My perspective about Bobby shifted profoundly as I began to revisit our shared memories with a new lens—one not clouded by the survival instincts of my younger self. Writing this memoir forced me to pause and reflect on moments I had long buried or dismissed. In unpacking those memories, I began to see patterns, connections, and truths that I hadn’t allowed myself to see before.

For much of my life, I had defaulted to viewing Bobby as “our idiot brother”—a perception born, I think, out of frustration, distance, and a self-protective instinct. He was the one who always seemed to get into trouble, who clashed with our parents, who didn’t follow the rules or “play the game” the way I had learned to. But as I started piecing together our childhood, it dawned on me that Bobby wasn’t just acting out. He was fighting back. In his own way, he was navigating the chaos of our home life, searching for a place to belong, and asserting himself in a world where he was repeatedly made to feel powerless.

The pivotal moment of understanding came as I reflected upon the “Great Pop Heist” and the incident at school when Bobby reported Dad for abuse. I had viewed those events through the lens of how they impacted me—how I felt betrayed, how I panicked, how I tried to survive. But then I stepped back and thought about what they must have meant for him. I thought about the courage it took for him to report Dad, knowing full well the fallout he’d face. I thought about the isolation he must have felt when his cries for help were dismissed—not just by the school and the authorities, but by me, the sister who should have had his back.

I began to see that Bobby likely bore the brunt of both of our parent’s anger after Frank left the house at 16. He became the lightning rod for all that rage, all that dysfunction, and yet, he didn’t have the tools or the support to process it. Bobby wasn’t an “idiot.” He was just a kid doing his best to survive in an environment that set him up to fail. He likely felt like he could do nothing right, no matter how hard he tried, and that sense of futility must have weighed on him deeply.

This realization didn’t come easily. It required me to confront my own biases, my own failures, and my own role in his pain. It’s not easy to admit that I betrayed him in the principal’s office, or that I spent years dismissing his struggles rather than trying to understand them. But the more I’ve reflected, the more compassion I’ve found—not just for Bobby, but for all of us. We were kids, thrown into a chaotic, fractured world, each of us scrambling to survive in our own way.

So now, when I think of Bobby, I no longer see the “idiot brother.” I see a young boy who was brave in ways I didn’t understand at the time, who carried a burden heavier than anyone should have to bear, and who, in his own imperfect way, kept trying to find his place in the world. And that shift in perspective has been one of the most humbling and healing parts of this journey.

The lasting Marc of physical violence. The only reason I didn’t title this entry this way is because it sounds like a schtick but it is no joke. And I needed to be able to clear the air about that at the same time as offering it.

I wish so desperately to understand the source of our father’s unbridled rage. I sense within myself that this is an area that I have been unconsciously “looking past” because I do not have an answer. All I have are the memories, and those of which I need to be real and honest with myself about now.

So Dad was not a guy that just ran around town pissed off. He had, what I recall to be, a “normal” range of emotions (it is the extreme range of the anger one that I struggle with today). I was about to say that I didn’t have a sense of walking around on eggshells around dad but I immediately realize this isn’t entirely true.

I was often very aware of myself, and often intentional about not pissing him off.

But he didn’t really have a lead-up. You couldn’t tell if a fuse had already been lit somewhere else in his day.

I did not have a clear sense of my dad’s mood, with exception of those sublime moments when he was whistling or singing or cooking happily in the kitchen. Those were bonafide not-much-can-disrupt this happiness kinds of situations.

I saw him cry about a handful of times in my life. Once or twice after particularly explosive fights with my mom.

Once when I shared that I felt very scared for his health because he was hacking and wheezing and I knew it was because he was smoking. Man that was a tender memory that I had forgotten. He gathered us all in the basement and promised to quit. He was genuinely remorseful and sorry and I don’t recall all of the detail of what he said that day or if he shared or whether I imagine that he’d have been connecting to his own fears of having lost his father at a young age.

I don’t know if this is projecting or factual: he’d have connected those dots and realized how difficult it was for him as a young man to have to cope with that loss and he’d be committed and hell-bent on never doing that to us because he loved us and he would approach that with the same level of fervor and energy that he put in to his work (dude was for real a workaholic). We could rely on that and rest in knowing that Our Dad would be around forever.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Side note to myself to capture how meta this all is, given my personal health circumstances at this exact moment in my life.

