love – Fauna Lewis Writes

pity party*

So much of the time, I seem to be angry.

The world is on fire; the president of the USA is a rapist; and so much of the time, I seem to be angry.

It does not seem to ease or to wane. In fact, with time it simply seems to encompass more.

I have gained other emotions alongside, over the years.

I have learned to love and to forgive and and and . . . and yet, this anger is ever-present. Co-mingled.

Being a parent myself has made this anger thicken.
Burned the water from the sap.

Was I so impossible to love?

Were the signs my parents needed help too quiet?
Did they need support, or were they bad people before I arrived?

Did I MAKE them bad people?

Do I blame the times? The government? Society?

What do I do with all this anger?

I survived the home of an abusive alcoholic who did not hesitate to raise his hand to his wife or his children.
I survived a childhood with a mother who never completed a maternal task in her life and regularly used me for her own gains, even if it meant letting others use me.
Two of my siblings survived to go on to be rapists and pedophiles — one awaiting federal sentencing and one in his 30s with his freshly 18yo bride whom he groomed beforehand.
I find photos of myself from my childhood and am transported to a nightmare, because the outfit I am wearing is one I had been abused in.

So much of the time, I seem to be angry.

I don’t feel like this anger even belongs to me; it was given to me.
Handed to me softly or thrown against my body.
Ripped stitches.
Off-color comments.
I received it wrapped and with blood and with smiles and with silence.
And I don’t want it anymore.

My parents used every opportunity they had to call me ‘entitled’ and ‘ungrateful’. That I was disrespecting them by not showing appreciation for what they had given to me (which was not even consistent food, medical care, or shelter, folks) so I finally decided this: I am no longer undeserving of them.

They are 100%, no cap, frfr, undeserving of me.

The narrative that somehow in this equation I would always come out lacking for admitting it is laughable.

Why is it always, “but they’re your parents!” and not, “but they’re your kid!”

I desperately hope this generational mindset in which children exist only to benefit the mother and father dies with my parent’s generation. Them being upset in their old-age that I am not upholding my side of the ‘deal’ and care for them no matter what is a hard pill they will have to swallow. They did not raise children on intimacy and closeness and trust and safety, so why they expect it in their final verses makes me very uncomfortable.

I am giving my children everything I can while simultaneously building myself a Fountain of Youth so I can help THEM into THEIR old-age. One of the things I cry about as a parent is that no one will love my 80-year-old babies like I would. I want to pre-pack a whole house for each of them with all the clean laundry and food they would need.

If I gave my parents in old-age what I received in childhood, their days will be very dark, very painful. They will have no blankets nor food. They will not be allowed to speak. They will watch what I put on the television, or listen to what I put on the radio. They will sleep in pissed sheets and bruises. They will be told not to tell anyone — what happens in my house, stays in my house.

I deserved better, and because of that I also feel like my children deserve better.

Thanks, Mom and Dad ❤

*Tonight’s Pity Party Post was brought to you by: days of cyclical depression, CPTSD, and the letter ‘Y’-the fuck didn’t you love your kids, Parents of Mine? Let’s see if I feel comfortably unhinged enough to write another.

My Father, the Mountain // post two.

I feel silly having such human, girly emotions while the country is in literal flames (fvckICE,btw) but I have been thinking about my reasons for writing this poem a lot recently and tbh, I want it out of my head thankyouverymuch.

So, let’s write it out and get some decent sleep, shall we?

Looking back over my father’s life, I can acknowledge there were plenty of things present to cause him to be easily overwhelmed with fatherhood and responsibility, and I acknowledge he may not have necessarily been able (capable? willing?) to access adequate supports which may have made things better for all of us, so . . . am I an angry daughter? Am I an empathetic mother?

Loving my own children may be the only thing that has allowed me to continue to see humanity in my father. That perhaps he just wasn’t meant to be a dad and I should cut him a break for it because he was once a child too and his childhood may not have been that great.

But, wasn’t I also a child?

Onto the point and the reason for the poem #cringe

My dad was my hero. He could do literally no wrong. More than once, I can remember him hitting my mom and thinking she absolutely deserved it

I wanted to have his attention as much as I could (and as much as my mother would allow — that’s another blog post) — even if it meant I was in the line-of-fire.

My father only let us kids hang around him when he was doing whatever he was doing. He was never interested in what I liked, but I learned a lot about nails and wood and pinup girls and beer and Queen. He was always ready for nails and wood and pinup girls and beer and Queen.

My dad had to be in the perfect mood to listen to me.

The right amount of coffee.
The right amount of nicotine.
The right amount of alcohol.
The right amount of uninterrupted time to drop his morning deuce.
(Bonus if he also finished his cross-word)

I learned my dad’s shit-schedule so I could plan when to talk to him without him putting me through a wall for approaching him, ya’ll. And it was all to do things I don’t particularly have interest in.

I sat through epic orations of Baseball statistics as he meticulously organised his cards. My brothers would get banished to their bedrooms because they were too loud and too physical but I did not mind being a statue on the floor next to his La-Z-Boy.

