There’s a strange kind of emptiness that comes when you stop performing for people who never really saw you. It feels hollow and spacious at the same time—like you’ve cleared out a house that was full of other people’s furniture.

My mum still tries to weave her way back in, pretending she wants connection while refusing to face her own reflection. She says she wants therapy together, but only so she can point out my differences—never to understand them. She calls it love; I call it control.

The guilt still creeps in. It whispers that holding my boundary is cruel. But she chose not to do her own work, and I won’t keep offering myself up as evidence that I was the problem. I’m done trying to make her feel comfortable at the expense of my sanity.

The truth is, I was the scapegoat. The easy target. The child who absorbed the family’s tension so everyone else could keep pretending we were fine. I learned to stay small, to accept scraps, to assume misery was the baseline of life.

And yet, something in me still kept trying—to love, to understand, to earn even the smallest approval. That part deserves compassion, not blame.

Inner Dialogue

Young Me:
Why did she always talk about me like that? If I could just be better—quieter, neater—maybe she’d finally love me.

Adult Me:
You tried so hard to make her love safe, and she kept moving the goalposts. That wasn’t your failure. She couldn’t love in a steady way. You were never the problem.

Young Me:
Then why do I still keep looking for people to prove her wrong?

Adult Me:
Because part of you still hopes someone will love you the way she couldn’t.
But that love starts here, with me. I see you. You don’t have to fix yourself to deserve rest or care. You just get to be.

I’m learning that I’m not reliant on anyone or anything—I choose what supports me. There’s no guilt in that, no shame.

Maybe acceptance from others will come, maybe it won’t. But if I can give that acceptance to myself first, everything else is just a bonus.