When I got accepted, she panicked.
She didn’t want me to suffer the way she did.
Instead of confronting her own trauma, she tried to scare me away from my dream.
She admitted that she had been following my life in secret. Saving articles about me. Keeping every award, every mention of my name.
She said she read about my research poster presentation and cried.
“I am proud of you,” she wrote.
“I always have been. I just didn’t know how to say it without facing my own failure.”Mom-daughter bonding
I sat on my kitchen floor and cried.
Not quiet tears.
The kind of crying that shakes your entire body.
Because suddenly I was angry and heartbroken at the same time.
For seven years I believed I was unwanted. Unsupported. Disposable.
I built armor around that belief.
And now I find out it wasn’t indifference.
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