Mom has always had a clear pattern when dealing with counselors, police, or any authority figure. It’s a well-rehearsed routine, one she slips into so effortlessly that even I find myself questioning what's real. When she speaks to them, she starts off addressing the issues at hand. Sure, maybe I got loud, maybe I yelled—there's no denying that. But as soon as she feels a little more comfortable, she shifts into this calculated vulnerability, carefully crafted for maximum effect.
She draws them in with stories of her own trauma. The abuse she endured as a child, the rapes, the molestations, the beatings—it’s all part of her script. And she knows exactly how to sell it. Her voice softens into a little girl’s tone, fragile and broken, just like the people on the other side of the conversation expect an abused woman to sound. Before long, she has them in the palm of her hand, and you can see them nodding along, starting to side with her, feeling sorry for her.
But she doesn’t stop there. After securing their empathy, she turns the conversation toward how hard her life has been as a mother, especially raising someone like me. Oh yes, she had big dreams of a happy, picture-perfect family—just like the ones on TV. She’ll even mention The Brady Bunch, though she conveniently leaves out that the Bradys didn’t hit their kids. And of course, they didn’t raise their children in a pressure cooker of control and violence.
That’s when she dives into my history, painting a bleak picture of rebellion, unemployment, and smoking pot 30 years ago. According to her, my entire life is just one long failure, filled with bad choices and harsh diagnoses—diagnoses, I might add, that she made sure doctors gave me, as if slapping a label on me would validate her sense of victimhood.
And here’s where she really earns her Academy Award. When confronted, when someone hints at the fakeness of it all, she launches into the grand finale: the ultimate performance of love. She’ll talk about how much she loves me and all of her children, how everything she’s done is out of that pure, self-sacrificing motherly love. If you didn’t know better, you might actually believe her. Even I almost do, sometimes.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, though—an elaborate show to justify what comes next. That’s when the call to action begins. “Institutionalize him. Conserve him. Take away his money. Force him into a poverty trap, jail him if you have to.” She never mentions the abuse she inflicted. Not once. There’s no mention of the beatings, the belt, the cigarette burns, the suffocation. It’s like those things never happened in her version of the story. And because she’s so convincing, they believe her. They don’t ask questions. They don’t dig deeper.
I have to admit, sometimes the performance is so convincing, I start to believe it too. Maybe she really does love me. Maybe she’s just misunderstood, doing her best with what little she had. But deep down, I know better. This is what happens when you leave an abused person’s treatment in the hands of their abuser. They rewrite history, turning the story inside out until they’re the hero, and you’re the villain.
And the worst part? They get away with it. Every time.
by Dan and Bonkers
SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS TODAY!!!
