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Some feel safe in their arms and call them home.

And then there are the others. The ones who flinch when the front door opens. The ones who learn silence before they learn words. The ones who smile on command, even if they don’t want to.

I’m from that category.

The broken one.

Father, but never dad.

People say a father shapes his daughter’s world. Mine built walls instead. Walls so high it hid the sun and the stars.

It hid happiness and peace from me.

He taught me how to lie with a steady voice, how to make bruises sound like clumsiness, how to disappear inside my own head and call it my safe place.

He taught me that love can come with rules, with fear, with the sound of a belt sliding through loops, the pain that comes from that on fragile skin.

And still, every morning, I call him Dad.

Like the word might save me someday or find a true meaning. But It never does.

“Say it, say you love your father.”

I said it repeatedly. Until I made myself believe it and forgot how painful a lie could sound in the mouth of a broken child.

Daughters aren’t born afraid of their fathers.

It takes years of practice, silence, footsteps, and locked doors, slaps and abuse to feel this way.

Years of focusing on something to mask the pain enough to feel like it doesn’t exist anymore.

He says everything he does is for me and that I should be grateful, that I should smile more and be a good daughter.

And I do; I smile, then hide in my room, taking the same pills Ethan would give me and stop smiling then. I know exactly what I’m doing, but it doesn’t help; it just feels like I could pretend for as long as they worked that it was never my fault. Cocaine, and cocaine, even when I write to myself, even when I draw.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to be someone else, someone who doesn’t count footsteps outside her door before falling asleep. Someone who doesn’t mix up drugs and alcohol to function daily.

If anyone ever reads this, know that I tried.

I tried to be a good daughter.

But silence can only hold so much.

And I think mine is about to break. I tried.

I tried.

Now, I’m tired.

Play - Spitting Off the Edge of the World by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Perfume Genius

Adults can be sad too.

They can cry for no reason, feel empty for no reason. They can feel so lonely that even surrounded by people, it’s still not enough to fill that seclusion.

I do feel lonely and sad, and empty at the same time.

It happens mostly when I'm trying to think about something stupid. The thoughts escalate, it can start with a question like “was the dinner good enough?” and then I’d think about dying and I'd feel anxious and think about disappearing completely.