small, confined to a tiny text box in the corner of the browser, but
somehow they seemed to swallow the room. She told me she had read
my letter. I braced myself for her rage.
It is painful to face reality, she wrote. To realize there wassomething ugly, and I refused to see it.*2
I had to read those lines a number of times before I understood
them. Before I realized that she was not angry, not blaming me, or
trying to convince me I had only imagined. She believed me.
Don’t blame yourself, I told her. Your mind was never the same after
the accident.
Maybe, she said. But sometimes I think we choose our illnesses,
because they benefit us in some way.
I asked Mother why she’d never stopped Shawn from hurting me.
Shawn always said you picked the fights, and I guess I wanted to
believe that, because it was easier. Because you were strong and
rational, and anyone could see that Shawn was not.
That didn’t make sense. If I had seemed rational, why had Mother
believed Shawn when he’d told her I was picking fights? That I needed
to be subdued, disciplined.
I’m a mother, she said. Mothers protect. And Shawn was so
damaged.
I wanted to say that she was also my mother but I didn’t. I don’t
think Dad will believe any of this, I typed.
He will, she wrote. But it’s hard for him. It reminds him of the
damage his bipolar has caused to our family.
I had never heard Mother admit that Dad might be mentally ill.
Years before, I had told her what I’d learned in my psychology class
about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but she had shrugged it off.
Hearing her say it now felt liberating. The illness gave me something to
attack besides my father, so when Mother asked why I hadn’t come to
her sooner, why I hadn’t asked for help, I answered honestly.
Because you were so bullied by Dad, I said. You were not powerful in
the house. Dad ran things, and he was not going to help us.
I am stronger now, she said. I no longer run scared.