ANYWAY – I saw him express emotion, vulnerability. I saw him happy, blissful. I saw him dedicated, hardworking. And I saw him really mad, in a fit of rage.

I never laid a hand on either of my kids for fear that I too would have somehow inherited that unbridled rage. I feel I have it in me. I feel I have a good sense of control over it, and I am careful not to put myself in situations where I might cross a line that I can never come back from.

I assume other people are able to do this successfully, administer the precise amount of corporal punishment to someone they love, compartmentalizing their own sense of self in the moment and focus on the delivery of the punishment.

So I’m not throwing shade, I am just expressing doubt that that could ever, ever, ever, be me. So I won’t even take the chance on it.

I can still feel the way my body tenses up. The electrifying tingle of knowing exactly what is coming to you, and also knowing there is absolutely no way out.

The physical sting: I feel as though I could physically feel the outline of the thicker protected edges of the leather belt. The holes, the cracks, each time as it left the unmistakable welts and bruises on my skin.

The emotional sting: I always knew it went on longer than it needed to. That it was far beyond whatever stupid thing I had done. And there was nothing I could do about it. The person delivering this punishment would never be able to see this pain.

The only thing worse than getting my own ass beat?

Watching, listening, waiting it for it to be over – any of my brothers having it happen to theirs.

I don’t know if it is true or if it is something I made myself believe: dad took it easier on me, because I was the girl.

I feel there is at least some evidence of this as I only ever got beat with a hand or the leather belt.

My brothers, on the other hand, would seem to have been beaten with whatever was within arms reach. It really at least seemed that way. Ping pong paddles and dowel rods were broken over my brothers asses.

Dad had a penchant for collecting some eclectic things, one of which was a display case of dowel rods. I don’t think that he owned this display case for the sole purpose of beating the shit out of my brothers with them. But I don’t know that to be true or false and I’m finding it particularly mentally disturbing to entertain a notion that it was intentional.

That display case sat outside his workshop or very close to the door that Frank would have had to walk by every day to get to his bedroom.

That is a special brand of fucked up if any of that was intentional.

I remember my mom pleading with my dad to stop.

One time she called out, “That’s enough! He’s got a test tomorrow.” This was about Bobby. “What? He has a test tomorrow?! Why didn’t you tell me that?”

Sigh. This is difficult to write about as an adult reflecting back.

My kid brain – and probably survival instinct – caught that the existence of a test the next day would possibly reduce or remove the risk of an ass beating. I made quick mental note of that. And was extremely grateful for the beating to be over, and I was so relieved for Bobby.

He had a look on his face that I won’t forget. As he limped away, red faced, tear soaked, his face did not hold relief of any kind.

He was broken.

My adult brain – ugh, so much. We really should have mandatory emotional fitness tests before anyone is allowed to attempt to be a parent. How did the presence of a scheduled test eclipse the weight and psychological damage that was inflicted on a child?

There were a few occasions where I volunteered myself as the whipping boy:

1. Somebody colored in this monochrome art thing of my mom’s with green. It was a carved portrait of like these old western dudes.
   How I said I did it: I’ve never been quick with the critical thinking skills. It was green. The first thing I could think of was this green stamp thing that I got out of a cereal box recently. I offered that as my weapon of choice.
   Super oddly enough, that seemed to make things worse for my situation, and offering a marker would have seemed like a lot less creative and intentional way to destroy something that someone else loves.
   I still don’t know who did this!!!
2. Frank and I were playing video games in his room and Bobby tried to get in. I don’t know why except that we are just dicks and did not want to let him in to play video games also. I think he ended up picking the lock and trying to force his way in, with Frank on the other side of the door forcing it shut. Well Bobby managed to get his hand in the door, and you can imagine the force of his older brother’s weight plus the rough/unfinished wood door against bare skin. There was blood.
   How I did it: I mean look at me, I’m an 8 year old little girl. I hold the strength of a ten men. Obviously. I don’t remember what I offered exactly, besides that Frank had absolutely nothing to do with it.
3. Somebody covered the bathroom ceiling with spitballs. We were dragged out of our beds at what seemed like the middle of the night with the demand, “Who did this???” Seeing no end in sight, “It was me.”
   How I did it: I had never made spitballs before. So again I was left to my imagination. I explained in great detail, how I wadded up little pieces of toilet paper, dragged a stool from the kitchen in to the bathroom, and meticulously placed each one on the ceiling. “But how did they get stuck there? Did you wet them down first?” Oh. Good thinking. I added that after balling them up, I ran the under the bathroom faucet first to get them wet. “Why would you do that?”
   “I don’t know.”

