All the Dangerous Things(94)
He was gone for an entire year, after all. An entire year that I will never get back.
And that could have been the end of it: Abigail Fisher driving fast down the interstate, moving them both into a new home. A new life. Mason growing up with another mother, his young memory erasing me completely, little glimpses coming to him only as a foggy dream, a distant echo. Something fractured and broken and warped with time. He might have been happy, even, whatever story Abigail told him planting roots and turning true—until she started seeing me in the news each day, begging for him back. Until the doubts had crept in, forcing her to come to my talks and listen to me speak. Until she started seeing me not as the monster Valerie had made me out to be but as a heartsick mother desperate for her child—so she memorized my speech and cried as I told it, knowing she had made a mistake, but still, trying to convince herself that the story had been true. That she did what was right.
That he was in a better place.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If you haven’t made it to the end of the story yet, I ask that you stop reading this now and finish first—what comes next will surely spoil everything.
Before this book existed on paper and it was still just an idea in my head, the idea was basically this: What would it feel like to be trapped inside the mind of a sleep-deprived mother who, deep down, believed that the disappearance of her child was somehow her fault? When I started wondering why she would believe that, it hit me like a truck: It’s because mothers—and, honestly, women in general—are conditioned from birth to feel guilty about something. We always think things are our fault. We always feel the need to apologize: For being too much or too little. Too loud or too quiet. Too driven or too content.
For wanting children more than anything or for not even wanting them at all.
I won’t lie to you: I was afraid to write a book about motherhood without first being a mother myself. I make some strong statements in this novel, and I was worried about making those statements without coming from a place of personal experience. There are many things about motherhood that I simply cannot understand, and in those instances, I relied heavily on research, as well as speaking to friends and family members who are mothers to help me sort through it all. And while I acknowledge that there are certain emotions and experiences that I cannot fully appreciate yet, I also believe that every woman can understand the unspoken expectations of it: the weight of motherhood that seems to be ever-present throughout our entire lives from the very moment we’re given our first doll. Not only that, but because of the judgment that emanates from others once we make a decision of our own, oftentimes, we feel like we can’t even talk about it.
We feel completely alone in an experience that’s shared by so many.
When I came to that realization, I just wanted to stuff this book full of different types of women: flawed, complicated, messy women who will surely draw scorn for their various decisions—but really, that’s the point. Isabelle is, in many ways, my attempt at showcasing the damage societal pressures and expectations can have on a single person. Is she the perfect mother? No. And does she make mistakes? Yes. She struggles, as do all mothers, and feels extreme guilt over thoughts and emotions that she doesn’t even know are normal—but how could she know if nobody ever talks about it? Despite it all, though, she loves her son fiercely—however, that love will never be enough to save her in the court of public opinion… or even in her own mind, for that matter, so accustomed is she to absorbing everyone else’s blame.
When it comes to Isabelle’s mother, I tried to tread lightly and respectfully on a topic so fragile. I did a lot of research on postpartum psychosis, and the character of Elizabeth was informed, in large part, by Andrea Yates. The more I read about her, the more her actions shifted in my mind from horrifying to heartbreaking: She was a mother at the end of her mental rope. She asked for help, never received it, and was villainized for what happened as a result. Of course, what she did was both tragic and terrifying—but at the same time, it could have been avoided, too, if only the mental health of mothers wasn’t something we so easily shrugged off or pretended not to notice. The same can be said for Elizabeth.
Allison, Valerie, Kasey, and Abigail are also women in this story with complicated emotions that lead to their own varying decisions: good and bad, right and wrong—but mostly, I think, somewhere in the murky middle. In real life, we are so rarely afforded the luxury of things being in simple black and white, so I try to stay true to that in my stories, too, by making each character as multifaceted as possible. For that reason, I hope they inspire some enlightening conversation—or, at the very least, gave you an entertaining read.
Finally, if you are concerned about your own mental health or the mental health of a loved one, please know that there are resources available to help. A good place to start would be the National Institute of Mental Health website: www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a complicated relationship with the Acknowledgments page.
On the one hand, I love nothing more than calling attention to the many, many people who play a role in bringing a book to life. I never knew how much of a team effort publishing a book truly was before I entered this industry, and let me tell you: it feels downright dishonest to only list one name on the cover. But on the other hand, it is impossible to list every single name, and it pains me to think that I’m leaving someone out—so, with that said: Please know, whoever you are, that if you touched this story in any way, I am incredibly grateful.