《This Isn't Fiction, It's My Diary》


 A Complaint

    I¡¯m not a creature of God.


    I¡¯m a creature of pain brought on by the belief in God.


    You see, my mother told me so. She meant it in a sweet way, the same way a girl whispers sweet nothings to her doll. She never really loved me, she loved a doll that looked like me.


    ¡°What?¡± you say, ¡°Every mother loves her child.¡±


    That¡¯s just a sweet perfume trying to cover up the smell of putrefaction. You see, my mother thought of me as a doll. She fed me like a doll and dressed me like a doll and never expected to find that I had my own will, just like a doll. But, at least that was all she her ideas added up to. At least she only wanted to change my exterior. My father was worse. He thought of me as an extension of his ideals. Unfortunately, his ideals were sexist, and I was his daughter. He told me that my ambition should be to marry a rich man and support him like the bible said I should. ¡°Husbands, love your wives,¡± and ¡°Wives, submit to your husbands.¡± As the bible says, my role as a woman is never to lead, but always to follow.


    It¡¯s just too bad that even with all your ¡®leadership¡¯ as a man and the head of a family, I mustered not only the will the follow, but resentment of the need to follow.


    You see, you made a mistake. So far as I know, you¡¯ve never really corrected it. You think that everyone thinks the same way as you do. That every person¡¯s goal is wealth beyond that which they can think to spend.


    It was only thanks to yours and mother¡¯s mistake that I was able to not be consumed by your thoughts. You see, even as dominating as you are, even as manipulative as you are, even as controlling as you are, you did make a mistake. Besides the mistake of me, that is. You thought that I had to be old enough to consume these ideas. You were wrong. I grew up with minimal interference from you or mom. When I first learned about parenting, I realized that I was raised in benign neglect throughout my early years. I grew up with teachers that taught me to read; and books. And before you ever tried to implant your perverted ideas into my brain, I had read books. Whenever I had read books, I didn¡¯t consider that the 1<sup>st</sup> person point of view was different from me. Maybe the ideas were a little different because it was a different person, but not because he was a boy. Huckleberry Finn was found out as a boy because he clenched his legs together to catch something in his lap, but I would do the same. I, having worn jeans for the majority of my life, would do the same, even now. I could easily see myself running away, the same way as Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. And even before that, I could see myself feeling jealous and then inclusive of a younger brother I never had the same way as Peter Hatcher in Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing.


    So, I became increasingly resentful of what my older brothers were able to do. I began to take note of the age they were granted privileges. Before you explained your own misconceptions between men and women, I became resentful of the privileges you granted my brothers. I understood that you might give them a bias based on their age compared to mine, but I never understood that you gave them a privilege due to their sex until long after I had experienced it again and again without knowing the reason.


    Now, do you understand my resentment? I am a human before I am a female. I am a human, God dammit! I only look into the mirror once a day to see that I have long hair, the rest of the time, I think, the same as you, the same as anyone. So when you started talking to me (too late) as if I was less than my brothers, I was confused.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    I¡¯m so angry now. So much so, that I can barely convey the amount of nonchalance I felt then. Not that it was completely nonchalance. Was it even a majority nonchalance? I remember always feeling fear in every conversation with you. You were like a bundle of controlled rage. Every comment seemed to have a tinge of violence at the edge. Every word I said, I said in an effort not to break your control over that rage. I always tried to say exactly what you wanted to hear because I never wanted to see your anger without that control.


    And yet, i was also naive. I was a kid. I was a scared little kid that barely knew what i was afraid of. I knew that if you spanked me it would hurt, because you did it. And even when i was six or seven and i heard you explanation that this hurt you more than it hurt me, i didn''t believe it. You could say whatever you wanted, but i could still see the expression on your face even through my tears. Your face shows a trace of satisfaction. A trace of vindication.


    I never remember seeing your uncontrolled anger, so how did I become so afraid of it? Is it because you spanked me? Saying, ¡°This hurt me much more than it hurts you,¡± and never meaning it? The release you felt at letting out a little of your rage. Was that it? Was that when I began my fear of you?


