Page 127 of Regretting Youu

“No, I’m not. I’m only a nine, apparently.”

He’s laughing as he backs away from me. “Yeah, but I really only deserve a six.”

I find a seat far away from all the little kids, all the way at the top. Miller was wrong. I don’t think the cartoon helps, because I can’t stop thinking about what happened.

It isn’t lost on me that my anger over finding out about my father and Jenny isn’t nearly as intense as it was when I thought my mother and Jonah were the ones having the affair.

I contemplate that, and I realize it comes down to one thing.

Selflessness.

It seems so insignificant, but it’s not. My mother was put through the most maddening, painful, tragic event of her life. Yet, as always, she put me first. Before her anger, her grief, the betrayal. She did everything she could to shield me from the truth, even if that meant unfairly taking the blame.

I don’t doubt my father’s love for me, but I don’t know that he would have done the same if the tables were reversed. I’m not sure Jenny would have either.

As devastated as I am to finally know the truth, it actually hurts less than when I thought my mother was the one in the wrong.

Since the day I was born, every decision she’s ever made for herself was made in order to benefit me. I’ve always known that about her. But I’m not sure I appreciated it until tonight.

The cartoon has ended and the theater has cleared out, but I’m still staring hard at the blank screen, wondering how my mother is doing. She’s the real victim in all of this, and it makes me sad to know that the two people she’s leaned on for most of her life are the same two people who weren’t there to catch her when she fell. Hell, they’re the ones who made her fall in the first place.

I can’t imagine all the invisible bruises she’s covered in right now, and I hate that some of them are there because of me.