#i personally do not believe this tops fusing your only daughter with her dog just for a fucking certificate and for science reasons

[xhanisai]

I seriously can’t think of any other animated character that can top the monstrosity that Shou Tucker committed. 

#and how the fuck did Gabriel Agreste make it this far and is now being pitted against him??? #sure we already know he's an absolute vile irredeemable piece of shit #from purposely manipulating his son cos he wants to turn him into a super villain that'll raze paris to the ground #and emotionally abusing said son and beating the shit out of said son in alternative timelines #to again beating up children heroes and manipulating other people so that he can turn them into villains #and being obsessed with jewels so that he can make the wish to turn back time and get back to his wife #something he already fucked up cos his obsession with Ladybug is so bad #BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT #i personally do not believe this tops fusing your only daughter with her dog just for a fucking certificate and for science reasons #and having done that with your wife prior #as much as a piece of shit that gabriel is at least he has some sort of love to his family even if it's twisted and nasty and horrible #shou has like no empathy and gives zero fucks about his family lol

[badgirlsinterviews]

The Depth of Humanity | Camila Sosa Villada | TEDxCordoba

Description

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Camila Sosa Villada began her career as an actress in 2009, when she was garnered international acclaim for the autobiographical drama Carnes Tolendas, the stage portrayal of a travesti. In this work, she fused acting, the poetry of Federico García Lorca, and her identity as a travesti. In this talk, she speaks of her journey as a young sex worker, and the incredible human beings which accompanied her along the way.

Transcription

You there- you’ve been with a sex worker before, right? I see a few familiar faces out there, but they aren't alone and I feel bad outing them like this. Anyway, you must have been through a red light district before. In your car, on your bike, you must have crossed paths with a couple of travesti sex workers, working on the street corner, or does this concept seem completely unfamiliar to you? Completely unfamiliar?

My father used to say that if you want to be happy you have to be a good person. He said that to be a good person, you must have a family and go to work. When I began to cross-dress when I was a teenager, my father put a curse on me, and told me that one day he'd get a knock on the door and that they'd tell him the news: that I'd been found dead, left in the gutter, because the only job I could hope for as a travesti was having sex with men for money. I'm paraphrasing because they won't let me swear, but he put it a bit more directly that that. He said I would die alone.And so, before the awards, before I became a cult actress, before I travelled around the world and discovered amazing places, before the prestige, and the affection people gave me, I ended up working as a prostitute, like my old man said I would.

I didn't end up left for dead in the gutter after all. The first time I did sex work, I was coming out of my university faculty where I was studying Social Communication. When I came to Córdoba to study I arrived with the personality traits of an Aquarius - highly emotional, very rebellious. I wanted to show my father that he was wrong about what he said. But I failed. Because every time I tried to find a so-called 'decent' job, like working at McDonald's or in a call centre, when they checked my I.D. and then took a look at me they became immediately brain dead, and refused to give me the job. So then one night, when I was leaving the university district a car stopped next to me, and the driver asked me how much I wanted.That was the first time I had to take a path towards my destiny and make a decision, and I got in his car. 

I started going around Barrio Alberdi at around 3 or 4 A.M. knowing that, at that time, my neighbours wouldn't be around to see me. I knew people drove around there, that drunk men would be leaving the bars. But working alone meant that I was exposed to many dangers. If it wasn't the police, it was the crazy people leaving the clubs, if it wasn't them, it was the group of beggars passing by. A travesti sex worker who worked in Dean Fuentes and Corro told me to go to a red light district and there I'd be adopted by other travestis. She said that, since I was a girl, they'd treat me like their daughter.

So I began to go around the red light districts that I knew about back then, which were la Cañada and Rioja, el Mercado de Abastos, and Sarmiento Park. Since I had always had an affinity for the trees which grow all on their own, without the help of others, Sarmiento Park was the option I was left with. Nowadays, people go out running there, they walk their dogs, they go cycling, they go there to make out,to eat sandwiches, but back then, the park was dark and it was used in order to get from one side of the city to the other, and it was where people looked to pay for pleasure. 

The first time I went there, I sat down on a bench close to a group of girls and travesti sex workers who were out working in front of the statue of Dante. I was listening to José Luis Perales on my headphones I saw how they immediately recognised me and they sent over a girl to figure out what I was doing there sat in the park. The truth is, I was very scared: the only thing I knew about red light districts was what was being shown on TV at the time. There was also that whole mess going on in Palermo where the neighbours wanted to get rid of the sex workers, so the images they put on TV were always awful. I basically felt a resounding terror, a huge amount of fear. 

