The House I Refused to Inherit

On rage, refusal, and the ghosts we love anyway

I. Blueprints of Disgust

I was raised by two people I never wanted to become.

Not in the teenage eye-roll kind of way — in the soul-level, DNA-won’t-decide-my-fate kind of way.

My parents were two different kinds of violence.

My father, the patriarch.
My mother, the mirror.

He was charming, abusive, elitist, narcissistic.
A man who called himself progressive b…