Mourning an illusion

How do you grieve the loss of someone who never truly existed—someone you believed in, trusted, and confided in, only to discover they were nothing more than an illusion? How do you mourn a person who spent their entire life manipulating yours, triangulating, distorting truth, and reshaping reality to serve their own false narratives? What trauma could have caused them to become this way?

Imagine discovering in your sixties that the person you believed to be your guiding light in life, was actually a covert narcissist. That what you thought was true and solid was merely a facade designed to make them appear perfect. The person you held in the highest regard, embodying grace, faith, and femininity, was a master of deception, weaving lies that affected your choices—your friendships, your faith, your relationships, and even your very sense of self.

I never questioned this person. I believed we were extremely close. I believed my best interest was at the heart of their motives. Until I saw the truth—until the evidence became undeniable. Until I witnessed the lies spread about me to those I loved most. Lies not based on reality or truth but on manipulation, designed to control, isolate and discredit. 

This was someone I entrusted with my deepest fears, my greatest desires, my failures, and my triumphs—only to learn that everything I shared was used against me. What remains now is the wreckage of that deceit, the shattered pieces of relationships tainted by their influence. And amidst that wreckage, the haunting revelation of a half-sibling I never had the chance to know—concealed, erased, as if they never existed. She passed away before I could ever talk with her. 

Did she wonder why she was discarded while I seemed to have it all? There are so many questions that may never be answered.