    Now that I¡¯m older and more ¡®worldly,¡¯ I think that I empathize with the children of alcoholics. They have a tendency to be able to read emotions or so I¡¯ve read.


    I remember saying something clever while I was working at a busy coffee shop. A customer came up saying something disparaging about foreigners not bothering to learn English. I said something like, ¡°Yeah, but I never bothered to learn Cherokee either.¡±


    The look on his face spoke nothing but confusion up until the point where I stopped paying attention to take the order of the next customer. God knows if he ever understood. Do you? I¡¯m saying that, even those of us that speak English, are immigrants, so no one is a native. Since that¡¯s the case why are you so [expletive] xenophobic?


    My point is that I could see the confusion in his face. Just like I could read a book. Even before that, I never had trouble understanding people¡¯s motivations, even when they were different from mine.


    It took me years to realize that you did not understand. I think you understood that people can have a different intelligence level than you. I think that you equated that intelligence level with their income level, but I don¡¯t think you ever understood that happiness could take on any other form than money. Someone who had an unhappy marriage for 20 years did not understand that money wouldn¡¯t fix all his problems. Seriously? Did my analytical father really think, that if he gave my mother a million dollars that she would be happy if all other thinks where equal? He told me how unhappy he was with her. When he lost control and physically hurt her, I knew why he left. He was ashamed at loosing control. He lost control and hit my mother an decided to ask for a divorce because he couldn''t keep his temper. And what''s worse than that except that mom begged to go back to him?


    She told me he used to pinch her at night to see if she was really asleep. He abused her in all sorts of little ways that seem like a joke when told one by one. And after all that she still wanted him back. She still wanted a happy, make-believe marriage that she knew could never exist.


    No wonder talking about you makes me so frustrated. Thinking about you makes me frustrated.


    In a way, it makes me understand why you and mom fell in love in the first place. Neither of you understands anything outside of yourselves. You don¡¯t understand the difference between perception and reality. One year of a happy marriage and 20 years of an unhappy one. And yet you still both think that the true meaning of life is to perpetuate your heritage. Fuck you, I will never fall in line.

 Nombre Dos

    Once upon a time I felt like I was falling in love, but now I''m only falling apart. I''m not even sure when I fell for Jack. I took a second job at Starbucks because I was bored with only one. 40 hours a week helping not quite lawyers foreclose on houses was boring. Not to say there wasn''t some funny moments. There was someone who wrote in saying they would payoff their loan in silver coins and if we didn''t take it we were scam artists. While i was working, i had to get the first notice of default out within the business day because they were Freddie Mac loans (FHLMC). So that even if the banks sent us a file at 4:50 pm, we had to do a rush check to see if they were dead or in the military and check how many addresses they had and if everything checked and we were able to get the mailing notice out by the post office closing time of 5pm, we were in the clear. And if we got it at 4:59pm we might have been shit out of luck, but for some reason, it was our company''s fault and therefore my fault. That was my life, I worked 40 hours a week helping banks foreclose on houses. I was under no illusions. My job consisted of kicking people out of their homes.


    It makes me remember my friend. She always claimed that i was a "goody two shoes." Am i really? I never did anything because i felt it was ''right.'' Most of the reason i stayed out of trouble was because i didn''t want my parents to notice me. I didn''t want my father to notice me. I wish he had stayed consistent throughout all of my childhood. You see, he ignored me for most of my life. He ignored me until I grew up enough to make it obvious that i was going to be a woman someday.


    That''s when dad started to talk to me. He told me things like i should date until i was married. That going to a good college was what i should do to meet good men that would become my husband. Indirectly, he taught me that my life wasn''t worth living unless i was supporting  a man. He taught me the bible, which said, "husband love your wife, wife obey your husband." Can you see the difference between those words? The gulf that exists? i can. I can because it was how i was taught by my father.


    No wonder my mother was depressed.  No wonder she considered going back to him even after he would pinch her to see if she was awake. No wonder she would consider him he husband even after he hit her.


    The problem was that he lost his control. He lost his control and hit her in places that other people could see. He could never go back because he was ashamed that he lost his control to that extent.


