“If you tell me no again, I swear you will regret ever giving birth to me.”
When my son said those words in the kitchen of our house in Savannah, I mistakenly thought it was just another one of his usual tantrums that I had been justifying for far too long. However, that night I realized I was no longer dealing with a confused boy, but with a twenty-three-year-old man who had learned to weaponize his frustration into a direct threat.
Wyatt had always been tall and broad-shouldered, possessing a physical presence that filled a room even when he remained silent. As a small child, he was kind and affectionate, but as a teenager, he began to fill with a deep-seated resentment that poisoned his personality.
First, it was because his father, Harrison, moved to Denver after our divorce, and then it was because he dropped out of college. Later, he couldn’t hold down a job and his girlfriend left him, until eventually, he didn’t even need a specific reason to believe the whole world owed him something.
I defended him way too much, making excuses for his screams when he spoke to me as if I were a clumsy maid in my own home. I justified his demands when he stopped asking for money and started claiming it as his right, ignoring the slammed doors and the constant smell of beer.
Mothers often confuse love with endurance, but that night I came home exhausted from my shift at the local library with aching legs and a bruised pride. Wyatt came into the kitchen and demanded money to go out, but for the first time, I looked him in the eye and told him no.
“No? And who exactly do you think you are talking to right now?” he repeated with a dry, humorless smile.
“I think I am the one who pays for this house, and I am not giving you another penny for your drinking or your lies,” I replied while my hands trembled.
His face changed in a heartbeat as his jaw hardened and his eyes went completely blank.
“Do not talk to me like that,” he growled.
“I am speaking to you the way I should have spoken to you a long time ago,” I said firmly.
