While the title of this article is based on a quote that I found while scrolling through Facebook, it perfectly encompasses the sentiments that I've been trying to put into words for the past year and a half.

But this is not a positive article.

Truth be told, my mom was not the most positive influence. If anything, she created most of the negative aspects of my life and introduced me to many of the negative qualities that I continue to have today.

This is not an article about how my mother lovingly taught me the life skills that I needed to get through. This is not about how my mom was (and would continue to be) my best friend. This is about a lifelong abusive relationship. This is about how the things that she put me through, and how difficult it is to try and rebuild myself and begin life free from the shackles of a toxic "love."

Earlier in my life, everything seemed fine enough. I had a decently happy childhood, without many memorable incidents. When I was in my early teens, however, my mom took to drinking and constantly argued with my dad when she was drunk. These incidents were a staple of my early teen years. In addition to these, she didn't take care of herself like she should have, and I had to call an ambulance for her more times than I can count. This usually occurred when she didn't monitor her blood sugar levels, and then they got too high or too low to handle. Of course, none of this seemed to matter to her, since things continued like this for years.

After my parents separated, things got worse. Without my brother or my dad there to be yelled at by her, my mom turned to me as the target of her drunken ramblings. I took up numerous extracurricular activities at school to keep me from going home. Even when I was out, I had to call her or text her to make sure that she knew where I was and whom I was with at all times. I knew I could never be gone long, however, because I was the one who had to take care of her since she refused to take care of herself.

Nothing that I ever did was good enough for her.

I was constantly compared to my brother, who had been in some trouble, and she always told me that if I wasn't better, I'd end up like him. Despite every indication to the opposite, what with my good grades, heavy involvement in extracurricular activities and only one incident of trouble at school (ever), this was what I was constantly told.

I pushed myself to be the very best that I could be in order to try and make her proud of me, to try and show her that I was always the good, dependable, reliable, dutiful daughter that she always seemed to want. I let her take money from me that I had earned at my job for the sake of keeping us in a home with food on the table.

Then, after years of constant pressure and torment under the guise of "love," she's gone.

My entire life until then had been based on taking care of and doing anything that I possibly could to make her proud of me. My entire world revolved around her, but now she's gone.

I've spent the past year and a half trying to find myself and pick up the pieces of my life since the center of my world is gone. I was raised for 19 years in a toxic, emotionally abusive environment, and over a year and a half later, I'm still struggling to learn how to live without her.