It is making me laugh a little bit thinking about this in hindsight – did my parents thing I was just this little monster? This shitty little person just running around destroying their stuff just because I could but never knowing or being able to offer a good reason why?

In reality I was just a kid who wanted to get on with my life, extremely lacking in imagination (or maybe over imaginative) and the ability to think more quickly on my feet.

I knew that no matter how this was going to end, somebody was going to get their ass beat before we could proceed with life and living. It might as well be me.

Back to the greater scale of reality: what I needed from my parents was for them to see in themselves that they were out of control when they were angry. And I needed them to protect us from that unbridled state of mind. And I needed them to understand their triggers and to be intentional about avoiding them because they loved us and cared about us more than than whatever the hell it was they were going through.

I have to start this by saying I absolutely adored my dad.

The man could do no wrong in my eyes and he held my heart in a superhero-like manner; faster than the speed of light, strength that could move mountains, part seas, energy that was undying and unrelentless and yet through all of his superhuman strength and courage still cradle and protect my heart no matter the cost to him or anyone else.

Well except that that is not at all how it went.

I suppose this is how many kids grow up feeling about their dads. And if your dad dies when you’re 22 and you’re pregnant with your first child, I understand how and why I preferred to hold on to that superhero persona.

When someone is no longer there to defend their position you are left filling in the blanks for them.

I sprayed sunshine and rainbows and glitter and kittens all over those blanks.

And, I understand why I needed to do that.

I also understand how that was another form of my pledging loyalty to ghosts.

When my dad was happy, in my eyes, the whole world was happy. When he was happily whistling in his own little world, completely ignoring the existence of everyone else around him, it was easy to overlook that he was self isolating and blocking everyone else out.

It was easy to ignore that was almost the only way I ever saw him happy.

He was happy. He was so happy that he was whistling happily, maybe cooking up one of his absolutely disgusting soup concoctions that always tasted somehow exactly the same or fiddling with some little gadget on the side table next to his favorite and well lived-in recliner.

Or riding in the car, with the chill of the winter air still trapped inside, each of us bundled up in our winter coats, happily whistling a Christmas song.

No one talking, conversing, engaging with one another. He could self isolate even in the chamber of a Buick sedan containing the warmth of four other humans who were warming up the interior faster than the heater could, and he was happy.

If he was happy it was a guarantee that so was mom and everything about my memories of my dad’s fucking whistle tells me that everything is right and well and good in the world.

I don’t know how long it will last but I know that if I stay out of his way it will last the longest. But I still want to be near. To soak up the sound of his whistle, like the warm rays of the sun on my face during a particularly long and frigid winter, like a gasp of air after being submerged under water for way too damn long, like the break of shade that a stray cloud offers for even just a few moments when the sun is just way too damn hot and you have nowhere to shelter, like the first warm day in spring that thaws everything around you, and the ground and the plants and the life feels free to emerge in to the world again.

I just want to soak it in and let it breathe renewing air in to the room again.

For me to feel safe and secure growing up, I felt a responsibility to be attuned to the mood of my father and whether it was a good energy or a bad one, the only right way to be was invisible. Or if not invisible, I had to be making myself useful.

I could make him happy if I brushed his hair.

I felt resentful towards this activity as I grew older.

He didn’t even say any words. He’d just drop the brush in front of me, run his hands through his hair and lay down in front of me.

I didn’t have words to identify with at the time but reflecting upon this today I felt disrespected. I couldn’t even be afforded the invitation, to be asked if I would please brush his hair. Or hear about how it would relax him after a long stressful day at work. It was simply an expectation.

