Chapter 14 - Christine’s childhood
Christine told me something during therapy I had never heard.
At eleven, she broke a porcelain lamp.
Harold made Brian and Scott stand beside the door while he questioned her for nearly an hour.
Not physical violence.
Interrogation.
She was not allowed to leave until she admitted deliberately breaking it.
She had knocked it over accidentally.
Eventually she said:
“I did it on purpose.”
Because that ended the questioning.
At sixteen, Harold discovered she had gone to a party after saying she was at a friend’s house.
He took her car keys for four months.
Reasonable consequence?
Maybe.
He also made her sit at the dining table while her brothers read private messages from her phone aloud.
Humiliation as truth extraction.
Family participation as enforcement.
Brian said:
“Dad was strict.”
Scott said:
“That’s how he is.”
Christine learned:
Resistance prolongs punishment.
Compliance ends rooms.
So at thirty-six, watching Jake restrained, part of her returned to eleven.
May you like
That did not protect Jake.
But it explained why she froze in exactly the family configuration she had known all her life.
