Hillbilly Elegy

with Matt, I belted out, “Absolutely not,”
and stormed away.
Mom drew from this conversation
that I had anger problems and scheduled
a time for me to meet with her therapist.
I didn’t know she had a therapist or the
money to afford one, but I agreed to meet
with this lady. Our first meeting took
place the following week in a musty old
office near Dayton, Ohio, where a
nondescript middle-aged woman, Mom,
and I tried to understand why I was so
angry. I recognized that human beings
aren’t very good at judging themselves: I
may have been wrong that I was no
angrier (in fact, considerably less so)
than most of the people in my life.