Worth noting that it was an expectation of all of us kids throughout our lives, it wasn’t exclusively “my job” until it was just Markie and me living at the house.

If I protested or pretended not to know what was going on, I’d be met with some sort of a guilt/shame protest, in a passive aggressive form, typically in a whiny baby-like NOT DAD voice, “Don’t you love me?”

Is this how I earn security from you, dad? From people in the world outside these walls? Is this how I have to show you that I love you? To read your mind and give of myself even when I don’t want to – this is what love looks like?

I learned to find my own security exclusively in the “signs” of the result of my action. If he fell asleep = good. If he moaned (which I felt really uncomfortable about as I grew older) = great. If I stopped to pay attention and think about how to solve a puzzle on Wheel of Fortune that was playing on the TV and he reached up, annoyed, to run his hands through his hair to signal that I was not done yet, still not saying a word (though sometimes he would say, “5 more minutes”) = not good enough, keep going.

I learned to base my self worth on what I could do to make myself useful, push past any feelings of personal discomfort for the sake of someone else’s comfort, and/or else be completely invisible. And expect absolutely nothing in return.

Nobody directly asked me to do that. Right, not directly. I definitely was often on the receiving end of the growling voice between gritted teeth “Tina! When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”

Saying things that I think or feel is upsetting to my dad (his happiness my sense of security). It doesn’t matter if that doesn’t make sense to you, or if you think there is some critical piece of information that would help him to understand you, or your, or a different perspective. It always makes it worse. You Have To Stop Doing That.

So I did.

I’ll never know Who He Was.

Or Why He Was The Way He Was.

Despite knowing and not knowing, I still love my dad with all of my heart. Though with the passage of time since his death it has lessened, I still find myself thinking about things that I know would have made him proud. And feeling proud on his behalf.

And I’d give just about anything to hear that whistle again.

My therapist challenged me recently with the phrase, “it isn’t your job to figure out what’s going on with other people!”

This hit me with a wide range of emotions, and had both the effect of feeling like being covered with a ton of bricks, while each one lifted from me simultaneously.

How does such a phrase prompt both sides of a wide spectrum and ultimately feel so liberating?

I almost instantly knew the source of this propensity I have, to figure out other people, to an obnoxiously obsessive degree, and also that it is something I view as a “super power” and at the same time probably removes agency in other people and that I need to let it go for everyone’s sake. And probably most importantly for my own.

It results in this wide range of emotions because it contains them.

I only have this “super power” because I had to develop it to feel safe and secure. I have leaned in to it as a self-soothing, reassuring technique. If I can figure out other people, they can’t hurt me. They can’t disappoint me and I can’t disappoint them. I can get exactly what I need and want from them with ease and if I can’t, they aren’t someone I can feel safe or secure around and so I cut them out of my life.

It’s a survival mechanism.

It’s a survival mechanism that I no longer need and that no longer serves me in this way, because I already survived. I can look after myself and I don’t have to have a dependency on other people any more because I can depend on myself.

I want to have a dependency on other people and I want them to be reliable and show up for me and for me to feel seen. But if I exhaustively fill in the blanks for them to achieve this then I block them from showing up for me authentically. Because I have done all of the work for them!

And I’ll be damned if that isn’t something that has surfaced in just about every relationship I’ve had with other people since my folks left Michigan twenty seven years ago. I have made myself everybody’s therapist who has been receiving of my “super power”, and I have driven everybody away who either felt threatened by it or were uninterested in what I had to offer.

This is not a lament; I prefer to spend time with people who are of a growth mindset, so that “weeding out” was not a bad thing for me. People who are generally stuck in their own ways and are unwilling to grow or adapt or refuse to go with the flow and all of the inevitable ups and downs of life are energy vampires for me. But I can see that pretty plainly in other people and identify it quickly. Probably it’s my “super power” to spot that readily and confidently assess a situation like that.

But even if they are growth minded – it is still not my job to figure them out.

I’ve been on this journey towards self awareness for about a year now. It’s not fun and it’s not easy; you have to face the things within you that make you tick, and oftentimes it’s not pleasant. So it’s a process.

Though I have done some “inner child work” years ago, about a week ago I came upon another method of visualization.

