Author: SomatiCat

The Frog Who Wanted to Be a Prince

Posted on by SomatiCat

Author’s note: This story is about trying to become something else and forgetting what you already are.

There was an ugly frog with a huge head, short legs, and even shorter arms in a pond. His head was so huge that even when he was a tadpole, he could not swim through the rocks with the others. They made fun of him.

His legs were so short that when he became a tadpole with legs, he could not paddle as fast as the others. They made fun of him.

His arms were shorter still, so when he became a tadpole with short legs and shorter arms, he could not crawl on the ground like the others. They made fun of him.

When he finally became an ugly frog—with a huge head, short legs, and shorter arms—others did not laugh at him so much. The pond was full of ugly frogs. Some had huge heads. Some had short legs. Some had shorter arms. So he became just another regular ugly frog.

He was heavy, and his legs were short, so when he walked and jumped, he made ridiculous noises.

Flop. Flip. Blap. Blop.

He had a friend who was smart and slender. When he jumped, he made a cute sound.

Hip hop. Hip hip.

Everybody liked the smart and slender frog. He was a good joker. Everybody laughed and loved it. He sang and danced well, and everybody wanted to dance and sing with him. When the ugly frog sang and danced, everybody just laughed at him—even though his singing was not so bad.

When the ugly frog was still an ugly tadpole, he once saw a princess sitting on the grass by the pond. She was blonde and blue-eyed, slender and snow-white. The princess was reading a book to her little sister.

The ugly tadpole listened to the story, but he didn’t understand it because he did not know human language. An old frog who could speak human language told the story for him.

It was a story of an ugly duckling who turned out to be a snow-white swan.

The ugly tadpole dreamed that he would turn out to be a majestic, snow-white king frog. It was fine. Many tadpoles in the pond dreamed the same dream, although they wanted to be regular majestic king frogs—dark green with black dots and shiny skin.

After the ugly tadpole became an ugly frog, he saw the princess again sitting on the grass with a book.

This time, he crawled up onto the ground—Flop. Flap. Blap. Blop.—then hid himself in the grass and peered into the book.

Even though he could’t read human language, he could look at the pictures.

It was a story of a frog. No—it was a story of a prince who had been turned into a frog by a wicked witch. A beautiful princess kissed the frog, the curse was broken, and Ta-ra-ra, he became a prince.

The princess and the prince lived happily ever after.

The ugly frog believed that he was a prince who had been turned into a frog. And if he could find a princess who would kiss him, he would become human again.

It was a tragedy that he had forgotten he had been an ugly tadpole since he hatched from an egg.

The ugly frog thought he had to learn human language to be a prince. He ignored the fact that if he had been a prince, he should already have known human language.

He joined the Human Language Speaking Society. Members spoke human language to each other with a funny ribit ribit accent.

“Heloribit, howribit are youribit?”
“I am finribit, thankibit.”
“I am very pleasiribit to seeeeerribit youribit.”
“Thank youribit very muchibit.”

The ugly frog studied hard—harder and harder—so he could become an ambassador to the pond in the princess’s castle.

He began to speak better human language than the others, even though he still had a heavy ribit ribit accent.

Then one day, his smart, slender friend was sent to the castle.

The ugly frog was upset. Since his friend could not speak human language at all, he did not understand why his friend was chosen instead of him.

So he studied harder. And harder.

When the smart, slender frog hip hop hipped into the castle, a wizard appeared.

The wizard liked the way the frog hopped and jumped and sang and danced, so he said:

“Your hopping and jumping and singing made me happy. I will give you a reward. Make a wish, and I will make it come true.”

Since the smart frog did not understand human language, he did not make a wish. He simply hipped and hopped and jumped on, and went to the pond in the castle.

The wizard smiled and made his wish come true.

The smart frog stayed in the pond, singing and dancing and hipping and hopping, enjoying his life there. After a while, he went home happily.

And he lived happily—hipping and hopping and dancing and singing.

Then the ugly frog left the pond and went to the castle without being appointed to anything.

When the ugly frog flip-flop blopped to the castle, he saw the wizard.

The ugly frog jumped on his short legs and said:

“Helloribit. Howribit doibit youribit doibit.”

The wizard frowned, because the frog’s accent was so heavy that he could not understand what he was saying.

Contrary to general belief, the wizard had never been mean. So he gently asked:

“What are you doing here in the castle, far from your native pond, little frog?”

The ugly frog answered:

“I arbit notttt a ffffrogit. I rrrrrribit am a prrrrince. I havvverrrribit come to seerrrribt a prinncess.”

The wizard listened patiently and realized that the frog somehow believed he was a prince turned into a frog.

The problem was that the wizard had never turned any prince into any frog—ugly or not ugly. In fact, he did not like that story at all.

