I felt bad for Harry. Every tear he shed stung my eyes, every degrading remark shouted at him tormented my soul, and every slap across his face caused a scar to form somewhere deep inside me, as slowly but surely I was being pulled deeper into the dysfunctional fabric of his family.
Down the rabbit hole I fell as I entered my senior year of high school. Harry had moved out of the dorm at KU and was sharing an apartment with two other guys in an apartment building on the main campus. I had friends that had graduated with my sister two years earlier who were students at KU, so my parents let me spend one weekend a month with them. I spent the days and evenings with Harry, and I loved being among the college students. I couldn’t wait to be one of them, and I hated that I had to return to high school when the weekend was over. It was difficult for me to be involved with collegiate activities during my weekends in Lawrence and return to the halls of Marysville High School during the week. I had convinced myself that life in the university town was paradise and when I was on campus the dynamics of our relationship were different, but my paradise was a lie, a fantasy I had created about people and places as I wanted them to be. The truth was that Harry could be as far away from his abusive father as he could possibly get, but his abusive father still lived inside of him. He was a part of him, having infiltrated his subconscious mind and carved out a cozy little niche from which he could torture his son forever.