The idea is whenever you have a visceral reaction to something – like being annoyed that someone refuses to address hard things (one of mine that I plan to explore using this process) – you meet your inner child self in an imagined safe place in order to understand where that first started for you.

Though there is no exact date/time, research on the formation of human emotion and personality concludes that you have more or less developed “you” by around age 8.

This explains why kids with fucked up childhoods become adults with fucked up adulthoods. In case you weren’t tracking.

I digress. With this information, it is then reasonable to dig around in one’s childhood to understand the triggering events, decide to heal and move on or keep the wound if it still serves a purpose.

In any event, connecting your present self to the actions/triggers of your childhood helps you to understand the next time you have that visceral reaction – that anger bubbling up inside of you – it is familiar. You know it.

You know that you are triggered by people that refuse to address hard things, and that your anger is not directed at the person doing it but by the triggering event that impacted you personally.

So, anyway – this visualization method requires a meditation of sorts. Another thing I need to put a pin in to understand is that I can’t really meditate. I fall asleep.

So I do this guided meditation that I will just call visualization to note that I remain conscious through the thing.

The visualization starts with you, as yourself today, walking down a path. You look around and take note of surroundings.

The guide provides really great, detailed prompts in case you have trouble with imagination.

I don’t have this problem. I imagine a paved path in the woods on a sunny summer day. Warm breeze, sun on my face through filtered leaves. There’s a small lake just off the path with all of the associated sounds of summer song: bugs, frogs, birds, the whole nine yards.

This imagery is easy.

Then you notice an opening or a door or a portal of some kind, hidden just off the path.

I’ll admit I just went full on Secret Garden for this one. I have never seen such a door or portal or hidden entry so that’s what I’ve got.

The guide takes you through the same prompts of imagination, some which I cycle through a bit like skins in a video game but I like my Secret Garden doorway and I stick with it.

You open the door and are in a tunnel.

So, same thing: what does the tunnel look like, what do you hear, what do you smell, how do you feel?

You get all of the same prompts. I go with an under-road tunnel I’ve been in before. It’s arched and made of concrete block. It’s sturdy, it feels secure. There’s some grafitti. It feels about 20 degrees cooler than the outside, it’s a little damp, there are occasional sounds of water dripping, but nothing else besides the sound of my footsteps echoing.

Again the guide offers different options but I like my tunnel and stick with it.

As you walk through the tunnel there’s an opening. You walk through it.

This is where your inner child is.

The guide once again takes you through all of these elaborate ideas for imagery: lush gardens, outer space, etc. They offer really great options and I toggle through them in my mind.

They continue to say they want you to build a house for you to meet your inner child at and provide options/prompts to get imagination flowing.

Does your house have doors, windows, walls, etc.

I could not build a world.

I could not build a house.

I have endless white nothing as far as the eye can see. No walls, no ceiling just white.

The idea of building a house made me feel anxious the first time I went through this exercise and I bailed on the exercise but didn’t stop thinking about it.

I know there’s endless white nothing because that feels safe. It leaves me vulnerable, sure, but nothing can happen to me in secret.

I know I won’t build a house and I certainly won’t build rooms with beds because that is where secrets are made.

I know, but only subconsciously at first, that I’ll never meet my inner child if I built a world that way.

So I honor my inner child’s needs over the prompt of the visualization.

I didn’t get to meet her the first time I was there.

The second time I could feel she was there but she didn’t come out.

The third time, this morning, I met her. She is so small, and so sweet, and so thoughtful and excited about life and all of its possibilities.

Sitting on my couch I cried. Not really sad; relieved. Excited. It’s pretty wild to meet yourself for the first time.

I recommend!

It will be interesting to see if my safe place evolves over time or if it always stays white and open like that. Will I ever build a house with rooms and doors and beds? Today that feels like a firm no, but I imagine if true healing takes place, I should find safety within myself to take care of me and prevent secrets.

We shall see. One step at a time!

I just finished watching A Friend of the Family and immediately followed up with A Friend of the Family-True Evil, a miniseries and documentary based on real life events.

I was thinking to myself – what were those parents thinking? How could they let their little girl go off with this full grown man like that?

And it didn’t hit me until this morning that my own parents would have fallen for the same bullshit.

