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Marriage would be my way out; a chance to leave my mother’s control behind. But with Harold, escape became another kind of cage. The Parkinson’s diagnosis was only the beginning; the pills meant to steady him unlocked something darker. Now, his world is stripped of logic; his eyes slip past me, and his whispers crawl with paranoia that swallows the light. Schizophrenia, they call it. I call it living with a stranger. Then there’s our son. All bruises and silences, injuries that multiply whenever I look away. He weaves stories sharp as razors, desperate for my attention, desperate for something I’m never quite able to give. Every day, I wonder: Do monsters make themselves, or are they passed down in blood and lullabies? I try to be the good mother. The perfect wife. Most days, I fail. The walls echo with laughter that isn’t mine, with threats from Harold’s fever-dreams, with the sound of my son’s breathing behind locked doors. The sick don’t rest in this house; they multiply, secrets breeding in the shadows. With every sleepless night, I lose pieces of myself; torn between the husband whose mind is crumbling and the child dancing on the edge of something worse. This time, survival means deciding who I’ll betray first: my husband, my son, or myself. Some houses are built to keep families safe. Mine hungers for a perfect mother—or none at all. What if the true danger isn’t Harold, but the boy we raised in his shadow?
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