Page 224 of Tell Me I'm Enough

Yeah, okay. This is beyond pointless.

“How have you been since last week?” she asks.

I shrug. “Fine.”

“Would you like to finally talk about what happened at your father’s office?”

“No…not really.”

“Mason,” she says gently, “you broke personal items and destroyed a lot of property. That level of anger doesn’t come from nowhere.”

“Itcamefrom him,” I say flatly.

“From your father?”

“Where else would it come from?” I snap. It’s not at her, just at the absurdity of that question.

Of course it’s from him.

“What has he done to make you so angry?”

I clench my jaw, needing somewhere for the irritation to go. The urge to either explode or shut down completely is showing up quickly today.

She sits there and watches me, waiting for an answer, one I don’t feel like giving her.

“He’s a piece of shit. Putthatin your notes.”

“You’re pretty angry today, Mason. More than I’ve seen before.”

I lean back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah. No shit.”

“Why?”

“Because I am every day,” I tell her. “Because the one person that made my life bearable is dead, and the one person that makes it hell is still alive…still making it his mission to make it worse.”

Her expression softens. “You miss your mom…”

I hate how obvious and pathetic she makes it sound. She’s not even asking me; she’s just stating it like it’s written on my forehead, like I’m a little kid still, crying for his dead mother to come back home.

“Whatever,” I say flatly.

She waits again for me to say more, and the silence that fills the room feels so suffocating—God, I hate it.

I shift in the chair, jaw clenched. “You know what…sometimes I think I’m more mad at her than anything.”

“Tell me about that.”

I laugh bitterly. “Tell you about what? About being mad at my dead mother? Hating myself for being mad at her? Fuck…I don’t know why I’m mad at her sometimes. I’m just mad at her for leaving me. For staying with him when she was still alive. For all of it.”

I get up, not being able to sit still, and pace the room behind the couch. “She was the only one who ever protected me, yet she kept me around him my entire childhood…for what? Stability? At what fucking cost? My sanity?”

She stays quiet, knowing that if she speaks now, I might stop.

“Did she actually love me? How could she not see what he was doing to me? To her? To our family?”

I lean against the couch, tapping my foot against the base.

“Why would someone like her be with a man like that?” I say, the words coming out faster now. “I willneverunderstand it. He destroys everything he touches. Everything!”