    It''s now that i have to say that i''m daddy''s litttle girl. I hate myself for it, but i''m daddly''s little girl. As much as i regected that i didn''t want to be a wife and mother, as much as i hated dolls, i am still my father''s daughter.


    When push comes to shove, my first instant is still to ask, how do i manipulate you into doing what i want.


    Unfortunatly, he wanted me not to date until i was married. My mother was a non=entity. she took what dad gave and would have taken more if dad wasn''t so ashamed of losing his temper enough that it would show.


    That was my dad. and unfortunately, I''m daddy''s little girl.


    When i was growing up all i knew was that dad was gone more than mom. Physically at least. But when i started hitting puberty, dad started to try to grow me into his idea of a woman. Luckify, by that point i had learned how to read. I read so many books before that point and thank god. When i read books, i wasn''t a man or a woman. I was just something that could read. It was as much as what made me as my parents. I was Huckleberry Finn. I was Peter from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I was the main character, whether they were male or female.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    So, by the time my father decided to teach me that i was less than, I had already somehow realized that i was human before everything else. I am human enough to be tempted by an old womans riches, the same way as in Crime and Punishment. I feel responsibility for my fellow man, the same way as the main character from Issac Asimov novels.


    After all that, after all i had learned about humanity, you decided to tell me that my purpose in life was to find a man to follow.


    If i was more like mom, i wouldn''t have found any fault in it,, but i took after you. I was my father''s daughter to a fault. I have all your faults.


    Even now, i think that half of the reason i drink so much is to kill off enough brain cells to be what you wanted me ot be. A wife who obeys her husband despite being so much like her father.


    Do what i say, not what i do never actually worked for parents. God knows that i took after my father despite being the wrong gender.


    I suppress all my feelings, but i took a social problem''s class that let me know that anger was a secondary emotion. I didn''t realize how much of my anger was just pain until i took that class. I suppress all of my emotions because crying isn''t something i should show and anger isn''t something that others should see.


    So even when i got ''A''s in all my classes i didn''t skip a grade because i didn''t know it was possible. When i ignored my teachers, it didn''t matter, because i knew the answer anyway. I was so bored, but I didn''t dare attract attention. I didn''t learn anything for years, but it was the speed that everyone else was at, so I went along with it.


    If i knew that all i had to do was say i wanted to skip a grade and take a test, i would have done it in a heartbeat, but i didn''t. Instead i kept being called the teacher''s pet, just because i was smart enough to answer questions. I was teased by boys, although i didn''t realize until much later it was because i developed before all the others in my grade and they had a crush on me because i had breasts.


    Once i started realizing it, i tried my best to stay invisible just the same. I wore baggy sweaters even in summer. It was suffocating, but it was better than people looking at me.


    I survived under the radar. I learned to forge my parents'' signatures and everything was fine, even when i stayed up too late to get up on time to go to school in the morning.


    "Please excuse my daughter''s absence."


    Turn it into the front office and no one would think it necessary to leave any messages on the answering machine.


    That''s how i lived. For the most part neither parent taking notice of their daughter until i started hitting puberty . Even after, there was only the expectation that i would be a child of God and a good wife from dad. From Mom, there was nothing. Mom treated me more like a moving doll than a living, breathing person. Is it sad to think that my (sexist) father treated me more like a person than my mother? No wonder I was daddy''s little girl. My father might have treated me as a biblical woman, but my mother didn''t even treat me as anything more than a doll.


    I AM ALIVE! I AM REAL! I''m not some wooden boy called Pinocchio. I''m a real person, weather my parents ever realized it or not. I''m not just some offshoot extension of my parents whether they ever realized it or not.


    But it''s still my fault. Its my fault that i didn''t reject your desires, not yours for pushing your desires onto me. it''s my fault that i have any other desire other than to be a support for the "man" that i choose. I am always in the wrong.


    I seem to only be able to fall in love with a damaged person. "i like that you''re broken, broken like me." What options does that leave me with?


    I already fell in love with someone who was on the verge of suicide enough to commit it when he had a chance. I gave him the chance. Why can''t i give myself the chance? Why can''t i just slit my wrists? or my throat? Cross my ''T''s.