While reading the final section of Heavy, I just felt shocked because it felt like I was witnessing history repeat itself. From a young age, Laymon’s mother had pushed for him to be excellent and would punish him whenever she felt disappointed, but she herself was just as flawed as he was. Not only that, but her harmful flaws and addictions seemed to be passed down to Laymon. Earlier on in the book, Laymon wrote about how he saw his mom gamble away a lot of money while they were in Las Vegas, and how she would continue to do this for a long time. Unfortunately, as an adult Laymon also developed the same gambling habits his mother had developed when he was a child. Even after throwing away who knows how many thousands of dollars and promising Flora that he wouldn’t return to the casino (220) he still did. A positive that came out of this situation was that Laymon was able to make amends with his mother and they promised each other that they would get better and she even promised to get help for her addiction (229). While Laymon was honest about never going back to a casino, it seems that his mother was never able to battle her addiction completely, so she continued lying to Laymon. Even when they were laying out all of their problems to each other, they continued to lie to each other, in turn continuing to hurt each other.

In a way this section really exemplifies how much Laymon is like his mother. They both struggled with addiction and constantly lied and hurt the people they loved. It makes sense that Laymon was hesitant about bringing a child into this world because he was afraid he would hurt them just like his mother and the world had hurt him (230). He was still suffering from years of trauma and still doesn’t understand how to deal with it in the healthiest way possible, a lot of people wouldn’t admit that willingly. After everything, I think the ending is quite ambiguous and that’s most likely because Laymon doesn’t know where exactly his story will go. Writing about everything that he went through might make his healing experience easier, but he can also continue to make the same mistakes, after all he seems to still be caught up in this never ending cycle of pain just like his mother.