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 1st 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.

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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.