’s closet and swipe the clothes that she has silently orphaned over decades. I unknowingly shop for similar blouses and shoes she wore in photos she shows me of her in her 20’s. She smiles giddily over the memories, a visible longing for her prime. The photos display an acute resemblance between us. Same big almond eyes, full lips, button nose, hollowed cheekbones. 

I have little to no control over what I adopt from my mother. I take from her without realizing that I am doing it. I even take the things that I have no want to.

How does such a beautiful woman possess so many awful parts? Parts of herself that she hides from the world and stores in a vintage jewelry box for me to open once she arrives home after a long day.

She is quick to anger. Her rage has no bounds. She is irrational. She is self-consumed, unable to step outside of her own perspective. She is prideful and uncontrite. 

My mother yells as often as she counts her wrinkles and gray hairs.

My mother creates narratives that live in her head and hold no place in reality, even if the facts are staring her in the face—just like she stares at her own and picks it apart, unable to see the objective truth of what stands before her.

My mother is the center of her universe where she can do no wrong and is forever the victim. A victim of those around her—a victim of time and age.

My mother apologizes for her hurtful actions as many times as she says that she is beautiful. 

Becoming a woman is realizing that I am becoming my mother—

Not only because I dress how she once did or because I have her features, but because her behavior has become my own. Her patterns live within me, something I cannot expel or separate myself from.