The Scapegoat

You were the one who said it. The thing everyone could see and nobody was naming — you named it, or you acted it out, and suddenly the room had something to be angry about that wasn't the real problem. That is the job: a family under strain needs somewhere to put the tension, and you were where it went. What gets left out of the retelling is that you were usually right. The trouble you caused was mostly trouble that was already in the house, and being the one who wouldn't pretend takes a kind of nerve the agreeable children never had to find. The cost is a long habit of expecting the blame to land on you, and of walking into new rooms already braced for it — which can look like the very thing you were accused of. Honesty is a good thing to own and you came by it early. What you can drop is the certainty that you will always be billed for it.