My parents let a full grown man “go check on me” after I went inside to change from swimming. At least he was the known “Candy Man”, run-of-the-mill church going, God-fearing son-of-a-bitch.

My parents left me alone-Every.Fucking.Sunday-with a known ex-convict, so they could basically go focus on arts-and-crafts.

Mother. Fucker.

Motherfucker!!!!!

Sounds like the piece of shit Ricky reported his own incident but it was dropped because Ricky had established a history of being a piece of shit.

Do people end up being pieces of shit because they are discarded and treated like pieces of shit!?

Whom do I direct my anger towards?????

It is striking and heartbreaking and humbling to consider how little I ever considered my own existence.

I didn’t consider that I should feel mad.

I didn’t consider that I should feel happy.

I didn’t consider that I should feel … anything.

I didn’t consider that I should have needs.

I didn’t consider that I should be protected.

You know what pisses me off the most?

Inconsiderate people.

Here am I, 42 years old, light bulb going off: only now realizing that my visceral reaction to inconsiderate people is all three fingers pointed back at myself when I have that one pointed outward.

You inconsiderate person!

All the while not considering myself. Damn.

So much of my life energy has been built up around other people’s needs, feelings, wants, desires.

I know other people better than I know myself.

Even complete strangers I meet I can run their behaviors, tonality, expressions through my mental model and spit out a recommendation for correction. And if they are receptive, they ingest and become a better-faster-stronger version of themselves, and come back for more like I have drugs to offer, often leaving me feeling depleted of energy.

If they are not receptive is when I am called condescending.

I’m going to just go ahead and type this out loud: you think I am condescending because you are insecure about not knowing yourself as well as a total stranger.

But that doesn’t mean you are flawed, it means you are human, just like everybody else. Nobody has got this figured out.

From my observations, the people who inherently know they have nothing figured out actually have the most figured out.

I will never say I have anything figured out; this is born of a lifetime of observation of myself. Not something that I came out of the box knowing.

I’m a good read of people but only those I have encountered and I meet new people every day who show me new behaviors.

I am constantly learning something new about something I thought I knew well, which means I will never know everything about anything. Including myself.

Though I suspect the motivating forces will shift after I work through this **complete bullshit mind fuckery but no doubt period of growth** and accept that my infinite curiosity with human behavior is a result of insecure attachment and stop looking for someone else to come and meet my needs and take ownership of that responsibility for myself — I have cultivated a skill that can be really useful and helpful for others.

Now I just need to use it to unlock myself.

I’m hit with a realization this last week that I’ve been pledging loyalty to ghosts in an extremely unhealthy way.

Or maybe it feels that way to me today, now, as I write this because I know it. So it hovers over me like an interrogation lamp you see in the movies.

At the time, and through my life, that loyalty was probably a survival mechanism.

I felt an obligation to honor the legacy of my parents by holding them on a pedestal. Of honoring their superhero status.

Throughout my childhood, throughout my life, keeping the dark secrets.

Exposing any of the truth, especially when those who are dead cannot defend their reasoning; it seemed unfair.

It seemed wrong.

And I was committed to seeing things through the lens of a mountain of excuses crafted by my imagination, in a one-sided attempt to keep them alive.

As I wanted to see them.

As I felt I probably had to see them, to maintain any semblance of sanity. Or normal.

Normal is what I crave. I just want to be vanilla and blend in and not make waves.

People wouldn’t be able to understand.

How could they?

As I have retold memories from my childhood, people have consistently recoiled in horror.

The things that were said. The things that were done.

The things that were not said. The things that were not done.

And I’ve seen that and I’ve always quickly gone to work kicking scented kitty litter over top of that steaming pile of shit.

I never saw any other way and I never saw any other option.

Did I hold out twenty years since Dad’s death to get to the anger stage of the grieving process?

Cause I’m mad.

I used to replay the memories of my life like virtual reality. I can remember what I wore, how my clothes made me feel, how rooms smelled, how I felt.

I have recalled memories and sprayed the smell of sunshine over the whole story like a perfume.

Sunshine smells good, it feels good, it is good.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for me now, as I type this, at 42 years old, to see things any other way than how they were.

And I cease to sense any sunshine of any form.

