How could I have failed to know that Nic was using throughout these past months, even when he was in our home? I have been so traumatized by his addiction that the surreal and the real have become one and the same. I can’t distinguish the normal from the outrageous anymore. I am so good at rationalizing and denying that I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Or maybe it’s only that, with practice, addicts become flawlessly gifted liars, and this coincides with parents’ increasing susceptibility to their lies. I believed Nic because I wanted to believe him—I was desperate to believe
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