Chapter Text
When he’s particularly stressed, particularly done , he lets himself believe that she hates him, and the thought is almost freeing. Maybe if she hates him, he doesn’t owe her this, doesn’t owe her the sleepless nights, doesn’t owe her cups of tea while she screams at him, because a mother is supposed to love her son, and if she doesn’t love him then it’s not fair that he has to do all this.
And then every time he recoils from that idea, the terror of it. A mother is supposed to love her son, and so if she truly hates him, if he cannot earn some kind of love from
her
, then what does that make him? If she hates him, who would ever love him? Better to be a bad son who can earn a reprieve from her anger, than a son incapable of being loved.