My mother always used to tell me and my sister that love is something you have to earn and it's not to be given less the person has earned it as well.

For years I always though that because maybe it's why mine and my sisters mother wouldn't ever show us love unless we did our chorus or did what she asked.

I grew up wondering how love would feel after I earned it from the people I was meant to spend the rest of my life with, and how I would show them love...but I really have no idea how it actually felt to just feel love unless I earned it.

And I really earned it through out my childhood and my teen years.

To this day I still have no idea if I know what love fully is or if I'm doing it right...I have no idea if I am using the emotion right but..my husband seems to think I am so I just believe him.

With him I dont have to earn my love which was odd for me in the beginning but after a while I just got used to it.

But he doesn't want to have children for some reason and I'm afraid to ask why...I'm worried it's because of what my mother did to me that will be like her....that I'll only show it loved when it's earned...and it bothers me that i will be like her and I know to him it could be the same.

I don't want my child to have to do what I did just to have the one who created me and raised me show me love...when she was actually supposed to love me anyways as my husband has told me.

I want to know if I can raise a child and not be like my mother.

But every time I look in the mirror I just see her...not how I imagine myself...I just see my mother in the mirror like she's waiting for me to end up like her...and I don't want that..

I don't want to be my mommy...I want to be me not what I was raised to be like...to be like my mother would kill me..inside and out.

I want my child to feel love...to know it throughout its whole life...to not have to work for it just to feel it every second of everyday unlike how it was for me..

Maybe one day my husband will want children and he'll see I'm not like her...hopefully.