I should start by saying that my father loved my mom.

There is no question, no doubt, no debate.

He loved her more than life itself and I have come to the understanding that his love for her was his detriment.

My father is an English professor, currently on leave because of his deteriorating health. He is a brilliant man, his IQ is 170 and he dedicated his life to three things: Literature, his career, and my mother.

My mom was a ballet dancer, that was her one true love. She never lent her time to anything else before she met my father. She was a woman destined for greatness if she didn’t have the misfortune that is my father.

Because my father didn’t share a normal type of love. He had an all-consuming type of love that demanded every piece of her being.

They met at school, he tutored her in English and it wasn’t soon after that they started seeing each other. I never knew what convinced her to give him a chance but that was the first day of the end of her life. My mom thought it was harmless at first when he would convince her to miss dance practice to be with him, when he would make bitter comments about ballet, her weight and how much time she spent dedicated to her craft. Eventually, after she graduated, he convinced her to quit, apparently, her coach begged her to continue dancing for months but she no longer had a say.

It wasn’t until they married that she realized her mistake and it wasn’t until I came along that she realized she couldn’t escape.

He told her what to do, how to act, how to dress, she had to be on par with someone with his intellect. I learned from these stories that narcissists cannot love, they can only control. My mom gave up so much to support his career because he thought his was more important, more valued and she was just a silly dancer prancing frivolously across a stage. He needed her to worship him I think because he knew she didn’t love him.

Which is why I became a problem.

Suddenly, there was this person that my mom loved more than she ever loved him. He hated me from the start although I didn't know that until much later, I was never good enough, never smart enough, never talented enough, I was never enough, so he didn’t understand why my mom kept loving me.

It was like you needed to earn his love, he wouldn’t just give it to you, even if you were his only child.

Which was funny, because I never felt like his child. I felt like his wife’s daughter that was living with a stranger.

My mom took me to ballet lessons behind my father’s back. I think she saw ballet as a respite, it was her way of rebelling and her way of getting me away from my father’s disapproval.

And I was good.

I didn’t know it then, but my mom showed me some videos once I got older and I danced liked I was trained for decades. I could’ve had a future in it, but then my dad found out. I know what you’re thinking, that he forbade me from ever attending, that he punished my mom for lying to him, that I never picked up a pair of ballet flats ever again.

Nope.

He broke my spirit another way.

He became involved.

He would force me to train every waking minute, I would practice my pointe until my nails were blue and I couldn’t walk. He drained the joy out of something I once loved. If I didn’t do a proper rotation or stumbled in a routine, I’d have to do it 5 more times and if I messed up again it would 10 times. He monitored my diet to make sure I never gained a pound, dancers had to be agile, that’s what he thought. If I snuck a candy bar, I wouldn’t get dinner and go to bed starving. If I cried in pain, no lunch.

I learned that to survive, I had to steel my emotions up, stop him from ever seeing. If he saw me cry, or frown, or smile he’d have something to say. Something to break my soul and drain my energy, until I hated it. Until I was conditioned to respond to everything with a blank stare and terse nod. I would count to 10, count to ten and force myself to press down every emotion until it was a flattened surface. Soon, the sight of my flats and leotard made me nauseous.

My mom would cry, asking him to let me have a break, to let me eat, but he wouldn’t budge, not even for her. She loved me so much and had threatened to leave him so many times, but he would say, in that chillingly rational and calm voice, who a judge would give custody to. A cherished member of the community and an upstanding University English professor or an unemployed failed dancer who no one ever really got to know well.  She would immediately back down.

She never admitted it, but I knew that the only reason she didn’t leave was because she couldn’t let him have me. I was his leverage, the only time he found me useful.

Then it blew up when I was at my first recital.

I was 16 and had practiced for over a hundred hours, I barely slept. My mom would sit on my bed and I would dance flawlessly in front of her. I was ready, and it was so much better knowing that my dad was in Tokyo for a conference and wouldn’t be able to come.

