Religion made me do it

I trained myself not to give second chances. If you hurt me,  I am done. I wont give a person a second chance to hurt me again. I dont care.

Being abandoned my my mother made it easier to erase her from my life. I was perfectly fine not having a relationship with her at all. As a child, I don't have any good memories of her. I associated her with pain and disappointment.

When I was 19, I accepted Islam as my religion. While learning more about my new faith, I was surprised to learn so much about the status of women and mothers especially. I learned that to cut ties of kinship was discouraged. I learned that one of the ways to enter paradise was to be kind and generous to ones mother.

I couldn't come to terms with that. I didn't want to accept it. Religion mandated it.

Eventually, after the birth of my first son, I folded. I needed to feel closeness to her. I felt as if I may have been able to understand her better since I was now a mother. It was a disaster. We were not ready for eachother.

Years later, we tried again and it stuck. I started to feel more of a connection with her, although our desire to connect was there, important issues were swept under the rug. I didn't know that they would surface later. It surfaced in the worst way.