Warnings for this chapter: mention of sa/non-consensual devil's tango, physical abuse, and homophobia. Stay safe, my loves! <3 /srs

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ever since i was a kid, my father always seemed to hate me. he hated that i was into "girly" things and that i was "cuter" than all of the other boys. he hated the fact that i spoke like the girls at grade school and hung out with them more than the boys. he hated that i liked to keep my hair longer and play with mother's and lauren's make-up.

and most of all, he hated the way i thought of the boys in my class.

6-year-old me didn't know that liking people of the same gender was "wrong." i mean, how was i supposed to know? i had thought that it was normal - the girls at school always said that they loved each other. granted, they meant it in a different way, but what was the difference to little kid?

i wish i had known the difference. maybe my father wouldn't have done the things he did. maybe he wouldn't have gotten angry and tried to fix me. or maybe he would've done it differently, in a way that didn't hurt me or lauren.

on my 9th birthday, instead of getting me a present, he forced me to watch my sister have sex with her boyfriend.

i hated watching it. not only did it make me uncomfortable, it was horrifying to listen to lauren scream like that. it made me want to scream, too. and of course, to make it all worse, she didn't consent to it.

i found that out not too long ago.

but that wasn't the only way he tried to fix me. he got me involved in football and rugby and other sports to get me to like boy things. he tried ice hockey, as well, though that turned into me wanting to be a figure skater all of junior high. though, what really stuck with me was football. i geniunely enjoyed it a lot. it made me happy and it gave me an escape from my parents. when high school started, i joined a team outside of school so i could play during the fall until spring sports started. my father liked it because it made me seem more "masculine."

another thing he tried was burning my entire wardrobe and buying only jeans and T-shirts for me to wear. i remember being so angry that i refused to get dressed every morning. i was beat for it. a lot. but eventually pearl took me shopping and we hid a bunch of clothes i actually liked at her house so she could bring them to school for me to change into.

it took my father a while to find out about it, but when he did, he didn't really do anything. i guess he just accepted that i'm not going to change.