Chapter 14: Rocky Roads
My dad contacted me and said he no longer thought my mom would be coming home.
He believed she was lying to him again, and in his anger, he had smashed her phone.
Breaking things when he was angry was not new behavior from my perspective.
I didn’t address it then. Instead, I reminded him that what was happening was beyond any of us.
I believed my mom needed to be evaluated and receive professional help as soon as possible.
My mom began texting me as well, apologizing for the mess and telling me how much she loved my dad.
It was agonizing to keep having versions of the same conversations with her.
Then my dad sent me an email he said he had found.
In it, my mom appeared to be telling someone that she only needed my dad’s help getting out of Las Vegas
and wasn’t actually returning to rebuild their relationship.
The email had apparently been sent two days before they began driving home.
My dad was overwhelmed and didn’t seem to know what to do.
I asked whether he could get her to a hospital or contact her doctor.
He told me he was considering calling 911 because, according to him, she had threatened to kill herself the
night before.
My mom was also supposed to have a phone appointment with her doctor later that evening.
I told my dad that I didn’t think she should attend it alone. By this point, my trust in what she would disclose
about the situation had deteriorated badly.
Later that evening, my dad contacted me again.
My mom had received more messages from scammers pretending to be members of bands she liked.
My dad was considering leaving her there and flying home.
Then he told me that my mom had said she would kill herself if he left.
I immediately began asking whether we could contact her doctor or get her another psychiatric evaluation.
Then my dad said something I was completely unprepared to hear.
“If she kills herself, it’s not going to affect us, will it? I will call a hotline before I leave.”
I was speechless.
I didn’t know how to process what he had just said.
It took me several minutes before I responded.
“You say it won’t affect us, but it will eat you alive if you leave her to do that.”
I told him that, at the very least, I believed he should take her to a hospital and not leave her alone while she
was threatening to harm herself.
From where I stood, my dad seemed consumed by the scammers, what they had taken from him, and what
my mom had done.
I was focused on a different question:
Why was this happening to her?
I felt as though that question kept disappearing beneath all the anger and betrayal.
Meanwhile, my own anger was building.
From the beginning, I had been pushing for my mom to receive more intensive psychiatric help.
Again and again, I felt ignored.
My words. My thoughts. My fears.
Nothing I did seemed to matter.
Soon afterward, my mom called me.
The conversation began much like the others, but by then I had reached my breaking point.
In the background, I could hear my dad needling at her—repeatedly making comments that I considered
cruel or unnecessary.
I had watched him communicate this way before, and it had always bothered me.
This time, I snapped.
I let my anger take control and told him exactly what I thought.
I confronted him about behaviors I had resented for years.
I regret losing my composure, but at the time, finally saying those things felt liberating.
I stopped trying to protect his feelings.
When he responded as though I were blaming him for everything, I became even angrier. I felt he was
twisting what I was saying rather than hearing it.
By the end of the call, my dad told me I had three days to get out of his house.
Something inside me broke open.
Years of feeling as though I wasn’t respected as an adult came pouring out.
I challenged his decisions throughout everything that had happened, including his insistence that my mom
remain home through Christmas because of my children.
I didn’t believe that had ever really been about them.
In that moment, I felt completely certain of myself.
I felt as though I had finally stripped away every defense he had used against me and forced him to hear
everything I had kept inside for years.
I felt righteous.
And, if I’m going to tell this story truthfully, part of me enjoyed it.
I had spent years feeling that I needed to tiptoe around my parents, that I was still the child and they were still
above me.
Now all of that resentment was coming out at once.
It felt like reclaiming my voice.
But it was also anger.
A tremendous amount of anger.
And I was no longer trying to contain it.