I would make myself so incredibly small in the garage, where my dad would be hunched over his workbench. Cut-off jeans, button-down shirt open to reveal his tan belly. Cigarette perched between two fingers while he measured something. His dark hair curling over the edge of his baseball cap. Beer in a cozy. The boys would want to hammer and bang and saw — I also wanted to do these things, but expressing so got you banished — so I was content with watching him work.
Sometimes, he would be generous and hand me a few wood scraps and some nails and tell me to build The Next Big Thing.
Once, he threw a wire brush at my leg. I can remember it feeling so heavy and hurting before I realised the brush was sticking out of my skin; I had thought it just glanced off, like everything else.

I would always end up being sent away for a stupid reason.

I sneezed.
I had to use the bathroom.
I asked a question.

And every time it happened, every time I heard that intake of breath and that buildup of, “Goddamnit, Fauna!” rumbling up from his naked chest with all the putrid alcohol from his guts, I hated myself.

I vowed that I could master myself in such a way I never needed to sneeze again.

Never use the bathroom again.

Never ask a question again.

And it did nothing but hinder me as I came of-age in the world. I was unprepared, uneducated, and felt wholly unwanted.

And I hated myself.

Now, I often wonder if that was the outcome he wanted?

I am ashamed of the tree I fell from, but not the one I grew, is all I can say. I really let this old white man fuck me up.

Ope.

Love, a Fatherless Daughter 🖤

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book that coincides, ‘My Father, the Mountain’ — you can find more information and follow the blog at www.faunalewiswrites.com

My Father, the Mountain — Tea Party for 1

On and off since the day of my forging, way back in the 1980s, I have had pits occurring in my mind. Like one would push the tip of their finger into wet sand and leave behind a dimple, such occurred in the delicate folds of my brain each time my father held me beneath his thumb.

Over the years, through the tides of life, information pooled in each.

This one is a glimpse of a man, red-faced, and it smells like beer.

So is this one.

And this.

And that, and those over there. Also, those in the back.

I even have some coming in to be installed tomorrow, they’re going up on that pretty ridge over there.

New shipments every week.

If I get close, the ripples tell the story, and I remember: this one taught me to be ashamed.

This one: to be silent.

To lie.

To hide.

So, this has been occurring for quite some time, but 8 months ago I could suddenly see it. 8 months ago I could finally see the enormity of it. I realised how much it pervaded; how deep it went; how badly I had been betrayed by someone who was meant to protect.

And that’s not even the worst part.

8 months ago, at the ripe old age of being born in the 1900s, I realised that I deserved better and none of it was my fault.

Decades of things I had internalised, maggots I pulled from memories to drown in the shitty dimples that pervaded, worked themselves out like botflys.

And now I am left with all these lapping waves.

Ah, poetic digression. Back on-track:

This realisation, that it wasn’t me, might seem like a great thing — in the bigger picture, it of course is — but it sucks.

Should it suck for me?

Well, after devoting hours a day of background consciousness (involuntarily, might I add) to this question, I finally decided on the answer:

42 (jk, you’ll understand if you’re old or really cool, but not both)

The answer to ‘Should it be me?’ is: ‘Nah’.

It should be my dad.

And since I’m an 80s baby and we all know Millennials love drama (this is in no way true I made it up right now), what better way to be dramatic than some silly, salacious blog post no one will read? hashtag i’m just a girl.

Of course, I am going to be called ’emotional’ or told to ‘get go of the past’, but I have heard them before and am no longer phased. These crimes are not mine and I refuse to hold the shame and guilt of them.

They belong to my dad.

My dad, the man who married and took advantage of a mentally-ill, physically-disabled woman. Even though she was desperate for support, he gave her none but made four children with her and left all of the childrearing in her lap.

My dad, the man who, when cops were called because he was beating my mom, grabbed our dog and hid in the garage (not really that wild, I just wanted to point-out he was a coward)

My dad, the man who, when I would ask from the backseat — past where my little brothers were asleep — if he could slow down, would say. “You think you fucking know more about driving than me!” as he took another swig of beer.

My dad, the man who beat his children — his babies — with his fists. Who insisted his children did not need glasses, or regular medical care, or supervision, or safety. The man who seemed to enjoy our fear as he whipped off his belt.

The man who drove his children to random abandoned homes in cornfields and left his oldest child (me) in charge of the younger three, all aged 9>, while he disappeared to do ???

My dad, who called his daughter ‘a slut like her mom’ when his daughter (that’s me!) asked permission for a piercing at age 16.

My dad, the man who told his daughter, survivor of childhood sexual assault, that CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) was ‘not a big deal if it was teenagers’. The conversation would come about when his son was arrested for receipt, transport, and distribution of CSAM of children of prepubescent age. (Andrew Branigan, defendant in the Southern District of Iowa — sentencing is November 2025)

My dad, the man whose favorite joke used to be:
“Hey, you know that cartoon, The Jetsons? How it is set in the future? . . . ever see a black guy on the show? Man, the future is gonna be great.”

Forty years is a long time to hide sins of the father.

I’m over it.

Love, a Fatherless Daughter ❤

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book that coincides, ‘My Father, the Mountain’ — you can find more information and follow the blog at www.faunalewiswrites.com