“What is the meaning of life? Someone please tell...”

“Nicole! Get down here. You didn’t clean up your mess!”

I put down my journal and jumped off my bed. I needed to go down and clean up whatever “mess” my mom was talking about. I probably left the knife that I used to put peanut butter on my sandwich with in the sink and that’s what she’s calling “my mess.” Anyway I’m kind of glad that she called me because I never know what to write in this stupid journal anyway. My grandma got it for me for my birthday. I just picked it up and wrote in it today. My birthday was 7 months ago. I keep insisting to her that I am not a writer, because whenever she sees me she always asks, “Have you written in your journal yet?” She always tells me that anyone has potential to be a writer, but only if they truly believe they can. I guess that’s my problem I don’t think I am good at anything. I don’t really do anything special. Everyone always sings or dances or plays this sport or that sport. It’s like those times on the first day of school or something when the teacher thinks it’s a good idea to go around the room and share something that you do with the whole entire class. I wonder if the teacher knows that mostly everyone hates doing that and dreads it. But anyway it’s like that; I never know what to say. I just make up what I say most of the time, like “I love to bake.” And everyone just looks at you and then the teacher will ask some follow up question that is even stupider. “What is your favorite thing to bake?” And then I lie again. I hate baking. I feel like I hate everything. I don’t though. My dad always used to tell me that it sometimes takes people their entire life to figure out what they love to do. He says, “That is why some people switch majors 4 or 5 times in college. That is another thing I hate. How should I know what I want to do? I am in 11th grade in high school! How am I expected to know what I want to do for the rest of my life? I cannot stand when people ask me that.

I got down the stairs and I started to clean up my mess. My mom was sitting at the kitchen counter eating a bowl of cereal. She just looked up at me and didn’t say anything. I guess she was mad at me. Or maybe she was mad at my brother. He’s always doing something that gets on her nerves. Anyway I started a little conversation with her to see if I was the one she was mad at or not. “I washed the dishes, Mom.” Nothing. “Do you need me to do anything else?” All I got was a “nope.” I knew she was mad at me, but I didn’t know if I felt like starting with her. I knew that if I did I would be in a fight with her until I apologized because apparently she is incapable of apologizing. I needed to though; I was sick of her always being mad at me for no reason and then in an hour saying, “Everything’s fine.” And act like it’s all perfect. So I went for it.

“Mom I am sick of fighting with you over the stupidest things. I just want to have a normal mother-daughter relationship with you like every other girl I know. Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you, stop comparing yourself to other girls, it’s not going to get you anywhere in life.”

“No, you know what’s not going to get me anywhere in life, not having a mother that I can talk to. When was the last time you actually asked me how my day was? Or anything like that? We don’t even pretend anymore that we care about each other’s days.”

She just gave me that same look that she always gives me, and then she just looked back at her phone and didn’t answer. I stood there like an idiot for around five minutes waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. I went back up to my room. At around 7:00 pm, I heard a knock on my door. I didn’t say anything, but whoever it was took it upon themselves to just come in anyway. It was my mom. She was crying.
“I am so sorry honey, you’re right. I cry myself to sleep every night, thinking about how much I want our relationship to be as close as my mom and mine was.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me? We have been going on this way for over a year now.”

She didn’t answer. All she did was come over to my bed, leaned down, and kissed my forehead. As she was backing away I grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. I don’t know what it was but I knew that everything was going to be alright. I haven’t hugged my mom like that in so long.

She left my room and I picked up my journal. I wrote down the date and a smiley face on the page. I think for so long I wanted to keep the pages blank because I felt blank inside without my mother in my life.