We were so excited.

I stood up there, the spotlight on me, and unlike a normal kid, I was elated to see that empty chair beside my mom. It started so well, not a single missed beat, I landed the jumps that I struggled with, the audience was enchanted into a silence. For a minute, I felt like I was flying, I remembered what it was like to enjoy dancing.

I paused, a silent beat before the music would change into the second movement when I saw him enter through the back doors. He had somehow come back early from Tokyo just to see me. I looked at my mom and I could see the confusion on her face as her smile faded when she saw the fear in my eyes.

Then he sat down.

It was like my brain shut off.

Over a hundred hours and I couldn’t remember a single step.

I just froze.

The audience started whispering in confusion as the music continued to play and eventually the stage lights dimmed, and my dance teacher ushered me off stage. When the next song started up, the anger started to grow in me. Anger I had learned so well to push down.

He ruined it.

He ruins everything.

I went to the little room that was a makeshift hair and makeup space and they were there waiting for me. My mom tried to look happy and supportive, but I recognized the tense shoulders, perfect posture, and pained eyes.

I can’t remember what my dad said, sometimes I lay awake at night trying to remember what it was, what triggered such anger that I was able to keep contained all this time, but it never comes to me. I just remember how I reacted. I was sitting on the chair, untying my flats, I did the right while my mom helped with the left, he said something, and I snapped.

Years of suppressing emotion around him that I had learned to suppress it around everyone just broke free. I screamed at the top of my lungs and whipped my flat at his face, hitting him. I yelled at him, that it was his fault, that I hated him, that I wish he would die and leave me and mom alone. I think, what I didn't realize then, was that I wasn't mad that he got involved in my dancing, I was mad that no matter what I did, he was never happy, he was never proud, he never loved me. And that's what I wanted the most in the world, I wanted him to love me, even when I hated him. I needed his approval, sometimes I still do, because everywhere else, parental love was unconditional, so why wasn't my father's?

He didn’t flinch, he didn’t yell back, he didn’t frown, but he did do something he had never done before.

He slapped me.

Told me that blaming others for your own failures was pathetic and didn't make you smarter.

It hurt so much but I wasn't scared, I was happy, because he had finally done something wrong. 

That was the last straw for my mom.

I learned a lot about her that day. I learned that she had been visiting a divorce lawyer behind my father’s back. She was building her case, strategizing the best way for her to leave and take me with her. Turned out that the lawyer was the mother of one of the girls in my ballet class.

My mom slapped my dad back and in a voice I had never heard, she said that if he dared to lay a hand on me again, she would end him. At the time I didn't know what that meant, but I knew she meant it. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out in my bare feet. It was disorienting, I was shoved into a car I didn’t recognize driven by a woman with a kind smile who offered me a pair of flip-flops and a sweater. Her daughter was next to me, also in her leotard and just stared at me before frowning and hugging me.

I had never spoken to her in class before but she hugged me like she knew what I needed most.

That’s how I met Soya.

And that’s the day my mom left my dad.

And that’s why I am the way that I am.

I don’t know any other way to be.

-----

Dr. Lee had stopped writing a while ago.

She just stared. “Ayeon.”

“So, that’s that.” She whispered as she stared resentfully at the patch of carpeting that was faded.

Dr. Lee looked at her note pad and just stared at the 3 words she managed to write before she had given up.

Mom

Father*

Toxic

Typically, she could see a breakthrough coming, she would see the foundation laid and the little safe house she would build with her clients within which they’d share sensitive topics. Ayeon’s house barely had the cement down but she was already sitting inside.

She looked back up at Ayeon, wishing she could just hug the girl. Millions of thoughts were running through her mind, the psychiatrist in her wanting to speak about trauma, learning to let go and embracing emotions.

But Ayeon didn’t need someone to tell her the correct textbook way to do things. She needed someone to tell her how to do the smaller things.

“I think you should take a self-care day.”

Ay