Hillbilly Elegy

Maybe Mom was right and I did have
some anger problems. I tried to keep an
open mind. If nothing else, I thought, this
woman might give Mom and me an
opportunity to get everything in the open.
But that first session felt like an
ambush. Immediately, the woman began
asking why I would scream at my mother
and storm off, why I didn’t recognize
that she was my mother and that I had to
live with her by law. The therapist
chronicled “outbursts” that I’d allegedly
had, some going back to a time I couldn’t
remember—the time I threw a tantrum in
a department store as a five-year-old,
my fight with another child in school (the
school bully, whom I didn’t want to