They are dead. There will be no judge and no jury and no admittance of any wrongdoings and no asking for forgiveness but yet I must find some way to grant forgiveness, because I know that is the Right Thing To Do.

I am certain: it is the Healthy Thing To Do.

By maintaining a generous amount of space for the grandiose pile of excuses, I left no room for myself to acknowledge and to feel and to work through the consequences of those excuses and the impact on my own life.

As if my life didn’t matter.

It was I who hung myself out to dry. Everyone else was dead.

When I say, “Lori was just not fit to be a mother. She really had no business having kids.”

I minimize the impact of neglect and its consequence of insecure attachment on me which has made me rely on exactly no one, and is difficult to form healthy relationships with others because “normal” people need to feel needed, and I just don’t need anyone. And I never will.

When I say, “Dad’s dad died when he was a teen. He probably didn’t know how to be a father, and he was raised in a different era where fathers were disconnected and hands-off and children were to be seen and not heard.”

I minimize the impact of a one-sided relationship. Being shown love when its convenient has consequently made me extremely anxious about being in the way or an inconvenience. Because I learned those things mean love or feeling loved is withheld.

When I say, “Mom probably had some undiagnosed mental health condition.”

I minimize the negative impact of the chaotic household. A childhood spent never knowing which Mom is sitting on the couch when I got home from school has convinced me that in time the other side of people will show.

And I constantly test that theory until it is validated because I have pushed all of the other person’s available buttons, evoking a negative response that may or may not be outside of their normal character, but really just validates my assumption that everybody is chaotic and cannot be trusted for stability.

And then I make an excuse for them, too: “I pushed it too far.”

By doing that, I gloss over the fact that all humans have a choice to act and react but I go ahead and take ownership and responsibility for being at fault for both when it is negative.

All of that said … here are the good parts that came out of all of the bad:

I want and see the best potential in people and shine a light on it for them and can work endlessly to help them achieve it.

I am extremely sensitive to mood undercurrents. I know when someone is turning sad or angry often before they do, and I’ve gotten really good at asking thoughtful questions when I see it – so they can stop it in its tracks. I have realized recently I only put this effort in to people that I like and respect. Fuck those other guys. They are just assholes.

I am a great listener and I love helping people to troubleshoot through their own sessions of self reflection and growth.

I don’t care much for bullshitting and favor transparency and telling it like it is. I will sugar coat for people that I see really working towards progress, but if you are just an asshole I will mirror that energy back to you every day of the week.

I learned that forgiveness is one of the keys to happiness – and will work through this internal parental conflict until I achieve a state of forgiveness that stems from reality … moving forward. Cause I sure as shit thought I had nothing to forgive … and that is not even remotely close to reality.

once upon a time
and somewhere out there
is a little girl whose little head
hangs low in deep despair

she’d read somewhere in fairy tales
that one day he would come
and she’s clinging to the notion that
he’d bring her safely Home

so she sits at a lovely table
she waits with innocent eyes
with a beautiful smile and a happy heart
she’s so alive inside

the first time she was seven
he was al the “candy man”
he left confusing stains on her
that pierced right through her skin

oh she didn’t understand, but somehow felt betrayed
she kept the secret to herself where no one else could see
he told her it was all her fault
and that no one would believe

her parents moved her far away
still broken and hurt but then,
she was so relieved she’d never see
the “candy man” again

so she sits at an ugly table
she waits with timid eyes
with a crooked smile and a wounded heart
she knows she’s dying inside

then when she was eleven
this awful cycle repeated
a family friend had just moved in to town
a move that would leave the girl’s soul depleted

his name was rick this twisted man
he told her she was his girlfriend
he’d make her watch pornography
so he could stain her again and again

every Sunday her family would go
and the girl would beg to stay home
but she couldn’t say why and her mother would make her
and she was tortured each time they were alone

she couldn’t tell a single soul
this girl so small and thin
he told her no one would understand
and that it was she who “came on to him”

so she sits at a lonely table
she waits with tear filled eyes
with a painted smile and an empty heart
she knows she’s dead inside

and that little girl’s still waiting
now sobbing, “Please Love Me”
and the only one to help her; to really save that girl
is me