starcastlesinthesky

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The Beginning of Yet Another Year

As a preteen, I wondered what a year like 2025 would feel like. I loved science fiction movies, so I wondered if we'd have cool things and technology that would make life better and more manageable. These thoughts were encompassing, looking at the big picture. However, regarding my own life, I never thought about the future.

When I was growing up, it was easy to plan for the future. I thought I'd become a meteorologist and an astronomer who spent the spring and summer in the Midwest storm-chasing. I thought I'd become a professional dancer in Mexico and spend the other six months of the year touring Mexico and the rest of the world. I never had a plan for how it would work; I just had faith that it would.

Then the Big Deal happened: My parents' divorce.

I had known since I was four years old that my dad did not treat my mom well. My earliest memory was watching my dad yell at my mom. He slammed a French door so hard that some of the little windows broke. He left the house, and I vividly remember watching my very pregnant mom sobbing and vacuuming up the broken glass. She told me to stay on the couch, so I didn't get cut.

When I was 14, in 1996, I stood up to my dad four times. He would lay into my mom, verbally berating her viciously, and I would stand in between them, telling him to stop. The first time, he yanked the phone cord from the wall because I was threatening to call the police. Each time, he ended up threatening me so severely that I would run away. I took shelter for the night with one aunt and another twice. It was always during the school week. My mom would arrive at either house to pick me up in the morning at six after my dad left for work. She'd take me home to eat breakfast and get ready for school.

I was not as prepared as I should have been in the latter half of high school. I should have been preparing for college, figuring out what I wanted to do, and planning that path. Instead, I was trying to get good enough grades to pass.

I was preoccupied with where we (my mom, my little brothers, and me) would live. After all was said and done, we moved 14 times in two years. At one point, we lived in our minivan for two days and at Motel 6 for about six weeks.

My dad's situation was no better. He worked for a union-backed company, and he made a shitload of money. As a teenager, I figured that with all that money, my dad surely could keep caring for things well. Color me surprised when I found out he had stopped making house payments, and the house was foreclosed on. When I would spend time with him (my brothers refused), it was in our old house where my dad still lived. It was weird. The electricity was still on, as was the water and the cable. We would sneak in through the back door. This situation was something that I never wanted to deal with again.

Fast-forward decades later, and it makes sense why I am the way I am and why my mom didn't help me with more life skills. I knew what she was dealing with regarding my dad. Therefore, I did what any dutiful eldest child/daughter would do: I relied on myself most of the time. I tried to figure things out on my own. There were some things that I didn't do, and that was because of what I observed in my parents' relationship. Cooking was something I never developed a love for. My mom was constantly cooking. The only time I had seen her be happy while cooking was when she was doing it with her dad and sisters. Christmas tamales were always a joyous occasion.

When I was four, I endured some CSA with a married-in uncle. (Spoiler alert: My godmother divorced him, he remarried, and he spent the rest of his life in prison 12 years after the fact for abusing his eight-year-old daughter.) I never told anyone about it until I was 16. I was sitting with my mom and godmother, and we were having a meal together. My godmother, Nini, told us about how the case went against her ex-husband, and she worried if he had done anything to their son. I casually said something about what he had done to me, and Mom and Nini were angry and shocked, not at me, but at what had happened to me. They asked me why I never said anything. I told them that he told me not to. This is where my extreme distrust of men came from.

From my first boyfriend, I never let them try to yell at me or anything. If they mistreated me, there were no second chances. Not taking any shit from a romantic partner is not something I learned from my mom, but rather something I learned watching how she was treated. I vowed never to be put in a situation like she was. My grandmother gave her permission on her wedding day to call it off. My mom went ahead with the wedding. The only good things that came from it were myself and my brothers, along with my nephews and niece. She wanted to leave when I was four, but when she found out she was pregnant with twins, she decided to stay and endure. She endured way more than she should have.

I became afraid of men taller and stronger than me, as well. What was I going to do if I made some guy mad enough that he wanted to hit me? So, I made it easier not to be afraid by being the bigger one in the relationship. My health suffered because of it. I let myself gain weight and didn't take care of myself properly because I hoped that guys wouldn't find me attractive enough to be worth the trouble. It worked, but because I refused to date, one of my mom's sisters claimed I was a lesbian. It turns out I'm demisexual, but none of that was ever my aunt's business.

After a year and a half of a disastrous online relationship, I wanted to be alone. The guy I had dated was a trans man, but that was not the problem. He lived three hours away but refused to visit me. His posted profile picture was of a handsome man who looked like Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid. When he finally visited, he looked like Bobby Hill from King of the Hill. He claimed to be a widower with a daughter who had open heart surgery and leukemia. To top it off, he had sent me pictures of someone's penis many times. If there's one type of person I can't stand, it's a liar. I didn't care that he was a trans man. I cared that he lied to me. I did learn something good, and that is that one must have precise boundaries when online dating.

A month after I broke up with him, an old high school acquaintance messaged me, and we ended up messaging each other for two months before he asked me out. At this point, I had been so run down and exhausted from the nonsense of my previous relationship that I was very wary. I knew he was real, and what he told me was true. He had been very polite and kind beforehand, which continued throughout our relationship. He is now my favorite person in the world. He had been through a lot of bullshit as well. Neither of us wanted to deal with games and nonsense. Now, we've been together 15 and a half years, married for a little over one, and I've never felt so at peace and loved and safe in my whole life.

I've shared this story to say that as a 43-year-old woman, I understand why it was so difficult for my mom to parent me like I needed. She was so busy worrying about our safety from my dad that she wasn't able to do anything past the survival part. I saw what she was going through and figured I'd ensure she didn't need to worry about me. Therefore, she thought I had and knew all that I would need. As it turns out, that was not the case. I've learned now how to plan for the future, and even though it seems like I've learned it so late in life, the fact that I discovered it is the most important thing.

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our pearly gates are burning and yet somehow fire feels so safe

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the moth

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Sometimes I remember that Dean and Cas would have little movie nights together just the two of them and I want to beat my skull in on the countertop because that’s such a darling detail that doesn’t add to the plot, it’s only purpose in being mentioned was to show how close they actually are outside of hunting

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Christmas checklist-Dec 19th.

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Dancing to Christmas music ✓

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been having this silent one-sided beef with this guy in one of my classes who keeps fucking taking my seat and like yeah i know it's a 200-person class in a giant lecture hall but also like i've been sitting there since the first day of class so why would you start sitting there a month into classes. anyways im imagining eddie having a deep hatred for this guy who keeps taking his unassigned assigned seat in class vs richie who is wondering why the cute guy sitting a few seats away from him in class is staring at him like he's killing richie with his mind

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Same, Joey

Such a picture of domesticity.

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if henry hadn’t swum away

decided to post this in honor of nicks birthday today🫶🏻

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Taylor Zakhar Perez | Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles, California | October 19, 2024

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The soft looks and the little smiles 🥹 they make me feel things 😍

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Jack NASTY 💜

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