Originally Posted by
BackAnew 
She was being vulnerable and self aware, she clearly wasn't incapable, she actively chose a different path. This backs up everything you have been driving yourself crazy over, it isn't that she can't see it, it's that she refuses to look at what she knows is there.
There was a reason she's been aware of this for 12 years without correcting it. My dad always chose the drinking, my mother always chose the illusion, even if it meant lying to herself about her only child.
Thanks for taking the time to write/post that BackAnew. That is a really interesting path of thought to read. It will be helpful to many, I'm sure.
You know, in reading this last part here, yes, you're right, she is aware of the dynamic and yes, she has gone along with it for all these years. I don't know all her upbringing/history but the things she described can be incredibly hard to overcome and probably, in many cases, impossible. Those defenses were there for a reason, it's survival and that's so tough to break through.
So is she choosing an "illusion" or is this just her, just her without 30 years of therapy, trying to break things within her that were ingrained from the beginning.
Anyway, I don't have those answers, it just made me think.