You know what, I don’t talk about it… at all. It wasn’t until 20 years later and after I’d moved to a different continent and started seeing a therapist for com

You know what, I don’t talk about it… at all. It wasn’t until 20 years later and after I’d moved to a different continent and started seeing a therapist for completely unrelated reasons, but the therapist asked me what my childhood was like. I’d always thought mine was “fine” or “normal”. Divorced parents, like my friends. Younger brother and I living with our mother, like my friends. Aggressively “middle class”, like my friends. I described one time how my mother would (frequently) get home from a long day at work, not ask how our days were, start cooking dinner (Hamburger Helper or similar), and then one of us kids would ask an innocent question and she would fly off the handle. Turn off the stove mid-meal, storm to her room and slam the door. There was always plenty of cereal, sandwich meat, and canned soup in the house, so it’s not like we went hungry. Again, I thought it was normal. I’m now very closely approaching 40 and finally coming to terms with what that seemingly insignificant thing (to her) did to me. I’m not expecting every parent to have a guidebook for survival with kids, but WTF. Hey, at least I ended up being fiercely independent and learned to cook. I’m sure this kid (man now) will soldier through… he’s obviously survived this long on his own.