I Hope Everyone Is Having A Wonderful Beginning Of Pride Month! This Is My First Pride Since Coming Out

Duality

I just found this drawing in an old folder. About time I finished it!

I wanna ruin your days so I wanna point out the painful thing I realised:

when Buck had the pulmonary embolism in the Grant-Nash backyard the doctors said that the reason he survived was because he was surrounded by medical professionals but when we saw Maddie and Chimney at the hospital neither had a single drop of blood on them so the only thing that makes sense is that Hen and Eddie were the ones that got Buck stable 🤧

*Trigger Warnings: Descriptions of physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, parental abuse, verbal abuse, child neglect, threats, anxiety, panic attacks, violence towards children.* Monday, June 19th, 2023 Part 3 6:32pm

When I went to the high school 5 minutes away from our house, I was in the Honors Academy and still in the Band program. I was busy, with afterschool rehearsals and homework that I couldn’t easily breeze through. It threw a wrench in how the household functioned because you relied on me to pick up your slack as a parent and to take the pressure off my mother. You asked my mother to make me quit the Band program, and when I refused, you made me pay for everything myself and forced me to find a ride home every practice or show. 2 months later, you asked my mom to take me out of the Honors Academy because you thought it was “too difficult because it took so much time”, to which we both refused. But, if it was a sport, would you have reacted the same? I doubt it, considering that you jumped at the fact that Anthony started playing basketball. You blatantly tried to sabotage my high school career and life to take advantage of me. Not to mention, you didn’t graduate high school and you don’t have a GED because you went to jail instead, so why would you try to disturb how well I was doing; the top 5 of my class and the first chair of my section, when you should know what you missed and sacrificed?

By that time, the girls were in elementary school, the same one my mom works at, and now I do too. You made it a personal responsibility to show up for every parent event that they asked you to, and you bragged about how you were making time for it, or how much money you spent taking them out to eat before going. Way to go! I hope you are so proud that you make your kids feel like a burden with how much you speak like that. ALSO, how you rubbed it in my and Anthony’s faces because every time we invited you to “Doughnuts with Dad”, you refused and said it was a waste of time.

I wasn’t allowed to hang out with my friends because it took me away from my responsibilities at home and because my friends were girls. I was bullied because my closet was made of glass, I didn’t know how to connect with my male peers, and I was one of 3 black kids in my grade in the Honors Academy. Neither you or my mom were checking in on me or my grades or how I was doing in high school. You never taught me how to make friends, didn’t warn me of discrimination in a conservative, racist area, and didn’t teach me that there was nothing wrong with me for being me. But, that’s because you didn’t make me feel safe at home and made me feel like I was crazy for thinking that our home wasn’t right. You took and manipulated my mother right in front of me for years, until I realized there was no point in hoping or wishing for a support system. Yet, when we’re out in public, we’re one large, happy family with an amazing life, but behind closed doors, we all shiver with anxiety under the wrath of the king with no visible throne. Things couldn’t be more twisted.

Every day, you walk in the door and immediately call out everything that was wrong. This shoe is out of place, the washer is being used, there’s a tissue box on “your” counter, when everyone, except you, has allergies. Or, did you forget after all this time of your wife needing weekly shots, and all of us kids needing to take medicine every morning and night? 

You consistently pride yourself on being an “observational” person. You’re not “confrontational”, so you “sit back and take note of what’s going on around you”. I think you mean to say that you look for all the problems that bother you, and when you explode about this thing or that we need to clean up “this mess”, you excuse yourself from having to get involved and parent your kids by saying you’re not “confrontational”. 

We are a 7-person household, where all of us kids sleep in what is supposed to be the living room, and you have one of the bedrooms monopolized as your “workout room” that you don’t even use. We don’t have the space to have a properly organized and clean look. You disregard functionality for presentation, and as soon as you hear the context of the situation after we repeat it for 8th time, you deflect and say to just throw it away. But, you’ve been promising that we would get a new house since I was 10. I’m 20 now, and look, same house AND same behavior!

Daily, you find something that frustrates you and instill fear in everyone. You have such a superiority/inferiority complex with your family and the public that it leaves you with such a scary pattern of irrational violence. You never take the time to teach your kids the same standards or lessons that Anthony and I were expected to meet, and then, you throw a tantrum when they don’t do things the way you want them to. You’re an adult and a parent, we’re kids. We don’t understand how to establish a routine of cleanliness and organization isn’t a talent, it’s a skill. But, you’re so observational, yet you haven’t realized or noticed that the problem isn’t us, it’s you. Because you have such high expectations and such extreme outbursts, but you don’t raise your children to understand and teach them how to meet them and avoid what you call a “consequence”.

Part 1 -- Part 2 -- Part 4 Part 5

also reminder if you ‘don’t care’ about bi ppl in straight presenting relationships this pride bc ‘it’s not gay/lesbian enough’ youre literally biphobic and you need to see ur mouth shut . ‘but i’m gay/lesbian and that’s why i prefer to hear’ don’t care . bi ppl aren’t single sex attracted . it is likely we will have straight presenting relationships and u should shut ur mouth before i break ur jaw. bi ppl ur valid i love u

Something about I'm not over it, not over her...

and

The things that make you sad, am I one of them?

And the opening Pepa offered Eddie, that she didn't get it right the first time, either. "Right" being the forever love that Eddie's heart so clearly longs for.

Sometimes it takes three tries to get it right.

I'm still chewing on this, but there's something about how Eddie believes that in order to accept his love for Buck — to allow himself permission to love Buck — he would have to regret Shannon. And Christopher. Loving Buck would mean he never loved Shannon, shouldn't ever have been with her, therefore no Christopher. Which is such an unacceptable, alien concept, Eddie stays stuck.

But Pepa offered him a different view. Sometimes, it takes three tries to get it right. And all those "tries" are part of the process. Eddie is learning that he gets to hold all of it, that he doesn't have to choose. That Shannon's ghost — not her death but their life together — and Christopher and his forever love with Buck? All of them are part of who Eddie is — part of his heart — and always will be.

It's all very queer awakening in adulthood. Eddie is about to set himself free and finally allow his heart to have what it wants. What a wondrous thing to behold.

SIENNA KING as PRINCESS TAMIKA The Little Mermaid (2023), directed by Rob Marshall

Part I of Naruto sketch requests!