Brat (and some context)

He was used to me being so well behaved. So good. Sometimes being a brat is an angle to get the discipline you’re looking for. Somtimes it’s just fun, playful, spirited. Sometimes it’s a way to show displeasure, or protest. But sometimes being a brat starts because you know deep down that he doesn’t deserve it.

And that’s what I realized that day. Not everyone deserves to be called Sir or Daddy. It’s something you have to earn, and continue earning as time goes on.

I was hurt. And I was right to be hurt. He would talk a good game about respect, but then he would think with his dick. When I’d call him on it, his carelessness, his poor choices, his miscommunications, he’d react like I was over-sensitive. It was clear; the problem was me.

The word gaslighting is overused, but that’s what it was. “The lights aren’t getting dimmer, what are you talking about?” became “I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal of this, stop being so dramatic, what’s wrong with you?”

But I wasn’t over-reacting. I see that now. I was standing up for myself when he was treating me like shit. And he didn’t like it. So he tried to undermine my reality, spin things around so I was the one who had to apologize, and put my tail between my legs.

He kept me so busy nursing a broken heart that I missed all the signs of his betrayal, of who he really was. The cracks would show but I didn’t want to see them, I filled them with the gold I imagined he had inside of him, something I was sure I could see. “It’s like Japanese art!” I tried to convince myself. It wasn’t though, it was just broken. Fucking broken.

He said the issue was that I didn’t trust him. “That’s what I want you to work on little girl, trusting your daddy”. It makes me feel sick just pulling the words from the depths of my memory. My heart aches. He said the issue was that I didn’t trust him, and I believed him. So that’s what I was working on while he was going behind my back to have unprotected sex with men he didn’t know.

When we broke up he said what we had was sacred. I spat and hissed my response, considering all of the damage he had caused, all of the things that couldn’t be repaired, sacred isn’t a word he should use. And neither was Daddy, or special, or forever.

People use all kinds of words. They’re just words. I know that. But it was hard to imagine using daddy again, or wanting to let someone else make decisions for me. Trust is tricky that way. I needed to be my own daddy for a while, I needed time to heal.

Property of Nobody: shirt worn once, un-ironed because I knew it would piss him off.

(You can give this very bratty shirt a home here at my store.)