She approached me - as the first girl in the group approached me, I realized that she was pregnant. Her stomach was huge. She had straight, black hair, that came down to her waist. Her hair was full of grass and so were her clothes, because she met with her clients there, inside of the park.I told her, "Hold on a second!" She asked me for a lighter, and asked me what I was doing there. She left, and told the other girls that I was Camila, that I was 18 and that I was trying to work there, the same as them. When I left that night, I was worried that they might to do something to me, that they'd get mad if a girl like me stole one of their clients. 

I went back the next day, and they all came up to me and introduced themselves. There was Gabriela, the pregnant girl; the other Gabriela, another travesti who was working there. She was enormous, almost 6 ft tall, and she spoke like Libertad Lamarque. She had such a womanly voice, like Libertad Lamarque. There was also Angie Desiré, one of the most beautifu travestis that I've ever met - and, by the way, there are some beautiful travestis in Córdoba! There was her cousin, Pilar, who actually identified as male but just dressed as a woman when he went to work in Sarmiento Park. 

And there was Cleopatra, who was like the pharaoh of that land, of that horrific inferno in front of the statue of Dante. She was a 6 and a half foot tall travesti. Her hands were huge, and she made such amazing roasts in her house in Alta Gracia. I mean, my father knows how to make good roasts because he’s spent his whole life making them, but this girl made the most delicious roasts I've ever eaten, and that I probably ever will. With her, I learned how much my body was worth and the price I should put on it.I learned how to defend myself, and to look twice at someone before judging them. I learned how to construct a weapon to fend off a client if things got ugly. It was made of a bar of soap and a razor blade, wrapped together in a hairband. You'd take it out like this and use it like a knife, but you could keep it in your purse or in your sleeves, or anywhere else. I never used it, but there were many times which I could have.

The only time us girls separated from each other was when we were with a client, or when the cops showed up. They're still as ineffective as ever, so just imagine what they were like in 2000 or 2001. We were no saints, so we obviously wouldn't just shut up and take it if the police provoked us when we got caught. We'd come home with broken septums, black eyes, misshapen breasts, so when we'd see the police arriving, we'd start shouting "The police! The police!" And we'd run off like a bunch of cockroaches scuttling away from a light, all of us, sprinting off through the park in our heels, because of how terrified we were of the police. 

I never figured out in which exact moment those girls became my true friends. I don't know exactly when they knew my birthday, nor when they knew if my heart was broken or whole, if I needed money for rent, if I needed money to eat, if I was tired, if I was in class. All my other friends, my uni friends, my friends from high school, my parents - none of them knew that, when class was over, I'd go to Sarmiento Park to work. Those girls did.

In that park, amongst the men who hired us, there were those who were old, young, skinny, fat, poor, rich happy, bitter, married, single, tops, bottoms. We didn't pay attention to the skin colour or the origins of those who sought our affection. And here I am at TEDx, trying, somehow, to put out an encouraging or inspirational message, although I don't believe in self-improvement - far from it. I accepted to do this talk firstly, because I needed to ask for forgiveness, for never trying to find those girls again. 

I never saw them again. And I wanted to tell you all about how Gabriela, the pregnant girl, would cycle to the park every night. She locked her bike up against a tree and did her job there, right next to it. And I thought about this shitty system, the reason for which two unborn children in a girl's belly are forced to attend such a spectacle. I want to ask if any of you have ever thought that there could be anything more concretely poetic than that girl working in Sarmiento Park, getting there and going back home by bike.

Perhaps I wouldn't be here at TEDx today, wouldn't have become the actress, or all of that, because I would have ended up in the gutter, left to die, like my old man said, if Cleopatra hadn't seen those two guys that hired me that one night. They came out of a club in Nueva Córdoba, and picked me up in their car, and when they realised I was travesti they began punching the crap out of me. From inside the car, while I was being beaten I saw Cleopatra coming, in her skinny, high-wasted jeans, a denim jacket which was cut off here, so you could see everything, the underside of her breasts a high ponytail, black hair, and her huge hands. She opened the car door, pulled out the two guys, and beat the crap out of them.