However, the wizard was too kind to tell the frog the truth. He thought that perhaps some other wizard was responsible.

So he asked, “What do you want?”

The frog said, “Human!!!”

The wizard made his wish come true.

The ugly frog became an ugly human being—with a huge head, short legs, and shorter arms—naked and greenish.

And he still spoke with that funny frog accent.

He ran to a pond in the castle and looked into the water to see his reflection.

Then he jumped into the water and tried to drown himself.

No…

He failed.

Because the ugly frog would never forget how to swim.

That is what he was.

A frog.

© 1992

The Wayfarer: The Empty Chair

Posted on by SomatiCat

On life, death, and the illusion in between.

The Wayfarer walked into a grassland with no beginning and no end. Brown leaves rustled as he walked through the knee-high grasses. It was like autumn before winter, stood still for eternity. The sky was gray, with no sun in sight. He couldn’t tell the time of day.

Like scattered drops of rain striking the surface of dried mud, he saw green spots far apart in the distance. They were trees, still alive. The brown grassland was sparsely marked with droplets of green.

The Wayfarer walked toward one of the trees, and he saw a man sitting under it. He looked as old as the grassland. His skin was dry, like the leaves of the grasses, almost peeling away from him.

“Hello,” the Wayfarer said.

The man did not move. His gaze was set toward the far end of the grassland, which seemed never to end. The tree was quiet. No birds nested in it. It simply stood there, without even casting a shadow on the earth.

Leaving the old man behind, he kept walking toward another tree far ahead. No insects leaped from the grasses. Only the sound of rustling leaves could be heard as he walked through them.

Under the second tree, the Wayfarer found a younger man sitting as well.

“Hello,” he said.

The man did not even look at him. He looked like a soldier after a defeated battle. Caked mud covered his legs, and his face was stained with soot. His gaze, too, was set toward the far end of the grassland.

The trees were far apart. Whenever he saw a faint green dot in the sea of grasses, like an island in a desert, he walked toward it, unhurried and steady. One after another, he saw a person, young or old, sitting under a tree, all gazing far away from here, into the beyond, in silence and stillness. He did not know how many trees he visited. He did not know how long he had been walking.

The Wayfarer came upon another tree and stopped in his tracks. After so many occupied chairs, all frozen in time, an absence felt like thunder in the silent sky. The chair was empty. Had the person who sat there just left? he wondered. Was it the beginning or the end? Then he noticed a beautiful mandala on the ground beneath the tree, glimmering and shimmering with many colors.

He suddenly felt tired and sat in the chair, his gaze set on the faraway horizon. Then he noticed a spider lowering itself from a branch on a strand of silk. As the Wayfarer watched, it spun its web between the branches. The intricate web overlapped his view of the never-ending grassland, and he did not know whether he was staring at the end or the beginning.

A butterfly came dancing on iridescent wings. It was like a light in the bleak landscape. Then it was caught in the spider’s web. The last fluttering of its wings sent waves through the silk. Another butterfly came and was trapped, and another. The spider wrapped them in silk, and their wings were torn free and fell to the ground like cherry blossom petals, glimmering and shimmering.

The Wayfarer realized that the mandala was made of thousands of butterfly wings, lives caught in the web and fallen there. It had been repeated from the beginning of time into its never-ending present.

He looked back to where he had come from and found that his tracks, too, had formed a spider’s web.

©2026 JU

Grandma’s Tree

Posted on by SomatiCat

There was a grandmother who had no grandchildren. She loved woods and forests and traveled all over the world. When she was younger, she went abroad in search of unusual trees in strange forests, in strange countries.

When she got a little older, she could no longer endure the cold of Iceland in winter or the boiling heat of India in summer. So she began to look for trees in her own country. She went to the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, the Blue Mountains, the Red Mountains, the Yellow Mountains—name any mountains in this country, and she had been there. Not only mountains, but swamps and bayous in the South, to see cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging from their branches. She took pictures of trees and drew maps so she could visit them again.

When she got older, she could no longer fly across the country or drive over the great plains. So she began to visit mountains and forests nearby. She drove to national parks and forests in the region and walked the trails until she found a tree that quietly drew her in. She still took pictures and made maps. The walls of her house were covered with trees.

When she got older and could no longer drive, her nephews and nieces took turns bringing her to the lake, where she sat in a chair and looked at the forest beyond.

Finally, she became too old to travel and sat in a wheelchair. The children of her nephews and nieces sometimes pushed her to a nearby park. She no longer took pictures or drew maps. She simply sat under a tree and spent one or two hours looking at the trees.

