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📓 Monday, December 15, 2025 — 11:10 p.m.
Tonight I saw The Shining in IMAX and it didn’t just feel like a movie. It felt like a mirror—an extreme mirror, but still a mirror. Sometimes when you finally see, you see more than yourself… you see the collision between your world and other people’s worlds—each one with its own rules, trauma, and loops.
I kept thinking about the loop. Not the supernatural stuff. The loop of an unhappy man who refuses the mirror, refuses responsibility, and turns “morality” into a disguise for control. A man who believes everyone else is the problem, not him. And when he believes that hard enough, the house becomes a pressure cooker. Everyone starts living around his weather. The strongest loop becomes the center of the household world—everyone orbits it. Not as a conscious agreement… as a subconscious one.
That’s what it reminded me of: the climate I grew up in.
What I remember
I remember the ’80s—being six or seven—going to the L.A. Zoo. I was in the back seat, watching the backs of my parents’ heads as the city moved past the windows. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood the energy. My dad’s voice—only his—coming hard. My mom silent. He attacked her—calling her names, calling her a pig, harping on her weight even though she wasn’t even overweight. I didn’t know what it was. I just remember it happening. Her silence. His loudness. Always loudness.
I remember how he tried to mold everybody, like we were dough being prepared for the oven. He told my mom how to look—her hair, her weight, how she should be. She permed her hair because he wanted it. I remember that perm. Later, when there was a woman at work he was attracted to—a certain look—my mom suddenly had that same haircut and got scary thin, like she was starving herself because she was, trying to become what he wanted. He was happy when she matched the fantasy, but she could never sustain it. No human can.
Even me—he tried to “build” me into his image. Pants, socks, shoes, tight clothes I didn’t even like. If I didn’t want it, the message was: you don’t know anything, you always want those baggy clothes, you’re wrong. I was a kid. I loved comfort—not tightness. And I didn’t realize it then, but I was absorbing everything like a sponge. The little unconscious reporter.
The betrayal that shaped trust
In 2018, I opened up to him about my depression. For a moment, he listened. He looked like he cared. He even gave me tips and said he had anxiety as a kid.
Then later—during an argument between me and my sister—something triggered him and he flipped. He took what I told him in private and used it to humiliate me in front of her. Mocking me: “Oh, the depressed boy… ahhh… grow up. Stop being a girl. Man up.” Laughing. Attacking my manhood.
And in that moment I understood something clean and brutal: I don’t have a father. I have a man who gave me life. “Father” is absent in this man whose blood I carry. I argued back, but inside I could see it—the construct of a father that never was.
When I confronted him later, he denied it.
That’s why I don’t tell my dad anything real. That’s why I don’t trust him. Because vulnerability became ammunition.
How he kept power in the house
He used to put me and my sister against each other—telling her things I said, telling me things she said, creating fights, then acting confused like he didn’t know why everyone was mad. He stopped doing it around 2020 because we stopped feeding him information. He couldn’t stir what he couldn’t access.
He labeled people too. Me: “piece of shit,” “his biggest problem.” My sister: “demon.” Victor: “parasite.” My mom: “an idiot.” Those words weren’t truth. They were weapons—dehumanizing language that built cages so he could feel justified and powerful.
And there was always the narrative flip: he’s never at fault. If you corner him, he escalates—rage, screaming, name-calling—anything to change lanes and escape the mirror. You could feel the rage. A child shown no love who became a father and husband, but never understood that to be a father or husband, you have to embody the title.
My mom’s survival and the cost
My mom spent years shrinking herself to keep the house calm—keeping things quiet so he wouldn’t explode. Later, in 2002, she found out about his affair in the most painful way: a tape recorder she hid in his van. Hearing a confession. Hearing about a pregnancy. That boy would become my younger brother, Victor. She confronted him that same night and he still responded with anger and control—trying to manage what gets exposed, telling her not to tell me, refusing to leave. “This is my house too.”
Even when she finally spoke truth—calling him evil—his response stayed cold: you helped me because you wanted to. No accountability. Just erasing what she gave.
What I see now
I see the loop more clearly.
The loop’s favorite disguise is morality:
“Correct them.”
“Straighten them out.”
“Handle them.”
“I’m justified.”
“They’re the problem.”
And I see what it did to all of us: a family trained to adapt to one unstable center.
But I also see something else: I’m not doing it like that anymore. The little reporter grew up. I eventually understood. Eventually forgave. And eventually learned the most important thing: trauma can become programming, and programming can start to feel like identity—but you are not the loop. You’re more, if you’re willing to look in the mirror.
I don’t confront with rage. I dissect. I stay calm. I don’t chase arguments. I don’t feed triangles. I keep private things between me and my mom. I protect my peace. I’m building structure—cleaner eating, working out, writing, drawing—because I refuse to become an extension of that chaos.
My rule now
I can understand my dad’s pain without carrying his behavior.
I can see the pattern without living inside it.
And I can be kind without being fake.
Tonight reminded me: the loop survives by blaming the mirror.
I’m choosing to look anyway.
Question: What’s a family loop you’ve recognized—and refused to inherit?
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