Duchesstopaz - Essence

Happy Pride Month, everyone!

HALLE BAILEY performing Part of Your World for the first time since filming Disneyland, May 2023

*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

I knew she would!!! 😁❤️👏🏾

(She's gonna LOVE it!! 😁)

i’m really beginning to feel lost when it comes to my feelings for this guy i work with. it truly feels like i am so small in his eyes, and i never know how to move forward. this is so out of the norm for me and it frustrates me that i feel powerless around him. i keep calling him pet names like, “babe, honey, sweetheart, pretty boy, etc.”, but i do that with literally everyone. i’m so bad at flirting and i really don’t think he would be receptive to that. he’s so charming, funny, goofy, and hot. but he’s talking to a different guy, and i feels like i’m too late. it all seems so pointless in the grand scheme of things. i don’t believe i’m his type, both physically and personally, and i don’t know him outside of work. but it’s terrifying to try for more. it makes me vulnerable and i feel worthless, disposable, unwanted.

this always happens to me though. i always catch feelings for some guy, and it literally has always ended the same; me hating myself for thinking it was a good idea and that i had even the slightest chance. it’s so hard to not think that i’m meant to be alone when rejection is so consistent. i’m running out of patience for my own self. i can’t keep letting myself put so much hope and emotion in finding that one person who will like/love me when so many people have turned the other way. when all of these things are stacked on top of me, it is so difficult to find a reason to keep trying and being open. i’ve been single for years already and it’s becoming easier to turn off this yearning to be with someone, until those moments like now. when someone draws your attention and you feel like they could be yours and this could be the chance. but 9.9 times out of 10 it isn’t. and the 1.1% chance that it could be, doesn't seem worth it anymore.

so, who knows what could happen between me and the guy honestly.  but my track record shows what is most likely to happen. it sucks, it really does, but that’s just my love life... lonely.

oliverstarkk: Thanks for having me @/abookof - you can purchase my collectors issue through the link on their page x

boys with

a) thick thighs, thick calves

b) very hairy legs

should consider

a) wearing skirts

b) wearing sundresses

c) kissing me

Art by Denis Istomin

*Trigger Warnings: Mentions of emotional and verbal abuse, su*c*d*l thoughts, self-deprecating thoughts, anxiety, and depression.*

Monday, Nov. 7th, 2022

4:37pm

Dear Me,

I’m struggling so much to control my anxiety and stress since my birthday 2 days ago. Deadass, I am so confused to the point where I don’t know where to begin, but I know that I am feeling so depressed and tired and empty and numb and exhausted. Gem’s extreme levels of vulnerability and the amount of breakdowns she has, is triggering and makes me upset for her, but also myself, because I don’t know what to do with myself and I feel out of place. 

Then with Angel, the way she speaks to me just gets to me. It comes off as if she is SO upset with me each time, or is looking for something to berate me over. It’s as though she’s projecting her frustrations onto me, but then, painting it over by saying that she is trying to have an honest conversation or teaching/advising me. It makes me so anxious and sick to my stomach when she talks to me because it’s like she’s going to be aggressive or “attack me” every single time. 

There’s no question of how I’m doing, or a thought of what I’m going through. She just wants to release whatever she wants to without any pushback. She’s controlling the situation to her own benefit without any regard. It’s like she forgets that I’m fighting my hardest to stay alive afloat, and only telling me what’s wrong with me(?).  It reminds me of our dad and how he used to talk to me and how I used to feel. She’s trying to “help” me “learn” by “advising” me to do certain things. But, it’s all a nice way of saying that she’s controlling me. But, some things are true and things that I truly need to work on, yet the consistent way that she delivers them is so awful. I just feel helpless.

Part 2