Rejected approval

I’m sat down on my couch at 28 weeks pregnant crying. You are all probably assuming my hormones are the accomplice of my tears, but that’s not it at all. My mind races as I think of all the things I need to get done at home, and it reminds me that I’ve never been appreciated for any of it. I’ve never had anyone say that they are proud of me, or that I’m doing a great job. This goes all the way back to my childhood. I’ve never had a parent that was proud of me. I never got hugs, and kisses like most kids do. I got ass whoopings and hateful words. My father loved me but worked 16 hours a day. I never saw him, but I seen my mother every day. My mother did not love me. She criticized every detail of the depressing life she gave me. I never got her approval as a child, and now I’m actively searching for it as an adult. I’m doing a million things for my mother just to try to make her happy. If I’m the reason for her happiness, maybe she will finally be proud of me, but no. She finds something wrong with everything I do for her. Nothing I do is good enough. Everything I do is a competition against myself to be better just to hear my mother say “I’m proud of you”. I will never get that approval from her, and that is something I have to live with for the rest of my life. I’ve begged myself to stop caring so much, but no matter what I do, I’ll always want to feel loved and appreciated by her. The human instinct to feel loved by you’re parent is normal, but having to search for that love is not. Maybe one day, she might finally be proud of me, and I can live my life knowing I wasn’t a waste of space on earth, and that I matter.