My Mother the Tor-Mentor in Journal

I was telling a friend how I was grieving the mentoring that I never got as a child, teenager or even young adult.
I feel like I am learning all the things right now that should have been instilled in me as a child, if not by the time I left home. I am sad that nobody cared enough to ask the few very simple direct questions that could have changed my life forever. Just one caring individual in my life could have changed everything. Only a few minutes of their time. All it would have taken was a basic interest in my well-being, and the 2 following questions;
“What do you want to do?”
To which of course I would have given the usual B.S. that everyone expects and which I learned to respond to such questions with. However, the following question, and I do believe this after much soul searching and re-parenting work on myself, would have jarred in me an understanding that I and no one around me had any idea at all about life;
“How do you know that’s what you want?”
To this my young self would have fallen silent in quiet contemplation. That familiar spark of awe would ignite a wildfire of internal thought and conflict. I would at once know that I didn’t know the answer to that question, and that no one else I knew would know, either. It would have opened the door to a deeper level of self reflection yet unknown to me.
It would have made me ponder the value of things.
It would have prompted an inner journey to the exact place that I am now. But much sooner.

To bring it back around. My friend said to me, “Your mother is a tor-mentor.”
And I immediately knew what he meant.
Because a mentor is someone that is genuine in their caring; someone that sees in you something of themselves in a truly empathetic way. The mentor engages with you in a compassionate way to provide guidance, wisdom, experience, etc.
But my mom did none of that.
In fact, and I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s like our roles are reversed. She expects me to provide her with many of the facets of parenting that she herself is incapable of providing. Not only is she incapable of providing for my needs, she is selfishly using me as an unwilling captive to fulfill her needs.