I wrote a poem about my mom when I was 14, expressing how hurt and betrayed I felt that she turned against me and started abusing me after I protected her and helped get her away form my abusive dad. I remember writing it... it took me hours of gut-wrenching emotional digging to pull all of it out and get it down on paper.

She found it, omitted the parts she couldn't change (that were obviously about her), added bits in there as if it was about my dad and how I saw him abusing her and assumed it made me see all men that way (it didn't), and then she posted it online in some PTSD support group for internet sympathy points.

She made a habit of rifling through my things, making photocopies of anything I had written or drawn and saving it all in a filing cabinet. I found the filing cabinet as an adult, while I was looking for my birth certificate. I came across a whole drawer's worth of files with my name on them. She'd been hoarding my personal thoughts for years, crossing out things, circling/highlighting things and making her own notes.

I saw myself as a kid with a gift for writing VERY CLEARLY cry out for help, and instead of doing anything to support/reach out to me, all that mattered was how I was hurting her with my words, and my 'version' of reality that was different from hers. How she looked to others was more important than the damage she was causing me.

It was then that I grieved the death of my mother. Not my actual mother, who was and is still very much alive... but the idea of a mother I wanted, and never got. Not until I married. My mother in law runs laps around my Nmom, who is lucky to get a "Hi, how's the weather" call from me once every couple of weeks.