When the Truth Isn't Convenient

There’s a certain kind of pain that lingers when you know people believe lies about you—especially when those lies come from someone who once held your trust, your love, your childhood. When your mother is the one weaving the narrative, it becomes almost impossible to untangle her story from the one you’ve fought so hard to live and own.

Recently, I found myself writing a poem, a plea really, to someone who I know only sees me through the lens of her voice—my mother’s. It was written not from a place of bitterness, but from deep grief. The kind of grief that comes from being misunderstood by people who were never supposed to misunderstand you.

My son’s father and his family have chosen my mother, time and time again. She’s welcomed to birthdays, holidays, family gatherings—all in the name of compassion, I’m told. They don’t want her to be alone. And on the surface, I get it.

She plays the part well: the loving, devoted grandmother; the poor woman who doesn’t know what to do with her troubled daughter and who "had" to raise her grandson.

What they don’t see is how strategic that narrative is. How calculated. How she’s spent years planting the seeds, pushing my buttons in silence, knowing I’d explode—and that they’d only ever see the explosion. That was always her insurance: if the truth ever came out, I’d look unhinged, and she’d look innocent. And it worked.

I’m not writing this to pretend I was perfect. I hurt people. I said awful things. I did things I regret. I broke someone’s heart—someone I I had to co-parent with for many years. And for a long time, I didn’t even understand how deeply I was playing out generational trauma. I thought I was just angry. I didn’t realize I was reenacting what had been done to me—what had been passed down like a curse from my mother and her mother before her.

I know now that what people see as “just drama” or “just behavior” is often the product of survival. Of reactive abuse. Of fighting for breath in an emotional prison. And yes, I stayed stuck in that system for a long time—believing the lies she told me about myself, performing for her approval, begging for scraps of love she never planned to give.

So I understand why my son’s father and his family choose her. She’s consistent. She’s polished. She doesn’t cause scenes. But that’s only because she doesn’t have to—she creates them quietly, then steps back and lets me take the blame.

I don’t write this in hopes of changing their minds anymore. I’ve come to terms with the fact that most people from my past are exactly where they belong: behind me. The only exception is my son, who I will never give up on—no matter how deeply I’ve failed him. I didn’t heal fast enough to spare him the damage. But I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to do better.

To the people who’ve chosen her over me: I don’t hate you. I see now that you’re just part of a story you don’t even realize you’re in. I know how powerful her charm is. I know how convincing her stories are. I know how much easier it is to believe the well-spoken adult than the messy, hurting daughter.

But one day, I hope you’ll look closer. I hope you’ll see that truth doesn’t always look polished. That sometimes, the one who cries the loudest isn’t crazy—just desperate to be heard. I hope you’ll realize that generational trauma doesn’t end because one person decides to be quiet. It ends because someone decides to speak, to heal, to stop performing.

And that’s what I’m doing now.

I’m done performing.

The truth isn't convenient. It never is.