the above picture represents my father. its black, a picture of a mug...which we will call a mug shot (he has a lot of those) and the brass knuckles represents how abusive he was to my mother. obviously this isnt a fair comparison to my father because this item would actually do more for me than he has, it'll hold my drinks. it also wont take credit for holding my food like a plate, but my father yea, he'll take credit for raising me and my siblings when he starts his kid bragging ritual, yet in private, in his mind none of us have done anything good enough with our lives.

today hes a deacon or minister or something of the sort, hes married and taking care of his son, my brother, who is autistic and he is making decent money. from the outside looking in hes reformed, a changed man, if any of the people in his new life knew about the old him im sure they would be shocked. he wants to re-frame his past, too bad for him the portraits he painted didnt come with delete buttons. ive sat in silence as hes told stories of rewritten histories completely unaware that i remember what really happened.

if pandora has a box, my father has a chest, that sits in a tomb buried by mounds of half truths and whole lies valued by him at the cost of his children's expense. it wasnt until i was 19 that i found out about two additional sisters i had. this of course may still be in secret if he hadn't overlooked some of the oldest cautionary advice in the book: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

the last time i spoke to him it was a few years ago when he tried to pit me against my mother by blaming her for some of my "wrong ideas about life" and went on to yap about how much better my life would have been had he been more in my life. i guess he doesnt recall the many conversations where i did ask to live with him and there was always an excuse, and on the rare occasions he would pick us up, we sat in the living room while he went to go bang his women. what a joke. i learned through his absence what not to be, thats it.

i applaud my mother for allowing us to come to our own conclusion about him, and still to this day she will not bad mouth my father. Is it better to die a hero or live as a monster? it was one of the last things said in that movie Shutter Island. My father will pull off both on his resting day. he has a lot in common with the lead character. In his mind he is a hero, and its really sad that he just will not accept and own his mistakes, but rather blame everyone around him.

where lies the conscience of the self righteous?