A poem I wrote and have performed several times at my local open mic nights. Also submitted to the Torrance Art Council competition and won second place.

“An Ode to My Father” by Amanda Peck

Dad, when you and Mom told me you were getting a divorce

I wasn’t at all surprised

My childhood of midnight shouts and broken plates did not hide our inevitable future

Yet when you guys told me

It was like my 11 year old rib cage was collapsing under the earthquake sobs that I let out

I could feel the cracks starting to form, the tiles that lined the inside of my chest starting to fall off

When you and Mom told me you were getting a divorce

I never expected you would be separating from me as well

I never signed those papers

I didn’t know what to expect

But I didn’t expect you to blame the divorce on me

To say “you could’ve made your mother stay”

looking at me with salty eyes and a tear stained face

I didn’t expect you to miss my twelfth birthday

to go on a date with some woman you’d met on tinder or bumble

or one of the many dating apps that you used to try to feel whole again

While your little girl was at home blowing out candles with a hole in her chest

I didn’t expect you to threaten to punch me

because I sounded just like her

when I sang or when I laughed

or even when I just cleared my throat

I guess it just hurt you too much to even see a shadow of her

I never expected you to act like she would come back, you said “I can get her back” over and over

“I can get her back”

“I can get her back”

“I will get her back!”

So when I said that she was never coming back

you kicked me out of your house

My house

I never meant to hurt you

but when you kept saying you would get her back

each repetition carved out another piece of me

I grew tired of hearing your sorrows and regrets

You kept promising me that we would be a family again

That we would be whole again

But you could never follow through

I couldn’t keep feeling hopeful for something that would never happen

One of us had to live in reality

So when you proved that it wouldn’t be you

I guess it had to be me

Dad, I never expected you to still be hooked on her

like you get hooked on everything

even 5 years, 2 therapists, 7 girlfriends, and 1 fiancée later you’re still yearning for her

So when you couldn’t have her you found all the similarities you could in me

and tried to monopolize my time just to be with a part of her when you couldn’t have the real thing

Dad, you were supposed to be the first man to teach me love

but you were the first to show me anger and how to hate someone

Dad, you were the first person to make me want to die

Dad, you were the first person to teach me that I should keep my expectations low and my defenses high

Dad, even when I expected nothing you still left me disappointed

Year after year blowing out candles without you

Leaving me with a hole in my chest

emptier than the house you now live in alone.

This is an article I wrote for See Beyond Magazine published in the November 2020 issue. See page 35 https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1879096

“Stop Fighting for your Abuser”

Childhood for me consisted of roughhousing with my brother, getting mani-pedis with my mom, and playing Barbies with my dad. Taylor Swift was my idol and her album Fearless soundtracked my life. Family, to me, meant riding bikes to the beach and dinners of roast chicken and green beans. All I knew at the age of eight was pure joy.

I considered my mom to be my ultimate role model, my brother my built-in best friend, and my dad my protector. We were one big happy family – until we weren’t. Late in the school year of second grade, my mom told me she had breast cancer; for the first time in my life, I knew heartbreak and fear of the unknown. Shortly after she had her first surgery, and had begun chemotherapy, my dad cheated on her. By then, I had already celebrated my tenth birthday and was old enough to understand what that meant. Fast forward to the first month of sixth grade, my mom left my dad after she had fully recovered from her battle against cancer.

Throughout my middle school years, my father morphed into a man I no longer recognized. The man who watched Spongebob Squarepants with me every morning and made me bowls of oatmeal transformed into an angry, bitter, and inconsolable monster. The emotional abuse he put me through yanked me from my baby pink childhood and hurtled me into the darkest place of my life; he would threaten to hit me or my brother if I said something that reminded him of my mom, he would kick me out of the house, and he would block my number if I put up a fight. The original plan for the divorce was for my parents to share custody, but that did not last long. For a while, I refused to go to my dad’s house but didn’t tell my mom why. The fear of my dad getting in trouble was enough to silence me; that was how much I loved him. But one day my dad was crying on the couch and I tried to comfort him.

“Are you okay?” I asked him gently, hating to see tears stream down my dad’s face. He was supposed to be my rock.

“No,” he spat at me. “I am not okay.” That’s when he turned to me, stood up, puffed his chest and straightened his shoulders. The way he looked down at me with puffy eyes and a red face made me feel smaller than a grain of sand. “You could’ve stopped her! You could’ve made her stay! This is all your fault!” He stormed into his bedroom. I called my mom and told her I needed her to come get me and take me far away from my dad. That night, I finally told her everything he’d been putting me through.

Throughout middle school and most of high school, my father and I had a rocky relationship. And while I was in therapy, I kept trying to piece it back together and hoped to get back to the person my father used to be. But I could never make it work. By the end of my junior year in high school, I realized how detrimental my father’s constant abuse was to my mental health. Verywell Mind defines an emotionally abusive relationship as “a consistent pattern of abusive words and bullying behaviors that wear down a person's self-esteem and undermine their mental health.”

