An email I chose not to send (altered to maintain anonymity):
I am going stir crazy. I really want to see you, but I can’t find a good excuse. Mom is psychologically abusing me, and I don’t think I can take it much longer. She constantly monitors me. She waits until there is no noise coming out of my room before she falls asleep. I don’t even think she sleeps most days. That would explain her insane need for productivity. I have no one to talk to at home who will listen to me and support me. I am trying to see my therapist here without her knowing I’m doing it because she wants to be the reason I go see a therapist. It’s always about her. I want to leave this house, but I don’t have the money, and my extended family would treat me in contempt for not having a good enough reason to move out. Why am I the only one who can see that she is a social manipulator. She read my journals. Remember those ones I showed you where I was writing those thought experiments? She went through my drawers while I was still upstate last year, and found the journals. She took them literally and told me I was very depressed and should speak with someone. The truth is that she Wants me to be depressed. She wants everyone to be depressed. She wants misery and misfortune to consume everything around her, and you know why? Because she can’t let my dad die. She maintains a house that she doesn’t want as if waiting for him to just waltz back in the front door one day. She believes that nothing can be good now that he is dead. Either she thinks that, or she’s faking woe; I pray she isn’t solipsistic that she has to feign grief. I can’t leave the house unless I tell her where I’m going. It’s not like I have anywhere to go though, since my friends don’t talk to me anymore. That part also really hurts. To be clear, I talk to them more responsibly, and with much more empathy and composure than I am writing in this post. I mean so well, but they all have gone their separate ways. It’s not their fault. I’m just so frustrated.