Sometimes he would blame the victim after losing his temper. “You always make me yell,” he’d say, as if he was not in control of his own voice. What disturbed me most was when he denied a tantrum even as I was still reeling from the effects. There is something quite powerful in being told, flatly, that the thing that upset you never happened; eventually you start to worry that you’ve gone mad. “You need to grow up and be less sensitive,” Nix would say. “I can’t trust you if you keep telling me that I lost my temper.”
