Frankie says… Parents are people, too. Since I recently wrote about my daddy issues, I find it only fair to write about my mommy issues as well. Now my issues surrounding her are not so definable – they’re much more convoluted and intrinsic to that weird and confusing bond between a mother and a daughter. I can tell you this, though: it makes me not want a daughter. Harsh? Well, it’s how I feel, at least for now. After all the stages daughters go through – immense attachment (0-8), awkward friendship (9-13), intense hatred and rebellion (14-18), clarity of collaborative forces (19-25), then the slow and eventual reveal that your mother is actually a person too and does not exist solely in your head (26 on) – it’s a wonder we’re not all more messed up than we are. This last stage, this is where I am at. I obviously cannot talk about what happens after, since I have not experienced it yet, but I’m hoping pretty hard that there are some more stages because the one I’m in sucks. Now that I am fully an adult, (in some circles) and am making life decisions on my own that will affect my existence from here on out, it’s come to my attention that my mother at some point had to make these same decisions. Not the exact same ones, but similar in the fact that they would impact the rest of her life. At 28, already my mom had three girls from her first husband (an abusive alcoholic) whom she was about to divorce in the next year or so. After that, she would join a commune in southern France, leaving her girls to essentially fend for themselves with the grandparents and not-all-there father...