Together, we had undergone several therapy sessions that proved to be fruitless; my therapist ended up diagnosing him with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD is diagnosed through symptoms such as “emotional instability, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, impulsivity, and impaired social relationships” (Mayo Clinic). The diagnosis made perfect sense and he fit it to a tee, but he refused to get help. BPD causes moods to change drastically and very quickly; one minute my dad would be kind and caring and the next he’d be hateful and angry. The constant toxicity of the past six years had built up to the point where my mental health suffered and I had to leave school briefly. I knew I had to cut communications with him and that it would be a hard decision to make.

The last time I saw my father, we had gone out for dinner. I shared with him the plans for my eighteenth birthday to travel to Washington with my mom, and he requested that I include him in the trip. I politely refused as I wanted it to just be my mom and meI. That’s when he lost control of himself. Starting in the restaurant and ending in the garage of my mom's apartment as he dropped me off, my dad had the worst episode of BPD that I had ever witnessed. He accused me of excluding him from my life and yet he went on to say how much of a burden I was to him – a clear sign that a manic episode was beginning. One moment in the conversation he begged me to forgive him for everything he’d done, and the next he was telling me to get out of his life and never speak to him again. “I’m better off without you,” he said.

In that moment, I realized that there was nothing I could do, and no matter how much he said he loved me, he would not change. That incident was the catalyst that caused me to cut off all forms of contact with him. The trauma he caused in my life forced me to give up on him and finally put the same amount of energy I was using to fix him to piece myself back together. Years of having a man I hardly knew tear me down repeatedly left me scarred but stronger than I had ever been.

Many people often ask why I put up with my father for so long. “Your mom takes care of you on her own, anyway,” they’d say. “So why do you keep wasting your time on your dad?” Loveisrespect said it best; “if a person you love tells you they’ll change, you want to believe them” (Loveisrespect). Even though I knew my dad suffered from a mental illness and he was a cancerous part of my life, he was still my father. When I saw him I remembered the dad who played Barbies with me and would let me give him makeovers.

I told my friends who urged me to give up on my dad, “The emotional and verbal abuse was never the hardest part,” I said. “It was giving up and letting him go.”

In deciding to end the relationship I had with my dad, I mourned the loss of having a father in my life, but I was glad to begin a new chapter. It was never my job to heal my father or to heal the relationship between us. He was an adult and he failed me. It may not be the best choice for everyone; however, giving up on my dad presented itself as my best option and it’s what gave me my freedom. Both my therapist and I agreed that the same energy I was putting into fixing my dad and our relationship needed to be given back to me. I turned all of the effort I was exerting onto myself and began to find my way back to who I am. Beginning from the foundation, I sorted through all my past traumas. I then moved on to self-love and reassured myself that no matter what my dad had done, I am – and will always be – a strong individual deserving of good things in life. Everyday is a new battle to move past my traumas, but I keep fighting for myself and I advise anyone in a toxic relationship – whether it be romantic, platonic, or familial – to do the same.

It’s been five months without my dad in my life and I’m doing better than ever. I know that every case of abuse is different and I am privileged to have had the opportunity to go to therapy for so many years. I am also very fortunate for having a strong mom who has always supported my decisions, raised, and protected me when my dad no longer could. No matter how much I loved my dad or he said he loved me, the abuse never stopped; it only ended when I realized that it wasn’t him that I needed to love – it was myself. Once I began to love and choose myself over him, life got better. I strongly urge anyone who faces a similar situation to choose and prioritize themselves and their needs before anyone else’s, to stop fighting for their abuser, and start fighting for themselves.

Works Cited

“Borderline Personality Disorder.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 17 July 2019, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20370237.

Gordon, Sherri. “How to Identify and Cope With Emotional Abuse.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 21 Jan. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/identify-and-cope-with-emotional-abuse-4156673.

“Why Do People Stay in Abusive Relationships?” Loveisrespect.org, www.loveisrespect.org/is-this-abuse/why-do-people-stay/.

“Selfie Expression” by Amanda Peck

Yes I take selfies and yes I love the new Instagram feature that lets me post six selfies in just one upload.

I love taking selfies because I love the way I look and love the way that golden hour lighting makes me look like a bronzed goddess for which all of my followers drop a like and comment as if it were an offering at my temple.

I love that I can show my best side with a click of a button and that I can hide the side that shows my acne and discoloration from years of anxiety and depression.

I love that I can pose myself just so to show that great lighting follows me around like the voice in my head.

I love that I can make myself appear like my biggest care in the world is if my highlight is blinding enough and not whether or not my depression will keep me in bed for the next two days.

And I especially love getting likes from my followers and comments from my friends saying “I loveeeeee this” or “work it girl!”

Because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t loveeeee knowing that I cry myself to sleep every night because of the chemical imbalances in my head that turn every situation into the end of the world.

But the main reason I am just absolutely enamored with taking selfies is because on a day when I’m trying to decide on either cutting myself or just going straight to playing hopscotch on the edge of a building, I know that if I take to Instagram and slap on a little bit of confidence people will see what I want them to like the perfectly placed flowers and how my hair falls just so and not my steadily decreasing mental health.

I just loveeee knowing that the distraction of social media and the self-esteem boosting comments have kept me alive ‘til this day so I can continue to take more selfies.

So please, go follow me on Instagram and drop a like and comment!