With friends like these...

I'm sorry I don't fit into the neat little image of what you think I should be like. You can push and poke all you want but I'm never going to, so I guess I'm always going to be a failure to you. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to feel as if your own mother thinks you're worthless? I am not antisocial, I am not unreliable, and I am not lazy, I am an intelligent, sensitive and responsible young woman who you don't understand.

I have friends, and just because I've never met them it doesn't make them any less real to me. The guy I love lives in another country, but does that make the fact that he loves me back false? No, it doesn't, but you would tell me I'm being ridiculous. Do you have any idea how demeaning it is, to have your feelings trivialised by your own mother?

You want me to get a job. Sure, I can see the logic in it, but that doesn't mean I need, or want one. Perhaps you 'need' me to have one, to convince yourself that I'm not as weird as you thought, because really I think the money is a trivial thing. You never asked me for money when I was working in college, even though I offered. Why is wanting to be happy the 'wrong attitude'? Why is wanting to wait until I feel ready to work, instead of jumping in and being miserable the 'wrong attitude'? I'm not like you, mother, I didn't finish school and go straight into work, I want to go further than spending the rest of my life behind a desk in an office working with people I can't stand but act nicely to to their face.

I don't want to be like you. I don't want to work myself to the limit of my endurance. Sure, I might be poor, but I'll be happy, and I'll be doing what I want, not what you expect.

Most of all, I'm sorry that I don't have the courage to say all of this to your face.