I gave up on writing about my mother after MY MOTHER IS CRAZY was rejected in 2010. I wrote two other books instead — a novel for adults, and a novel for tweens.

For the seventeen years I worked with Judith, I thought therapy was like school. You put in the hours to master the concepts, and then you passed the test. Once you learned something, you knew it for life; you never backslid into ignorance. You could build on your knowledge and attain new levels every year.

My mother, I maintained, was a fucked-up person, but she wasn’t psychotic. Judith never met my mother; she only knew what I said about her, and you can’t diagnose people you never met from someone else’s description.

My mother stressed it repeatedly throughout my childhood. “I never want us to turn out like me and my mother. I couldn’t stand my mother, she was nothing but a burden to me, and I never want you to feel that way about me.”

What do you do, on the day of your mother’s death, after you’ve called everyone who needs calling? Before you select a picture of her to post on social media with a quick RIP, so everybody knows what just happened to you, out of the blue, on a Saturday morning?

The paramedics refused to enter the home without hazmat suits And I refuse to let it go

Maddy was confessing last night about Davis. How fucked up she is over it. Kept giving her anecdotes about me but, hey, what is relating about? Saying, “I think I understand what you're going through.” It's hard to admit that you’ve been a jerk, and the guy you thought was worthwhile actually sucks.

"I believe in the moon," she told me.

"Of course you believe in the moon," I told her. "The moon is real, it exists." It annoyed me so much.

"I believe in the goddess," she told me, and I said, "Yeah, I'm right here."

My first therapist, Judith, who I met when I was 25, did not have an organic brain disorder for the first fourteen years of our relationship. Then she developed rapid onset dementia. By the time I stopped seeing her three years later, she was unrecognizable.

Thing I tried: Cleaning the house myself

Report: After the extreme cleaner delivered his extreme letdown, I abandoned the idea of hiring a cleaning service and decided to do it myself.