Lowell and I started therapy that winter, separately and then, once, together, and it was harder than the reporting and the confrontation and the family falling away combined.

It is a strange labor, untangling a childhood you spent decades rationalizing.

You go in expecting to find a few clear memories, and instead you find a whole architecture — thousands of small adaptations, habits of flinching and appeasing and reading the room, that you had always believed were simply your personality.

My carefulness.

My reflexive apology.

The way I could never quite eat in front of people without monitoring their faces.