Thread by @r_diamond

Time to do this.

CW, y'all, this one is going to be dark.

Long, dark, painful - mentions abuse/rape/trauma/child & pet abuse/death.

Avoid if you can't deal w/that or severe religious descriptions in this moment - it's ok to skip and take care of you <3 1/

I want to talk about who I saw at the Capitol on the 6th. And by "who I saw" I don't mean "I literally saw him in the crowd" - as far as I know, I don't think he was there.

But I saw him there, over and over and over again, in the faces of so many people in the footage.2/

I'm talking about my Dad.

Depending on how you know him, he's different people.

To some, he's the nice nurse anesthetist, coming in to talk to you before your surgery, assuring that you're in good hands & you'll be safe. He'll put you to sleep & check in on you in recovery. 3/

Some people know him as the Squadron Commander for Civil Air Patrol, the mentor who guided them as they were a young man, encouraging them to avoid drugs and consider the military and learn to serve the public and inviting them to church. 4/

Others know him as their flight instructor - you want to learn to fly? He loves it so much that he got certified as an instructor just so he can help others learn to fly as a hobby, like he does, because it brings him joy. 5/

Many people remember being in church services with him, as he'd play his guitar for worship service and alter call.

I've watched people shed tears of genuine emotion and appreciation as he lifted his voice in song. 6/

There are many people in Mexico who know him as the son of the missionary in their village, who'd come to visit and help build churches and bring in money and clothing and work hard to help them. 7/

My nieces know him as "Poppy", as do the (2? I think? I haven't talked to that brother in many years, but I heard one of my brothers was married with a kid or some kids) other grandkids. 8/

Lots and lots of people know him as the long-suffering husband of the white woman calling Black clerks "sweetheart" and swelling with pride as she remembered not to use the N-word...patiently handing over thousands of $$ for her investments in fibre arts. 9/

(My mother is her own thread, no pun intended! but she's an amazingly talented seamstress, quilter, and machine embroiderer.

I inherited the love for fibre and the talent from her - but y'all might notice there's ZERO overlap in our art. For reasons.) 10/

Some people probably remember him from volunteering at the food bank with his church, or from the many years he volunteered with his church to deliver Meals on Wheels on major holidays so lonely elders would have a hot meal that day. 11/

People know him as professional, wealthy, accomplished, intelligent, kind, loyal, generous.

My father *is* all of those things. None of the people who know him in those ways are wrong about who he is. 12/

Sometimes, when I describe my childhood, I forget that people outside my head don't see what it looked like to everyone around me.

I always had cats - I've LOVED cats forever.

When we lived in a place that was large enough, I had horses. 13/

I was clothed, I was fed, I was sheltered.

I remember times my mother didn't want to cook, so we'd drive to the airport and get in the Cessna and hop over to the next state for dinner at my great-aunt's restaurant. 14/

I didn't live a life of poverty.

I lived in a 2-parent nuclear family, with 3 brothers.

When you saw us, you saw nice, white, churchgoing Christians in a home with a strong father figure. 15/

My daddy raped me for the first time when I was 3.5.

My mother was pregnant and unwell, and I was his - he made me, he could use me as he wanted, and I was supposed to be quiet and not have a "spirit of rebellion."
16/

That's when my mother broke C6 and C7 in my neck, by holding my face and hitting me so hard she cracked them.
It's the reason I'm under a neurosurgeon's care, with bone pressing on my spine, and why I have an #InvisibleDisability. 17/

The subsequent months are also the first times my jaw was fractured, my wrist was broken, and the first time she started lacerating me with needles.

Often, she'd beat me for my "Jezebel spirit" that caused me to "seduce her husband". 18/

It was the father's place to beat the children, but after the one time she saw him beat me while I was naked, she took over, because she didn't want me accidentally seducing him while he beat me. 19/

My father - remember, he's a CRNA, a nurse anesthetist - knew all of this.

He enabled all of this.

He was allowed to beat me on Sunday afternoon before "nap time" because she needed to hear me scream before she'd let him touch her. 20/

She explained this to me when I was a new mom who happily co-slept with my infant, right along with my spouse - as she was trying to Titus 2 me in the ways of pleasing my husband. 21/

Anyway. I don't remember how old I was when he killed my pet rabbit and tried to feed it to me, to the side-splitting laughter of my mother, but I know I was very young because that's when I decided to have cats because at least he wouldn't cook those. 22/

The snapshots in the family albums, of me holding an assortment of cats through the years?

Give me a cat. Beat me for not bonding. When I finally fell in love with the cat, kill the cat (drown/shoot/feed to the neighbour's doberman), beat me for making an "idol" of the cat. 23/

It was a fun little game he and my mother played, couched in "training me up in the way I should go" and reminding me that I was not ever supposed to love anything more than I loved Jesus.

The last pet of mine they killed was 2 weeks before I got married, when I was 20. 24/

During that time, I was educated - and by "educated" you should read "homeschooled and they faked the portfolio while they withheld textbooks because Jesus doesn't want women to learn math or science and besides I was cheaper than a maid." 25/

When I got married at almost 21 and left home, I started trying to detox from them...but I didn't go into therapy until I had my son when I was 27.

