The Illusion She Sold Me

For most of my life, I tried to be someone I wasn’t — not because I lacked identity, but because the version of me that existed outside her story was always met with confusion, discomfort, or outright rejection.

She sold me an illusion:
That she was a good mother.
That her love was unconditional.
That I was ungrateful, difficult, hard to buy for.

She needed those beliefs more than she ever needed a real relationship with me.
She needed to feel like she had done her best.
She needed me to perform gratitude, even when my nervous system was in survival mode.
And when I stopped performing, when I started asking for truth, for accountability — I became the villain.

I reached out again recently. Not with anger, but with clarity. I offered her a path — one last door into something honest.
But she chose silence.
Not because I was cruel, but because I was no longer controllable. Because truth threatens illusion.
Because I was finally strong enough to say: this doesn’t work for me anymore.

She once bought me a house after I came out of psychosis. Not because I asked for love — I asked for distance.
And she gave me property. A guilt gift. A final attempt to preserve the illusion of being generous, good, caring.
But real love doesn’t arrive with strings attached or the hope of public applause.
Real love says, I’m sorry. Real love says, tell me how I hurt you.
She never said those words.

Now I sit with the quiet reality that I’ll probably never see her again. And you know what?
That reality is softer than the lie I lived inside for 35 years.
Because I’m no longer contorting myself to keep someone comfortable in their denial.

She always said I was hard to buy for.
But the truth is: she never tried to know me.

And now, for the first time, I’m beginning to know myself — outside the illusion.
And there is peace in that.

Even if it comes wrapped in grief.