What she missed was the mother she was supposed to be.
I had to pause at this sentence because it triggered something deeply personal in me. My mother may not be terrible in all the same ways as Octavia is, but they do share some traits and I can't remember a time when she was ever a good mother to me. I used to hope that she would be one, that if I was smart enough and talented enough it would eventually be good enough and she would finally be proud of me and love me. But I gave that dream up at a very young age. I still remember the day I wrote in my diary at age 11 that I had realized no matter what I did nothing would ever make my mother love me. For a long time after that I mourned the mother she should have been and sorely missed something that I never had. Your heart hardens over time and that grief is replaced with bitterness and anger and sometimes numbness. But every once in a great while a wistfulness comes over me and for a moment I'll wish things were different and the little girl in me will miss the loving mother that never was and never will be. This one little sentence made me swell with so much empathy and heartbreak for Quinn. It made wish she was a real person so I could hug her tight and tell her that it isn't her fault and it never was.