It took me until I was 32 to completely break ties with them.

The me you all see now? I was not that person before. 26/

I remember doing so much sorting things out in therapy, trying to reconcile who my parents are with the front everyone else saw - I knew how evil they were. Did anyone else? Were they complicit? 27/

The last time I attended their church - on of the last visits I had with them - I remember being horrified at my mother's pistol in her purse next to her Bible.

She sneered at me, and pointed out the guns my father, the pastor, the pastor's wife, and others were carrying. 28/

After all, she said, you never knew when a Muslim would invade and you'd have to kill them for Jesus.

And she just didn't know where she went wrong to have a child like me. 29/

The next-to-last time I was in their home, my son was 3 years old. After the prior visit, I realized how dangerous it was, so I gathered my courage and told my father I'd only stay in their home if he showed me all the guns and that they were unloaded. 30/

It was one of the very first times I'd ever openly defied him (the only times prior being when I was almost 16 and he beat me with his belt because I didn't want to close the bedroom door in my closet, and once when he 31/

went to bed with a sick headache because I embarrassed him so bad because I told him in front of everyone at the family reunion that I wouldn't eat anything he gave me after the last 3 times he'd put peanuts into my food.)32/

Oh and when he wouldn't let me get a job when I was 16 - told me I was under his protection and provision until he gave me to the man who would own me as his wife and would provide for me. I gave him my budget and told him to start providing, and that's how I got a job. 33/

Anyway.

He grumbled, I let him see a glance of how I despised him in one flash of my eyes, and he started walking me through their arsenal.

Loaded pistols in every room in the home, more than one in many. Shotguns/rifles in the corner of their bedroom. 34/

I lost count after a while because I was aghast at the illegally modified fully automatic loaded machine gun, but my husband remembers there being well over 20 weapons.

My brain keeps saying "at least 50" but that could have been the 50 caliber ammo for one of the guns. 35/

That was the infamous trip where when we were leaving after less than 24 hours because I just couldn't (nothing like having flashbacks to being raped at 3yo while you watch your rapist play loving Poppy to your own 3yo!) - 36/

That was the trip where my father, when my husband asked him to watch our 3 year old for a moment - where he took my baby and put him in a truck with a loaded pistol at his feet, closed the door, and took off out of range. 37/

Of course, he was just doing it in hopes that - like my pets that he slaughtered over the years - hoping my baby would kill himself so he could teach me that I'd made an idol again of something other than Jesus. 38/

Reader, I *still* saw my parents one more time after that, in my home.

They left early, angry, because I'd told my cousin they'd brought with him that he wasn't allowed to brag about killing Black men on his job as a cop. 39/

I talked to my father twice more after that - once for his birthday in January, and once for Mother's Day.

Why him? Because neither of them would answer the phone, so the next day I blocked my number and called his cell because I knew he'd answer it since he was on call. 40/

That's the call where he told me that my son wasn't turning out as bad as he expected, given the way I was raising him, so he'd decided to let me keep my son for now, but he was watching me.

He'd come get my son as needed and "raise him right". 41/

There's more I'm glossing over, of course - both because some of it involves other people's stories that aren't mine to tell, and because yes, I will write a book - I've been working on it! :P 42/

The point is, though - he knew that he could take my son and have complete immunity. When you're buddies with killer cops you don't have much respect for the laws and rules that other people have to follow. 43/

He despises my husband for being a "pinko Commie" - never mind that my husband is a law enforcement officer, which is kinda the opposite of either of those terms!

But my husband is Canadian, and even all the way back in 1993, religious types feared "socialism". 44/

So when I looked at the terrorists at the Capitol on the 6th, of course I rolled my eyes and the Q Shaman and the idiot scratching his balls in Pelosi's office and all of the other ridiculous cosplayers there. But also? 45/

Also, in that crowd, I saw my father over and over and over.

Somebody's Daddy. Somebody's Poppy. Intelligent and kind and generous and professional and wealthy and long-term married and very, very, very Christian - and completely evil. 46/

It's long past time we evolved beyond the ableism and classism that assumes only those with a lower IQ, or from a lower economic strata, would be involved in something like we saw this week.

And for the love of alpaca can we PLEASE stop with "Real Christians wouldn't" shit? 47/

That crowd was FULL of people like my dad. They know their Bible and they support their "man of God" and they vote to "save the babies" and they "stand for the flag and kneel at the cross" and they are baptized, blood bought, born again. 48/

To pretend otherwise is to invalidate the hell that I am all to intimately familiar with.

To pretend otherwise is to discard the knowledge I gained living within that for decades.

And I'm not here for any more pretense, y'all. 49/

I don't think my father was physically present that day...but I know that I saw him there, anyway.

/fin

CC: @C_Stroop - with a heartfelt thanks for everything that people like you, @RLStollar, and @kkdumez are doing to stop people like my father.

For everyone who stuck with me through this - thank you ♥️

I’m sharing this embroidery I made last year with a quote from Maya Angelou and a phoenix - I don’t know who I would have been without my past, but I do know who and where I am now is pretty great 😊