Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me

by Adrienne Brodeur

I felt a pang of envy that somehow Peter had succeeded where I’d failed. He’d put a healthy distance between himself and the madness. He’d managed to grow up, get the girl, and move on, whereas I remained stuck in the scrum of our childhood.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

I knew that children who’d been neglected emotionally, as my mother had been by her parents, often formed attachments to objects instead of people.

“Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror / Just keep going / No feeling is final.”

“Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”

“You have to remember that your mother is unaware of what she’s done and always will be,” Margot continued. “If you’re waiting for an apology or gratitude, don’t. You have hard work ahead. You need to forgive her and move on. Happiness is a choice that you have to make for yourself.”

Above all, I didn’t want to move through life unaware of how my actions affected others. I didn’t want to become Malabar.

Aristotle famously suggested that through the mirror of friendship, people are able to see themselves in ways that are otherwise inaccessible.

I hadn’t known that romance without drama was possible. I had only ever understood love to be fickle and fleeting.

From my parents, I’d learned that when your vessel started to take on water, you found a lifeboat and abandoned ship.

With Nick, I felt the intense psychic fusion of lust and love along with the steadfast as...

She was her own person, as was I. And I knew that every time I failed to become more like my mother, I became more like me.

the deprivation that comes from not being known.