"The Broken Son: Bound by Strings

chapter 12 Twisted Threads

I thought the battle over the trailer was over. I had won—at least on paper. But with my mother, losing was never an option. If she couldn't control me through ownership, she'd control me through chaos. The war was far from over, and I knew it, especially after that weekend when my boyfriend and I got engaged.

When I told my mother the news, she forced a smile, her lips pulling tight in a way that never quite reached her eyes. She offered empty congratulations, but I could see the cracks in her mask. Beneath the surface, her emotions churned—anger, disappointment, resentment. She wasn't happy for me. She was furious. I braced myself. I knew what was coming next.

She had a cycle—a twisted routine she followed when she felt she was losing control. First, the anger—sharp, biting words meant to break me down. Then the guilt—reminding me of all she had done for me, making me feel like I owed her my loyalty. When that didn't work, she'd fall into sudden sickness—complaints of dizziness, chest pain, fatigue. And if that failed to pull me back in, she'd escalate to a full-blown trip to the emergency room. The final act in her performance was always the same: threats of suicide.

And right on cue, my phone rang.

It was my brother, his voice urgent, frantic. "Mom's trying to kill herself."

Everything around me blurred. My heart pounded, my hands trembled. I had been here before—too many times to count. My mother had cried wolf so often that I should have been numb to it by now, but I wasn't. The thought that this time could be real kept me locked in her cycle. I dropped everything. I left work, picked up my fiancé—who refused to let me go alone—and sped toward her house.

When we pulled up, my stomach twisted at the sight of my brother pacing furiously in the yard. The porch light flickered behind him, casting his shadow long and sharp against the dirt driveway. His face was red, fists clenched. The second I stepped out of the car, he turned on me like a rabid dog, his voice a barrage of curses and accusations.

"This is all your fault!" he spat. "You pushed her to this! You don't care about her! You're selfish, just like always!"

His rage was deafening, drowning out every attempt I made to speak. His words sliced through me, not because they were true, but because they came from someone who did far less for our mother than me. My brother—the person who should have seen through her manipulation—had become just another pawn in her game.

My fists clenched at my sides, my body rigid. Talking to him was pointless—like screaming into a hurricane. Every word I tried to say was swallowed by his fury. The heat of my own anger rose to the surface. I was on the edge, teetering between restraint and the overwhelming urge to knock some sense into him.

Then, the front door burst open.

My mother stormed outside, arms outstretched like a martyr stepping onto the cross. "Stop it! Both of you!" she cried. "This is not what I wanted!"

For a moment, everything stilled. She looked disheveled, her hair messy, clothes wrinkled, her face twisted in an expression of forced weakness. The cool night air carried the faint scent of cigarette smoke and something sickly sweet. I felt my fiancé shift beside me, uneasy but eerily calm—as if he had been through this kind of situation before.

Later, when we were alone, he told me about the "attempt."

"She barely scratched herself," he said flatly. "Superficial cuts. Nothing serious. She just wanted attention."

I let out a slow, exhausted breath. I had suspected as much, but hearing it confirmed didn't make it any easier.

Then, he said what I hadn't allowed myself to think. "She needs to be committed. She needs real help."

He was right. God, he was right. But I knew my mother too well. If I called an ambulance, she'd spin it into another narrative. She'd say I was trying to lock her away, paint me as the villain, twist the entire situation until, somehow, she became the victim and I became the monster.

And I wasn't strong enough to face that battle. Not yet.

We left as soon as we could, retreating from the battlefield she had created. But the war didn't end there. For months, she played the game, repeating the cycle—each time chipping away at my resolve. No matter how much I tried to distance myself, she found ways to pull me back in. And every single time, I caved.

Eventually, she told us she'd be out of the trailer by March of 2022. She claimed she was looking for a house, that she'd be moving soon, that we'd get the trailer back. I wanted to believe her. Maybe I did. Maybe I was just so damn tired that I needed to believe it was finally over.

My fiancé had warned me several times that she wasn't leaving, and deep down, I knew he was right. But I hoped I was wrong this time. I wanted to believe she might actually surprise us and follow through. She didn't.

So we made plans. For the first time in what felt like forever, we let ourselves dream. We planned a getaway, a vacation we had put off for too long. We would take the trailer, escape for a little while, finally breathe.

But March came.

And she was still there.

No boxes packed. No signs of moving. No effort made. She sat comfortably in the trailer like a stone at the bottom of a creek—rooted in place, daring us to try and move her.

And that's when I finally saw it.

She never had any plans to leave.

I stared at the trailer, the weight of the situation crashing down on me like a tidal wave. She had never planned to leave. It wasn't about the house or the space—it was about her need to control, to keep me tethered in a way that made sure I could never fully break free. She would stay there until I had nothing left to fight with. And I was slowly starting to lose my will to keep fighting.

My fiancé, sensing my shift, squeezed my hand tighter. "We'll figure this out," he said softly, but even his words couldn't shake the heaviness in my chest. The realization hit me hard: I couldn't stay in this cycle. I couldn't keep allowing myself to be manipulated, to be dragged through this maze of false hope.

But as much as I wanted to walk away from it all, a part of me knew that leaving would only give her more power. The idea of cutting her off, of finally making the choice to stand up for myself, filled me with a mixture of fear and relief. What would that mean for me, for my future, for my relationship with my brother? How much more would she push before I couldn't take it anymore?

"I think it's time," I said quietly, my voice almost a whisper. "But not yet. There's something I have to do first."

My fiancé gave me a curious glance, but didn't ask. He knew I needed to find the strength on my own.

The world around me felt more distant, like everything was falling away. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the next chapter of this battle was already beginning, whether I was ready for it or not. And I wasn't sure what that meant or what I had to face next—but I knew I couldn't run from it any longer.

The trailer wasn't just a physical space anymore. It was the last link to a version of me that was slowly dying under my mother's control. And I was finally ready to break free—even if I wasn't sure how I was going to do it yet.

But what I didn't know was that the most difficult challenge was still ahead of me. A battle that would force me to confront not just her, but myself.

And that battle, like everything else with my mother, was going to be far from easy.