why don't I know you?

"You look like your mother."
I've heard it a hundred times, more, since I was 10 or so.
It never hit me one way or another.
Sometimes I thought so, sometimes not, depending on how my hair was styled or if I was angry with her that day.
I'm not old, but today the face in the mirror doesn't look so young anymore.
There are wrinkles around my eyes and hidden under my bangs, and they aren’t going anywhere.
I wonder when she decided she wasn't young anymore.
I wonder when she decided she was or wasn't anything.
We have had such different lives that I can't imagine I'm reaching the same stages at the same times.
But I see her in the mirror, in my face.
Did she feel this way? When? Did she tell anyone or simply move on, her heart just a little bit heavier for the silence?
What did she want when she was 32? Or 42? Or 12? Or now?
Why don't I know these things?
Because she's been only an extension of me my whole life.
Someone who did to me or for me or with me or because of me.
Who would she be if it hadn't been for me?
Her life began when mine began, and when her life ends mine will still mean something only if I truly knew her.
I stare in the mirror until my face is nothing more than a blur, looking for answers but getting only more questions.
I look like my mother.