It was the first time in my life that anyone ever defended me. It was her - not my parents, my friends, my siblings, or anyone else, but her, who saved me from death that night. Maybe I wouldn't be here if I hadn't followed my intuition and hadn't arrived at that park by chance, guided only by my affinity for the trees that grow without the help of others. Thank you.

[ayatanskywalker4u]

NO ONE CAN BLAME YOU FOR WALKING AWAY

Does the story end when we go? Does love die if the pages stop turning? I hope so because Im in pain. How do u tell someone "you cheated 1st"? I slept with two women and the other I still love. I read her tumblr page when she wasnt looking, its not like i was the greatest guy. She said stuff like i said mean things. I know i did. Like a kid throwing a tantrum because i dreamed of a future. You know, having kids a house, maybe a dog. If i didnt love her why risk going to jail to save her life? Her father threatened to call the cops on me when i banged on the door yelling and crying shouting "SHES DYING" it was raining that night like some movie and me running through it. We were always there for eachother whether it was a prayer or a hand. I asked her to marry me and she said yes, that was somewhere in the middle.

Theres a lot that happened, some NSFW stuff that happened to her. I could see it breaking her. And when we finally met again she was laughing about some of the graphic content. She told me the old her was dead, like she was just looking past me. Like the night she was dying from an overdose. She didnt see the man that loves her. She only saw what she wanted to see.

When the ambulance took her away i met her the next day in the hospital ward. I will always remember this because as i turned away from her hand i felt her standing there almost begging me not to leave. I had to go, i joined the military.

What went through my mind during that moment was does she love me, then why didnt she call me before the pills? And she's slept with other men to boot. But i was always there even if it made me mad.

There was this other girl, Ebony. She was pretty but so was Ashley. I wanted to try getting back at her for running around. And no i didnt go to bed with Ebony after Ashley's incident. Not right after. I still shouldnt have. "He who touches a women divored commiteth adultery." The same goes for man. I sinned against my very heart which was Ashley and now she hates me.

Im not the type to go get a new dog when we have to put down o'l yeller. When my dog Ginger died i never replaced her. Can you replace a son or a daughter, a father or mother? Can you replace the person you almost lost your life for? I guess the question is should you though. I hate sounding like im giving up on what i believe in. I love ginger and i believe in a better place.

I stayed gone to military training until 2010. Ashley called in the beginning to see if i was alright. I was still mad at her. Was she sleeping with others even though i wasnt around even Ebony? Lol no but ebony was sleeping against me and Ashley even stalked her to find out for me. I thought she was manipulating my emotions. That was the beginning of our downfall. I called her, Ashley, right around my graduation. I was outside of a hotel the privates threw a party at. I missed her and decided to go outside and call her. She was with some other man sadly. Probably doing some NSFW with him as my heart breaks. She laughed at me over the phone, like hey Ash come on its OB. Im still here. I graduated but the woman i love left me.

After the military i called her every now and again. She wouldnt pick up most of the time. I joined the conservation corps and just decided to wait until she asked me to come over. My heart was racing when she asked to talk, funny enough i believe i quit there right beforehand.

We talked about a lot of stuff. Mainly she talked about the guy and the NSFW stuff. All while looking off in the distance just smiling and giggling about how he made her scream and broke the cheap Walmart bed. I was getting upset. Holding my tongue. But when she told me her father touched her, thats when i cracked. I laughed at her pain because it seemed like she was ignoring mine. I missed her forever and a day and she was just, idk she was something, a happy i wouldnt call happy. I spent the night i think, even tried to pull a night with her but its like she just hated me. The last time i recalled ever seeing her was the hospital. She must have held the hospital and ebony against me.

Fast forward to the next day she drops me off at my house. As i stare at her wondering whats going on in her head, probably the dudes equipment, she reaches out and tries to hug me. I pushed her hands away, like she just wanted me to feel like everything was going to be alright. She only wanted to chase tail. Like all those moments over the years we were together didnt matter. I know she was talkin to someone else, i felt like i couldnt "satisfy" her anymore in a way. She definitely didnt like my moves the night before. I watched her get back in the car and drive off.

Some years passed and we lost the house. I overdosed on i think excedrin. That was the night she wouldnt pick up her phone. Funny enough that bottle wasnt enough to finish the job. The cycle of wanting to die when you lose a love like a dog, pig, cow, man women, whatever its hard to kill unless you have hope.

