September 20, 2022:
Even then, I complied from lack of choice. Where children are given no vote in decisions like this.
He was difficult. Sometimes frightening. Everyone walked on eggshells.
Most centrally, he'd chosen not to pay his child support, which — even then — I received as language. That gesture said: You're not important to me.
Why, then, visit at all? Empty ritual: events without content. Where eventually they stopped: action catching up to language. By then — even then — it was well after childhood.