I Can't Believe I'm 31 And Still Putting Pieces Together.

I can't believe I'm 31 and still putting pieces together.

Shortly after reporting my stepfather to the police for rape, his father, the man I had called grandpa for a fucking decade, started coming to the burger joint I worked at. I couldn't get a restraining order because he didn't do anything but order a burger and sit at a table directly across from the register and stare at me. He'd leave when he finished his food.

When I told people, their reaction was always "why would he do that? That's so weird." But knowing what I know now, knowing he'd been paying my mother thousands of dollars over the years to keep both of us quiet, knowing he had effectively been paying my mother to let his son use me-

It was just intimidation. Money wasn't keeping me quiet so he wanted to scare me into silence. Wanted me to know he had more power, more resources, more time.

And they did win the court case. And he did scare the shit out of me. So much so that I nearly quit my job.

I was just faulty merchandise to him. God.

Dude I have never felt older than I felt when I cried over the final Brooks & Capehart of 2022 because they hijacked the segment to tell Judy Woodruff that her journalism is a gift to the world, on her last night as anchor for the NewsHour.

This song is such a fucking gift

her

when the purple faded from her hair she said she liked the way it looked like the ocean the way her lover said her eyes looked in the sunlight; like the ocean the way she felt when her feet were pulled gently, strongly, underneath the sand; by the ocean the way the salt chapped her lips when she overstayed her welcome with the ocean when she said she liked the faded color, the grey green blue- the memories of purple chemicals breaking down the keratin of herself remade, brittle and neon and defiant- she meant because she was seaweed all along grey green blue floating dead in the ocean washed up, sticky in the foam on dry land honest in death smelling of the ocean

It's like:

Sometimes I want my nanny back even though I know she was selling coke on the side and probably endangered my life, all I remember is her hugs and teaching me to sew and making me snacks and not letting anyone hurt me.

And then I'm forced to reconcile how a literal drug dealer who harboured her fugitive adult son was a better mother to me than the woman who brought me into this world.

After therapy today, I spent 5 hours writing fanfiction in which the main character gets the comfort I wish I had been given as a kid. I didn't do anything on my to-do list but I'm gonna count this as productive anyway.