Chapter 8: Shock
I left that conversation with my parents utterly confused. Nothing I had heard made any sense.
My mom had been contacted by an Instagram account pretending to be Keanu Reeves.
The person behind the account worked to convince her that he really was Keanu. Eventually, she was
persuaded to send money to purchase a “package” that would supposedly allow her to visit him while he was
filming a movie overseas.
Looking at the account myself, I believed immediately that it was a scam.
What I could not understand was why my mom couldn’t see what seemed so obvious to me.
I had never considered that someone I loved could become the victim of something like this.
Most of us have probably encountered some form of scam attempt. We delete the message, block the
account, or laugh at how ridiculous it seems.
It is much harder to laugh when someone you love believes it.
The account had perhaps fourteen followers. When I inspected it, nothing about it convinced me that the
person behind it was actually Keanu Reeves.
But my mom wanted it to be real.
At least, that was how I understood it then.
Someone claiming to be a wealthy celebrity had entered her life, told her he loved her, and offered the
possibility of escaping into something completely different.
I could see the deception from the outside.
She was experiencing it from the inside.
I did not yet understand how powerful that difference could be.
At the time, I saw her belief in the scam primarily as evidence of how badly her mental health had
deteriorated. I would eventually come to understand that the situation was more complicated than simply
asking how she could possibly believe it.
She had been deceived.
And whoever was behind that account had found someone they could exploit.
Thus began what I believed, at the time, would be the worst experience of my life.
I had no idea how wrong I was.
My parents’ problems became front and center, spilling over into everything.
While I had been working on my own problems and reflecting on my own weaknesses, their conflict quickly
became the center of our world.
Each day was filled with heated arguments.
We tried our best to shield our children from what was happening, but that became nearly impossible. They
knew something was wrong, even if they had no way of understanding it.
I struggled with what to tell them.
My instinct was not to pretend everything was fine.
Growing up, I often felt that my parents tried to protect me by keeping their problems and emotions hidden
from me. Looking back, I came to believe that this had left me poorly prepared to understand and manage
difficult emotions of my own.
I did not want to repeat that pattern with my children.
So I spoke to my son about what was happening in a way I believed he could understand. I chose not to
pretend that everything around him was normal when he could clearly see that it wasn’t.
As a child, I had seen anger and fear.
What I hadn’t seen enough of was what someone was supposed to do with those emotions.
My dad was now struggling with his own anger and feelings of betrayal.
Eventually, my mother left.
She stayed in a hotel for about a week.
When my mom ran out of money and could no longer afford to remain on her own, she contacted me asking
for help.
My dad ultimately brought her home. He told me he didn’t want her living on the streets.
Whatever else was happening between them, he still cared deeply about her.
My mom promised that she would stop communicating with the scammers, along with other promises
intended to begin repairing the damage.
But by this point, trust within the family had been badly damaged.
I no longer knew when I could believe what she told us.
As more information came to light, it became clear that the situation was not over.