I gathered my senses and decided to leave california for Minnesota. The week prior was bad though. I started hallucinating and i heard voices. I started developing schizophrenia, and destroyed my mothers house due to it. Back to the following week im leaving for Minnesota and Tony tells me he has a gun he wants to sell. I figure i'd buy it when i get paid. You guessed it, im looking to make the job quick. Ashley didnt love me anymore. She wont miss me anyways. I Know how to pull an M9 apart blind folded and put it back together within seconds. I know the central nervous system is what you aim for. Its in the back of the skull at the nape of the neck. You'd leave this world in seconds. I know it sounds grim but come on, its better than commiting adultery against my heart. Who wants to live and suffer at the same time?

Tony saw me brandishing the piece and hid it from me i was crying about what i had done to everyone.

Tony ended up ditching me in Minnesota, luckily it wasnt my first time eating out of a trash can. Home is where you make it. Some people at the shelter became my friends and we played guitars together. But i wasnt as good with the guitar as i am now.

Salvation army was my first job in Minnesota, i was just happy again. I grew my hair out and styled it down, not like Prince and less greasy. After work id go get a drink. I worked that job for about two months i know because my birthday had passed and i believe i turned 25.

2015 came down and i still was asking god what now. I was skinny and handsome playing the guitar with a job. There were women who'd look and stare and some thought i was full of myself. The truth is i just wanted to be able to hold ashley if she ever fell in my arms. I was kinda muscly. I always told myself that one day her legs will fail but id be ready, the muscles werent just for show.

I hit on a few women but i never chased. Id go to the library every now and again to read. And then it hit me, even though i had no cell phone i could use the computers, Ashley was the 1st thing on my mind. I called, i dont think she answered but messaged back. She sounded angry. She was pregnant is what she was. Little did i know. All said and done she left me feeling more empty than i had planned. I started getting angry at God, "if you control everything and move everything, why are you moving me toward Ashley? She doesnt even see the love anymore or remember the sacrifices."

The train to the mall was coming by soon. I went to the liquor store with a plan. Buy as much fireball whiskey as i can consume and jump off of the mall of america. The train was sluggish, probably because i had been drinking. I fell into a doze just before the last stop, "The Mall of America". I woke up and walked slowly, tipsy, toward the elevators to the 6th floor. I heard a voices as i walked to the ledge. I turned around to see if anyone was watching me, my back against the guard rail. I climbed on top and looked down, liquor really did help. I turned my head up and told God "you want my life? You can have it". I let go of my hands back toward the earth and fell asleep.

When i woke up it was about 2 weeks later. My vision was blurry but i made out my mom crying on my chest. I slowly reached and touched her scalp. She didnt know i woke up. Short lived, i went back to sleep. Not just my mom was there but my sister too. They drove from California. How did they find me with no ID?

I stayed in that hospital for 3 months, due to my injuries and placed in the psych ward. My family visited me every few months. All that was going through my head is 'I'm alive" it took me a while to figure out how to use my legs being one has nerve damage now. But i started walking before my bones could fully fuse. The nurses told me to stop.

After i gained disability and got placed in housing, i bought a game to occupy my time. No more work outs, no more running, just me trying to forget the reasons i gave up on life. A couple months to about a year later my mother asks if i want to leave the housing and save the disability money. I said yes to that. I didnt know they'd take me back to california on my birthday. It was a nostalgic drive.

I picked up a walking routine and decided talking to ashley was always going to end with her thinking about my faults. I stopped calling her for probably 4-5 years no messages, nothing.

One day my mom asks if i want to go for a ride and talk. We drove until we reached the on ramp she passes me her phone with a picture of Ashley holding a baby. It was Zipporah. What should i have felt? If ashley is dead why did ashley hold onto the dream? And share it with someone who just left her holding the bag. I couldnt believe it after how hard we tried to bring her into this world.

But i cant chase Ashley anymore, i cant even run, literally.

I didnt know if she was married or not to the dude all i know is his ass wasnt in any pictures with the baby. Ive done some searchin around, he was some dead beat who'd prey on women revealing there weak sides on the internet instead of reality. Yeah I never liked virtual dating. That or the websites. Why do for me what i can do myself?

Even after zipporah was in my view i was a happy mad. Happy that Ashley finally got her family minus the father. But mad at the whoremonger man who just left her. I was a little sore with Ashley for hiding it.

