Realizations

Of course, now that I have made the appointment and comitted to going to counseling, I am trying to fix myself so that after one session, she will tell me that she can't help me other than to say that all of my feelings are valid.
In the mean time, yesterday, I came to the following conclusion.

I don't want to be my mother. I love her, I respect her, and she has some really great qualities. But I don't want to be her. Here is why this is an issue with me.

All my life, I have been comapared to her. When I was young, people constantly remarked on how much we look alike. My step dad distainfully called us "clones". In some ways, I am named after her. We share some qualities, as all mothers and daughters do. All my life I have disliked it. And yet people still feel the need to make comparisons. As I have grown older, I feel as though the differences are more pronounced. She's a thin size 6, I'm a curvy 10. My face is rounder. My eyes practically dissapear when I smile. She would often say, when comparisons were being made, "I know you hate looking like me" and while I tended to mumble something about "no I don't", I know it's because I felt guilty for not wanting to be like her. I always thought my sister was lucky, because although they used to tell her she looked like our dad, they never said she was just like him.
I think she wants me to be just like her. This has become more evident as I get older. She is constantly making comparisons between us. I don't see it. Yes, we share some similar struggles. But they are human struggles that most people go through. Despite what she sees as parallels in our lives, by the time she was my age, she had two children and was newly wedded to her second husband. Totally different.
She tells me that I will meet Mr Right For Always someday, after all, look how long it took her to find him? But I don't want to be alone until I am 50. I know I am rapidly heading for that, but I would like to think that I won't. It may be true that we have dated similar men, but really, I don't think so.
I have never dated a klepto. I have never been with a man who hits me. I have never dated a drug addict or an alchoholic.
Sure, I am not going to say that the men I have dated have been without issues, most of them had BIG issues, and there are reasons we are not together now, whether it was my choice at the time or not.
The list goes on.
We all need someone to identify with. We all want someone to be just like us, and I do find myself making comparisons between my life and others when they come to me for a chat. This is something that I need to consider changing. Empathy is one thing, but every situation is different.
I guess I still feel guilty for not wanting to be my mom. I should feel proud to be compared to her, as I feel proud to be compared to her grandmother, although it's a "you remind me of her" kind of thing, not, "you are just like", so it's different.
I guess what it all comes down to is that all my life, people have been trying to make me into mini-she, when all I really want to be is me.