"So, that explained everything. Her overnight absence, her extreme rebellion, her trysts with rock stars, and her breakdown, her hospitalization, her inability to find success, and the sordid turn her life had taken. Everything. I didn't really respond to her. I simply told her that mom must never know what happened. Then, I cleared out, I went away, hating her more than I had ever hated her in the past.
"Dad died a couple of weeks later, and I cut short my tour for the funeral. I suppose I could have cancelled it altogether and stayed by his side and helped Mom and all, but I can admit now that I was very selfish. But I also wanted to put distance from everything, and instead of giving it more thought, I simply threw myself all the more into my music, into practicing and performing and absorbing the wild adulation of adoring audiences, and it all kept me so safe and buffered from the reality of my sad and horrible family. The sister I had never been able to love, and the father whom I battled heroically against hating for what he had done to her, for what he might have done also to me.
"And of course, I also had my own family to attend to. I had been married only a couple of years, had an infant daughter whom mom would be looking after while I was away on tour, that on top of everything else I had to cope with, and I didn't know at the time, but I was already just newly pregnant again, and did have to cut the tour short anyway after the first trimester.
"I admit that I was a horribly selfish woman. And I am still horribly selfish. Oh, why did I even come here to this place..."
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