
And it was an icicle just jammed into my chest. That my own mother—and with cause! It was not as if I was the greatest kid in the world. I was a troublemaker! I was a brat! I was a big-mouth pain in the ass! But that my own mother would not understand—at that moment I had what, now at age seventy-two I understand, was an enormous epiphany, which is: I really cannot support it, I cannot bear it, when people laugh at me.
Source: Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018887/ (documentary), at about 28:10.
Context: About being beaten up by bullies as a child.