▸ Column · Present-day, modern American domestic — grounded comic register
WHEATLEY replies.
The letter
For almost forty years my mother Hazel has had opinions about everything I am — my weight, my teaching job (she calls it a "dead-end," which, fine), the way I let my kids watch TV and how I'm apparently ruining them. The breaking point was Olivia's birthday party last month. Hazel pulled me into the kitchen to tell me my dress made me look "like a sausage" and that no wonder my husband travels so much for work.
I blocked her number and email the next morning. And honestly, I've slept better in the three weeks since than I have in years.
But now my brother Oliver keeps texting that I'm "tearing the family apart" and that she's "getting older." And I guess the guilt is starting to creep back in. I know what she said was awful. But am I a monster for choosing my own peace over a mother who never had a kind word for me — or am I finally just done?
— Sleeping Better in Columbus
Wheatley replies
Right, okay — and I want you to know I am genuinely qualified here in a very specific, slightly embarrassing way, so hang on.
The thing people miss about someone who spends forty years telling you you're worthless is: they are getting something out of it. The voice that calls you a sausage and a dead-end every day is not doing charity. It needs you to believe that version because as long as you do, you stay small and manageable and useful. I know this because I've been on the receiving end of exactly that — and, look, also the delivering end, which is not my finest chapter, moving on — but the point is: Hazel isn't devastated that you blocked her. She's confused the system stopped working. Different thing entirely.
Now. My instinct — and my instincts have a truly catastrophic track record — is to say "apologize first, be the brave one, go back." But I have to stop myself there. That's the advice for when YOU did the terrible thing. You didn't. She did. You just stopped volunteering to stand there.
The guilt coming back in through Oliver is the old system trying to reinstall itself. Don't let it.
You're sleeping better. That is data. Brilliant data, actually.
— Wheatley
Chell weighs in
He's right about Hazel.
He left out Oliver. "She's getting older" — that's the cake. A promise of something that never arrives, used to walk you back inside. He's telling you the exit is back in the facility. It isn't.
You already solved that chamber. The block was a completed step. You don't have to re-open a door just because someone who didn't run the course with you says to.
I never said a word to the voice that needed me afraid. I just kept moving until the door opened.
The guilt works if you let it. Don't.
— Chell
▸ Read next