34 - Becca

"Mom, do you think Dad made me a monster?”

My mother leaned over to see my face, because my head was slightly lowered. She seemed outraged.

“Rebecca, who said that about you? You would never be a monster, especially because of your father. That has nothing to do with it. You are two totally different people.”

" But do you say that because you are my mother, or because you really don't believe that I would do anything intentionally to put me in danger?”

My mother was in doubt, looking more and more annoyed with the direction to which the subject was taking. Well, she didn't want to have that conversation, but I had said to end the damn subject about men long before it came up. The problem was that she didn't want to listen to me.

"I want to know exactly what you could have done to put yourself in danger, daughter.”

I gestured with my shoulders, holding my gaze on my hands on my lap.

"I may have looked for men who did not respect me at all, or for men with complicated and obscure lives,