Boxer braids

Might seem entirely silly but I needed to say somewhere that I spent the whole fucking afternoon trying to figure out how to do boxer braids and I finally managed to do decent-ish ones.

I wish I had a sister growing up, honestly. She would've taught me how to do hairstyles. I barely know how to do anything other than braids (and I didn't learn how to braid until I was 18-ish!), I'm still terrible at buns, and most of the time I either use a claw clip or a ponytail to hold my hair up. I have to teach myself this shit and... well. Makes me feel a little lonely. I wasn't also part of the girly crowd as a teen. I was fairly reclusive, I was convinced I hated everyone, and I didn't want to get attached to others because the minute I got in the south, I was sure I would move away again. I did make friends, but very few made it to the point I invited them to my place or vice versa: I wasn't comfortable having them over, or having my mother know about my life, at all. So I would avoid anything close.

Still, some of them remain today. Including Rose. But those are few and far between, and even to this day, I'm uneasy when I have to tell my mom about my life. Might have come from the years of having been constantly overprotected and monitored.

***

When I was little, I had my brother, but since we have almost a decade of age gap and he went to live with his biological father at age 15, I spent most of my childhood and teens as an only child. And when I finally got to be an older sister at 16 then 20, I wasn't living with my sisters.

And even when I lived with my father from December '24 to March '26, I didn't even get to be fully an older sister.

Why? Because my father was looming. He was always watching like a hawk. Making sure I was not a bad influence? I think he's just obsessed with control really. 

I was once watching the launching of the Discovery space shuttle. My soon to be 10 year old sister was in the room. I asked her if she wanted to see a space shuttle launch. She was interested in it. 

But then father came.

What are you showing her? 

A space shuttle launching.

You're not showing her anything violent, are you?

Chill out, it's a damn space shuttle launching. It's not Challenger. It's Discovery. 

He acted as if I was showing her the fucking launching of Challenger (the one that blew up, or perhaps that was Columbia? I think both blew up but one upon re-entering, if I'm not mistaken.)

That alone deterred me from trying ever again to be a big sister. He was so obsessed with logistics, control, having things done at this or that hour, and his face, oh God, his face always had that "contracted" expression when the sisters were here for the week. He never looked at peace. He always looked tense.

My sister once talked at length about something for half an hour during dinner. I was listening, though I didn't get it much. He, on the other hand, was watching the clock and his wristwatch.

Whenever she'd talk to him, he'd say:

Good. Now eat. 

No care. No curiosity. Just "hurry up, it's gonna be bedtime". Sending them to bed right after dinner, like that's any good for digestion. Always seemed abhorrent to me. All felt like it had to fit into a tight schedule and all felt just unnatural. 

In the end, I might've been the only one who listened to them. I always strived to.

***

He'd always ask this empty, uninteresting question at dinner.

So what have you done today at school? Tell your sister about this.

Scripted. I even said how empty this all felt and how I wish topics just came up instead of being prompted, and that I wasn't bothered if no one talked at dinner.

But to him, apparently, meals had to be "a ritual". A "moment spent together". Together? The best time he had was when he was telling us his overseas/foreign territory missions anecdotes. Like the time he almost ate anaconda in Guyana, or when he went to Caledonia, or to Afghanistan. Talking about himself.

But when it came to truly getting interested in his daughters, and I've clocked it immediately with myself, it only goes so far as "I get to know my daughter through my projection of her". 

He lives through his own projections. Knows no one. 

To think Cepheus thinks of him as a "beautiful person".

***

Not only that, but my sisters are sadly fairly uncurious, which seems a bit abnormal for their ages. 

I don't know, children are pretty curious creatures in my opinion? I certainly was. I was always asking questions, when I got Internet access I would research each and every thing and get into Wikipedia rabbit holes. I was also incredibly creative, making little LPS movies, writing stories, playing Neopets... listening to music, I even watched anime in secret.

But my sisters? No passions. They did love Gabby's Dollhouse for a while. Now the oldest is into Kpop Demon Hunters, the youngest is slowly abandoning Gabby to go towards other shows, but it's mostly a closed-off world of Netflix, child-friendly stuff, children's things, and nothing adult. Nothing that would expand their consciousness. They're not avid readers, either. I was one. Still always have a book by my bedside and my bookcase is getting too small. 