Its been a a year and a couple months after the pictures were seen. I started forcing the thought of Ashley out. I wanted her to disappear, me or her, but mainly me. She wants to chase body parts thats on her. But Im broken now. I still love her and sure some might say less than before but i say im just skeptical now. Besides what good is seeing me broken going to do for her? Idk if she'd just laugh at me again. I kinda wish she would, so i can take these feelings and curse the day she ever earned my love.

Whats the point in arguing though. We were so happy until people stepped in and sabotaged our emotions. You hate me for cheating, laughing at what happened between the father and you and walking away. When i should have stayed. I forgave all the crap in the past. But im almost done.

The doctors told me i dont have much time left after my jumping act. I messed up my innards pretty good. The alcohol relaxed the impact though. I dont want to tell my mother, she'd flip over what im talking about. I think i can close the book on this life well too.

Even though i didnt get to help raise the dreams we shared i learned you still held onto dead things just to keep the dream alive. Ashley is alive in there somewhere, only ashley would name that baby zipporah.

I can leave happy.

[gaiatheorist]

‘Daddy Issues.’

Now, I’d always associated ‘Daddy Issues’ with approval-seeking behaviour, and projecting a desire for protection, but, during the recent therapy sessions, I did catch myself muttering ‘Thanks, Dad’ in relation to some of my behaviour patterns and coping mechanisms. Much like many of the screws in flat-pack furniture, my need-to-please is rattling around at the back of a drawer somewhere, that’ll be another reason I’m not particularly stable, my skewed coping mechanisms are the human equivalent of that cupboard door, where there’s a knack to opening and closing it.

I’d sent my Dad a message, about the Autism diagnosis, my family dynamic is odd, and my tangential risk-avoidance mechanism kicked in. I’d already messaged my Mum, then it dawned on me that my brother has contact with both of our parents. It was possible, but not particularly probable that my mother might mention the diagnosis to my brother, who might mention it to my father. Unacceptable risk of Dad turning up unannounced to check I hadn’t put my trousers on my head, or taken to swallowing live goldfish. I sent a very detailed message to Dad, and then a short-and-to-the-point message to my brother. ‘Heads up, Dad might ask you to check on me.’

I’d sort of anticipated a laborious hunt-and-peck reply from Dad, you know the ones, where the electronic ellipsis is on the screen for ages, so you expect War And Peace, but end up with ‘OK’, or that damned ‘thumb’ on Facebook. Nope, at some point between two and three yesterday afternoon, my Dad knocked on my door. He’s only known where I live for two out of the last twenty years. Less than ideal, the house is in that particular ‘Oh, Gods, did they take much?’ state, with my son back from uni. We have two of everything, because I set him up for everything, two sets of cutlery, two sets of crockery, two coffee presses, two pestle and mortars, you get the idea. I probably looked like I’d try to fight off the imaginary burglars, and that I might have been eating my dinner at the time, my top-jumper has dropped food, and all manner of dubious ‘matter’ on it, and I was in leggings and fake Ugg boots. Classy. 

“Right, I saw your message. What’s all this about? I didn’t read all of it.”

Hmm, if he’d read all of it, he’d know what it was about. People function in different ways. I have a tendency to type all salient points into a text-message, quite frequently with ‘Information only, no action required’, hit ‘send’ and it’s done. I’m a cow for ‘as per my previous’.  

“Come in, Dad.” (Mad panic, shifting my son’s disgusting desk, so Dad could sit down.)

“I will, just a minute.” (Dad goes back to his car, which is on the road at the end of my empty drive.) “I brought you these, a sort of early Christmas present.” ‘These’ were gin, my Dad can be the very worst Tommy-top-it,self-aggrandising, delusions of grandeur type, but, hey, free gin.

I explained the process that had led to the diagnosis, how I’d always found some ‘normal’ things incredibly difficult, but thought it was just me being useless, as everyone else seemed to cope, when I just wanted to hide behind the curtains. I elaborated, about how much conscious-cognitive effort that had taken, and that the brain injuries massively diminished my ability to filter/screen/mask. I was a little barbed with him when I mentioned that high-functioning females with ASD are often missed, because we’re conditioned differently, small, polite, quiet, ‘good girl’ material. It gets tricky here, because I remember being shouted at, and clouted for ‘having a long face’, and not ‘joining in’. I explained that I’d always found those things exceptionally difficult, and now, with the brain injuries, I wasn’t able to suppress the sensory overload. (See, I’m not ‘just’ being an arse when I decline invitations to family gatherings and such.)

