I Found You, Ms. New Booty.

An idea occurred to me early in the morning. A voice summoned
strength, coming from an open window somewhere buried deep inside this
house and it said, write a book. And then all sorts of voices
reminding me of miscellaneous inadequacies assigned to me by various
people, some important, some not so much spoke loudly in protest. Then
I thought, those reasons are reason enough to do it. It would have to
be dark, ugly, torturous, and sometimes funny because that is what
life is. My life even has been those things. Most of all, most
prohibitively, it would have to be honest and that's the part that
stopped me when I was thirteen and that is what is stopping me now.

I remember the day my parents found a notebook filled with gruesome
poems and tragic stories. I was thirteen. They didn't get it. I didn't
want to be lying in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, I just
wanted to write about it. I was sick of writing about flowers and
puppies, I wanted to express other kinds of feelings and the words
that came to be on those pages were the most immediate representations
I could access. I'm not sure they would understand the darkness that
would certainly find its way into anything I wrote now. Or maybe they
would, and that's what bothers them. They would feel responsible like
any parent would when they realize their child harbors such resentment
and pain.

I went home today and couldn't even bring myself to tell my dad happy
father's day. This might have been because his first words to me as I
crossed the threshold were something like, god damnit you have to
clean the fucking break dust off your tires. What the fuck did you do
to the front of your car he then screamed, as he pointed to a small
white scrape on my front bumper. If you had heard it, you might have
thought it was the end of the world. I learned a long time ago to just
agree by nodding my head and remaining silent. Any words thrown back
will be misconstrued at a later date and used by the prosecution to
prove your worthlessness and inadequacy.

We spent the day at the country club where he confined himself to the
golf course and I confined myself to several vodka lemonades by the
poolside. He later refused to have dinner at the same table as our
family, asking us all to get away from him as if we carried some
terrible disease. I left my home angry. Angry that I have always had
to be the adult, angry that my mom still loves this man, and angry
that my sisters have to live with it the way I have been my whole
life.

The worst part is that it would be so easy and so logical to blame him
for my faults but to do so would give him a kind of credit he would
find disgustingly rewarding. I refuse to give him that sort of
advantage but even by refusing him that satisfaction I must
acknowledge that his presence in my life is a driving force. It makes
me do some things and prevents me from doing others. You can't escape
a man like him and trying will only make his voice in my head grow
louder and stronger.