Or a cousin.
Or Carrie would text something like, “Mom’s really hurt,” as if my boundaries were knives.
I learned early that in my family, “hurt” was a weapon.
We didn’t talk about why something hurt. We talked about who was responsible for the discomfort.
It was always me.
Even when I was a kid.
Carrie was older than me by three years, and she had always been the center of the room.
She was louder. Prettier, by family standards. More dramatic in a way my mother called “spirited.”
When Carrie cried, my mother rushed to fix it.
When I cried, my father told me to stop being dramatic.
I learned to swallow feelings and translate love into usefulness.
I became the “responsible” one because responsibility got approval.
Straight A’s.
College.
Dental school.
A stable job.
A stable life.
And then, when my marriage fell apart and I became a single mother, my family didn’t see the strain. They saw a convenient truth.
Helen can handle it.
Helen always handles it.
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