The clinician can never fully prepare you to what your life will be like with a mother that has “bipolar disorder”. They never tell you that the first slap never loses the sting. The first chase and cower around the house is the reason for why you try and pretend to run away. That you will look to eventually appease your abuser. That, even after the abuse is done, you will gravitate by some force, naturally, like breathing air, to similar people and situations, believing somehow the outcome might be different. You hope and you pray. You pray as though you truly have no control either way in the outcome. It is inevitable what is to happen to you. After all, life has only been happening “to” you for so many years.