I was horse-crazy growing up: they have no such passion. No real hobby. They just. Consume. Content. They don't go into crazy cultural or musical or scientific rabbit holes like I would. Like for God's sake, I was hella into Ancient Egypt, especially mummies, when I was 10 years old. It was one of my biggest passions ever, and I still do hold mummies dear: I have a book about them, and not just the ones from Egypt. 

Are they ever going to get such a passion? In fact, do most people ever have one? I can't imagine my experience is so unusual, is it?

I can't even blame them. I'm just afraid they'll grow up to be mediocre adults and I don't want them to be. Granted I'd still love them if that was the case, but that would be hell of a disappointment.

With me, they act smarter. Their language changes. Whenever father is around, they act almost stunted, very "childlike". My oldest sister even told me that "she feels she has no brain" when she's around him. 

I can't understand growing up in a bubble like that. I know, because even though I wasn't "kept into a bubble", I was already suffocating in my parents' view of me. I would go on Skyrock, I would lie about my age online to talk with tweens and teens, or even adults on forums. At 8, I was pretending to be 12 or 13. Don't know if my cover was perfect but I pretended to be mentally behind. I just could not stand being "a child".

***

It felt like my parents always saw me only through that lens: a child. Not a person. A child. I was raised almost hidden for years because my mother was afraid my grandmother (paternal) would track us down, learn about my existence, and then ask to have me over legally. She did meet me after the divorce, twice, when I was a teen, but 1. I didn't trust her, she acted very manipulatively as expected and 2. she died of breast cancer shortly after. Who I was as a person didn't matter. How I felt about being overprotected, kept inside, not allowed to play outside unsupervised, did not matter.

That might have been what led me, at the age of 8, to suddenly get the "white rage" washing over me when I would ask to be left home alone. At the time I had a bunny and a guinea pig. I would call my friends over the landline and discuss the attractiveness (or rather, "prettiness") of Japanese voice actresses, but... the white rage would take over if I didn't. I didn't know why, but I would get a sense of wordless, pure rage, clench my jaw and teeth, and take it out on the guinea pig. Throw the poor thing, hold it by its leg, wanting to hear it scream. 

Immediately after, I would regret it and feel bad and also feel scared that they would find out. But I remember more of that feeling of "fuck what did I do, I'm sorry". 

And when they'd get home, it would be as if nothing had happened.

It's chilling to think back about it. I know I was a kid, but still. In retrospect, and I've explored this when I was still in therapy, I think the "white rage" was pent-up anger I was neither allowed to express nor to feel, at all. Since any talking back or expression of annoyance was seen as rude, or had been probably scared out of me when I was much younger, then I would repress it. 

I've read that children who abuse animals have seen abuse in their homes, but I hadn't. Just... yeah. Probably pent-up anger I had no idea about at the time. I just knew I had "it". 

I abused small pets from ages 8 to 10-ish, and got cats afterwards, once my father was gone from the picture, because he's allergic to them. The abuse on animals did not escalate to human abuse: it escalated to self-harm a couple years later, when I was 12, finally made friends, and was uprooted yet again. 

And while my mother has moved on to see me as an adult now, my father still seems to see me as a teenager at most. 

He also still doesn't understand why I don't speak to him anymore. In his mind he literally "did all" for me. "But I helped her find a job!" "But I got her a car!" "But I did this or that for her!"

Yeah? But you also kept invalidating me and my sisters. You also almost hit me. You also treat the dog like shit. You also pressure my sisters constantly. You lie. You still shit on my mom any chance you get a fucking decade after you divorced her. You cared more about the cost of a driving lesson than my health when I had to call one off because I had barely slept, was feeling dizzy and nauseous, and it was the middle of a heatwave. You also kept using me as a household employee. Always throwing demands at me. I could even see them coming from afar. And that's not even all.

And somehow you don't get it. 

***

Well. At least I've got my... boxer braids. I didn't expect this to turn into a memory stream of consciousness, but here we go, I guess?

Meeting Hikianalia and dancing again in two days.

Can't wait. :)