Page 60 of Letters From A Stalker

“Honestly? Sometimes completely normal.” I glance toward the window while I try to put something into words that has always made far more sense inside my own head. “We can talk for an hour and laugh. I can tell her something about work, or someone I know, or something stupid that happened during the day, and she can be perfectly fine. Supportive even. The problem is that I never really know whether something I tell her when we’re getting along is going to stay safe.”

Kai’s expression changes slightly. “Safe in what sense?”

“As in not being brought back up later and used against me.”

That gets his full attention.

I rub my thumb over the edge of the bottle label. “She has depression, and her moods can change. Not always in the obvious way where someone is happy at breakfast and furious by lunch, although that happens sometimes too. It’s more that when she’s hurt or angry, she reaches for things. Things I’ve told her. Things that had nothing to do with whatever we’re arguing about.”

I stop for a moment, trying to think of an example that doesn’t require another hour to explain.

“Say I tell her I helped Tessa with something. Maybe Tessa needed me, so I rearranged something or spent a day helping her deal with a problem. Mom might listen at the time and think it’s nice. Then two weeks later, if we argue because I couldn’t come over when she wanted me to, suddenly it becomes, ‘You always have time for your friends. You’re exactly like your father. Everyone else comes before your family.’”

The familiar bitterness reaches the back of my throat even though none of this is happening now.

Kai remains quiet long enough that I look at him.

There’s no shock on his face, which I suppose would be ridiculous considering what I’ve already told him about my childhood. He looks thoughtful instead, his pen resting motionless between his fingers.

“So something you shared because you felt close to her in one moment can be reinterpreted as evidence against you in another.”

“Exactly.” The relief of him understanding it without making me explain three additional examples is immediate. “And then I get angry because whatever I told her had nothing to do with her. I wasn’t choosing Tessa instead of my mother. I was just helping my friend. But suddenly I’m defending whether I love my family enough.”

“Does that happen specifically with Tessa?”

I laugh once, without much humor. “Tessa is probably her least favorite person.”

“Why?”

“Because she thinks Tessa gets too much of me.”

I look down at my hands again.

“She would never say she doesn’t want me to have friends. She absolutely does. She wants me to have people, go places, have experiences, be happy. But sometimes when I actually do those things, especially if it means I’m unavailable to her, there’s this undertone that I’ve chosen somebody else.”

Kai nods slowly. “So the message can become contradictory.”

“That’s my mother in one sentence.”

The corner of his mouth moves, but he doesn’t take the invitation to turn it into a joke. I’m grateful for that.

“She wants me to do things she never did,” I continued. “She’ll tell me I should travel, take chances, live my life, not waste years being afraid. And I believe she means it when she says it. But then sometimes when I actually do something she wouldn’t have done, something maybe she didn’t have the courage or opportunity to do herself, I can feel...” I search for the right word. “Resentment sounds too harsh.”

“Maybe it is. What does it feel like instead?”

“Like she’s happy for me until whatever I’m doing reminds her of what she didn’t have.” Kai’s eyes stay on mine. I shrug, although there’s nothing casual about the feeling. “Then somehow the conversation becomes about that. I tell her something that happened to me and within five minutes we’re talking about what happened to her when she was my age, or what my father did to her, or what she would have done differently. And suddenly whatever I came to tell her isn’t really mine anymore.”

The room goes quiet around the words.

“When that happens often enough,” he says eventually, his voice lower and more thoughtful than before, “you don’t only start asking yourself whether something is safe to share in the moment. You start asking whether it will still be safe later.”

I look at him because that lands harder than I expect. “Yeah.”

“And if you can’t predict which version of the information will come back to you, withholding it starts to feel safer.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”