It’s because we’re conditioned as a society to believe that women don’t leave. It’s sort of an article of faith, isn’t it? Mommies don’t walk out on their babies, and if they do, there must be something wrong with them. A strain of madness, and if not madness, then something deeply broken. But a unique type of brokenness, one that the abandoned child, despite everything, refuses to accept is unfixable. A deserted daughter doesn’t just say, ‘Mom left, screw the bitch,’ as they might about a father. It’s something they must make sense of, and it seems to me they never stop trying.”