Last year, or possibly the year before, I had a no-holds-barred conversation with  my Mother. We agreed that, with hindsight, we’d both made some dubious judgements, but that we couldn’t go back and change anything. I don’t physically look like either of my parents, but I AM similar in some behaviour-patterns and psychological aspects. The ‘keep going’ pit-pony element is from my mother, I used to run at everything full-tilt, now, I’m more of the tenacious water-on-a-rock. Princess-wing-it is entirely my father, he’s a chancer, and a grifter, lobbing himself head-first into things, without planning how to get out. Perfect storm, I have my father’s bravado, and my mother’s resilience. Both parents have acknowledged that they married too young, and didn’t have a clue what they were doing. In response to me making the same disclosure first. I ‘played house’ for a decade, then the metaphorical rot set in. Relentless, like my mother, and headstrong, like my father, I ‘kept trying’, to show everyone who said my marriage wouldn’t last that I was right, and they were wrong. There was an amusing incident with dad yesterday, where I word-slipped, the word I couldn’t remember was ‘rehabilitation’, I bumbled around the edged of it, recovery, repair, re-adjustment, dad couldn’t find the word, either. 

“That happens a lot, Dad, my mind knows the word, my brain can’t find it, and my mouth throws out the next-best-fit word, and hopes for the best.”

“Well, yes, I understand what you’re saying, and I know I get it wrong sometimes. Actually, no, I don’t.”

We spoke over each other, he said he was last-wrong in 1968, and I said I was wrong in 1983. Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong. 

I was their pancake-baby. You know how it goes, you make the batter, heat the pan, take one of the connectors off the battery in the smoke alarm, and make a start. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first pancake is always shit, it’s the dog-pancake, it either burns because the pan is too hot, or soaks up oil like a disgusting gluten-sponge. Subsequent pancakes improve in quality, and, just as you’ve absolutely cracked it, you run out of batter. I was the dog-pancake, and my half-sister, 6ft tall, with a Masters Degree from Oxford, AND conventionally gorgeous was the last pancake from the batch, the perfect pancake. She’s about 24, world at her feet, considering continuing her studies with a doctorate. I have 10 GCSEs, and 4 A-levels, I am the bad pancake. 

I don’t have Daddy Issues in terms of seeking approval or affirmation from others. I don’t have Daddy Issues in terms of looking for a protector, I can catch my own spiders, and change my own light-bulbs and fuses. My Daddy Issues, like most things about me, are slightly skewed. As much as I was conditioned-female, as much as I spent most of my formative years being ‘nice’ and ‘quiet’, and ‘good’, because I was terrified of what would happen if I stepped out of line, I’m not scared of him any more, and I’d rather be productive than ‘nice.’ He’s 68, and he’s frail. I’m as tall as him, as age has taken its toll, I’m heavier than him by 2st, he’s not a physical threat to me, and I severed all emotional ties decades ago. He can’t intellectually intimidate me, because his ‘specialist subject’ is rabbits and chickens, and I have neither, that knowledge is not relevant to me. (I did have chickens, he rambled through an anecdote of one of the well-to-do-Oxford-parents seeking him out, to pose poultry predicaments. I imagine he was sought out as a novelty, he’s an odd looking object. The ‘very posh’ lady had sought him out, he rambled on a bit, before getting to the point, she’d bought eggs to hatch on eBay. “Really, that would never be my first choice, Dad.” “Precisely my point.” “You’d have no idea of the lineage, even if they did hatch, and survive the first 14 weeks, they’d likely keel over and die as soon as they reached adulthood.” He went a bit quiet, and then started telling me how my half-sister ‘worked the computer’ while my step-mother performed veterinary surgery.)

That man caused me physical, emotional, and psychological damage that I live with to this day. I was never-enough, and when I was-enough, I was a try-hard, doomed to fail when my incompetence was uncovered. He told me I was ugly, stupid, useless, but I don’t believe that any more. I don’t ‘need’ my Dad, I don’t want to ‘be’ my Dad, much less marry him. I spent far too many years trying to ‘beat’ him, but all that did was exacerbate the self-doubt he’d instilled in me.

He came from a different time, for all his personal issues, he tried, he had better results from his younger daughter than he did with me, there’s almost 20 years between the two of us. Not ‘better’ results, different ones. She’s amazing because she was a late, very-much-wanted child, with a stable mother, and a father who was at a different point in his life. I wish them all well, but I’m not part of their lives. Unless they’re bringing me gin.