You have heard it your whole life. Do not believe everything you read or see, especially on the internet.
People are always surprised that I do not hold any ill will towards my children. In fact, I still call them my children and love them as I always have. Now that they are adults, they continue doing this bizarre pantomime of what life was like when they lived with me, but now it is all over the internet for all to see and it honestly, really worries me.
I worry about their mental health and their physical health. I know their living situations are extremely stressful, they do not like noise or too many people around. They are used to having their own clothes and their own personal space in the house. They lost all of that when they took off.
Most days it is almost as if my kids have gone off to college or are studying abroad, back before the era of the internet. Occasionally we receive messages about how hard things are or how stressful it is. Sometimes they ask to come home, which we always say they can. They send us messages about anniversaries, holidays, and birthdays. Things are fairly pleasant.
Then if I look up their accounts online, which they have sent me numerous requests to follow them online, I am absolutely gobsmacked by what I see. There are all these posts about how terrible their life was with us and how they hate us and that our house was abusive.
It is so bizarre. To have them personally interacting with us one way and then telling the world the opposite. They may not even be talking about us but the multiple homes they were in before us, but they do not differentiate it to the world. They lump us all together and since they lived with us the longest, people assume it is us they are talking about.
I also know that they are being harassed online because they keep posting AI and super filtered pictures of themselves. They do not post anything actually real and people do not care for that. I know they receive a bunch of sympathy and comments when they nebulously blame their trauma for the state of their lives. It is what gets the clicks and I get it.
I still love them. I understand they do not see how they hurt us. They are too busy trying to patch up the hole inside of themselves. The hole they thought would be filled when they went to live with their birth mother again. They had been talking about having jobs, apartments, going to concerts, and college. They have lost all of that now. They message us telling us how bored they are and that there is nothing to do.
My therapist wants me to call them and ask them to come back. And unfortunately, I cannot. I am not in a place where I think that will be a good idea. They are still spreading lies about us, even if they are lies by omission. I cannot willingly invite that back into my home. They have asked to come home, but have not followed through with the request. Instead we sit in this weird kind of limbo.
Someday we will not be considered content. We will not be props to gain sympathy from others or to excuse bad behavior. I look forward to having that future where my kids are able to mature past the need for validation of strangers or acquaintances. I hope they will finally make friends based on who they are and not on excuses from their past. Someday maybe they can admit to other people that we are good parents and that they miss us. Instead of sending us texts in the middle of the night. Someday we will all be on the same page and can move forward together.
For now, I have to preserve my sanity. I have to keep my partner healthy. We have been slowly recovering from this crazy roller coaster that we have been on for eight years. Things have slowly been coming back together for us.
They are alive, telling everyone they are living the lives of their dreams. Even if they tell us differently. That is something they need to reconcile for themselves. There is nothing I can do to help them do that.
I have to let them figure it out themselves. I will be here as always.
Mother of Trauma 
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