My father started acting strange during his second divorce. Anytime I or me fell from my mouth, he grabbed a blade:

“You’re always thinking of yourself.”

“Me! Me! Me!”

“You’re selfish! If there was a war, and every one of us was starving and there was only one apple left on that tree out in the front yard, you would take it and eat the entire thing; that’s how selfish you are.”

“You’re practicing Meism again, that’s a sin!”

This started when I was eleven. I was lost because I refused to follow. Years later, as a high school senior, I took a communications class. We had a section on speech and assertiveness. Our teacher instructed all of us students to go home, look into a mirror and say over and over, Lane, I love you.

I didn’t hear him come in, I was simply doing my homework. He called the school forbidding me back into the class. But he’s eighteen, they said, he’s an adult. My home life wasn’t a secret anymore and neither was he. And then I was free. And all I said was, Lane, I love you.