One of her nephews understood why she had traveled all over the world taking pictures of trees. She had never told anyone, but to the boy it was obvious. She had been searching for a tree to die under, so that her spirit could enter the tree and live on.

He was eager to know which tree it would be. Whenever he visited her house, he studied the photographs on the walls. Was it that grand sequoia, or that mighty oak? Or the bristlecone pine in the desert? He promised himself that whatever tree she chose, he would take her there. He would bring her back to it.

Whenever he asked her, she only smiled and said, “I will let you know when the time comes.”

The grandmother grew older still, until she could no longer leave her bed. She still had not told the boy which tree she had chosen, and he began to worry she would not be able to make the journey.

Then one morning, the time came.

She called the boy and asked him to take her to the backyard.

There stood a tree with nothing particular about it. In fact, no one had really noticed it before. It was not young, nor old. It was simply a tree no one paid attention to. The boy pushed her wheelchair to it. She stayed there for a while and died quietly.

The boy could not understand why she had chosen this ordinary tree. Even if she could not travel far, there were still many dignified trees in the nearby forest that would have suited her better. He had promised to take her anywhere. And after thousands of photographs of thousands of trees all over the world, she had chosen this unmarked tree in her own backyard—a tree she had never once taken a picture of.

After her funeral, the boy entered his grandmother’s room. He took the photographs down from the wall one by one. On the back of each photo, the name of the tree, the date, and the place were carefully written—except for one.

It was a picture of an unremarkable tree in a deep and remarkable forest.

On the back it only read:

Kiquawa tree.

No place. No date.

“I will find it,” the boy said. “I will visit them all and find that tree. Then I will understand why.”

Author’s note: This story is about a lifelong search that slowly turns inward. The grandmother’s journey is a necessary wandering until the difference between one tree and another begins to dissolve. It’s the search of identity, which is only found in yourself and each person needs their own journey.

© 1994

Kiquawa Tree

Posted on by SomatiCat

When heaven slept, dreaming a dream of a thousand rivers in the sky, its only child crawled out of the cradle of wind, crawled to the edge of the cloud, and fell to the earth.The wingless child fell without a wail, and died.

When heaven lost its only child, the first drop of its tear fell upon a Kiquawa tree on a hill. Then it turned into rain that would never end. It rained and rained upon all the creatures of the earth. Day turned into night, and the earth turned into the sea, at the bottom of which the drowned forest stood silently, like a wingless bird without a singing voice.

The Kiquawa tree on the hill looked down upon the earth and up toward the sky, and asked heaven not to let its tears flood the world.Heaven said,

How can you tell me not to cry? I have lost my only child. My child fell to the earth. The earth engulfed my wingless child and did not give it back. I look down and see the earth full of beings, yet none are mine. My tears will never cease, until all the earth lies beneath the sea of my sorrow, as silent as the starless night of the sky.

The Kiquawa tree said,

Then let me bear your child. I will take in your tears and nurse the child with them. I will give my limbs for its bones. Your tears will be its blood, and its flesh will grow. When it grows, it will worship you from the earth. You will have forests full of children to look upon you.

After one hundred sixty-eight days and nights, the rain quietly ceased. Half of the night turned into day, and the Kiquawa tree bore a child. It suckled tears from the earth. The earth grew dry, and birds began to sing.Then another Kiquawa tree bore another child, who suckled more tears from the earth. Gradually, half of the sea returned to land, and the forest was filled with children of the Kiquawa trees.

When the wingless children grew, they admired heaven, whose tears had become their blood. When a child died upon the earth, it was buried beneath a Kiquawa tree. Its bones returned to the tree, and the tree drank its blood and returned it to heaven as morning mist. Somewhere in the forest, another Kiquawa tree would bear another child.

Still, from time to time, heaven silently sheds tears for the only child it lost long ago.

© 1996 J.U.

Author’s note:

This story is a myth of grief that cannot be undone. What is lost is not recovered, but transformed. Through the body and the earth, sorrow becomes life again.

Of course, the images are AI generated.

Tear of Hannya: The Fire that Became the Sea

Posted on by SomatiCat

This is a story about what happens when the fight does not end, even after the war is over.

When the nervous system is constantly in survival mode, the sympathetic nervous system—what we call the “fight, flight, or freeze” response—is always activated. Over time, these neural pathways become automatic. We remain on alert, scanning for danger, ready to fight back.

You may have survived many battles of childhood trauma. Even after the war is over, the nervous system continues to live on the battlefield of the original trauma.

Cognitive understanding alone is not enough to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, because we do not feel safe. We may have never known what a safe home feels like. Eventually, the sympathetic nervous system forgets the original source of fear and becomes a demon that fights for fighting’s sake.

This demon once protected the vulnerable child we used to be. Now we are grown, and we can protect ourselves. And yet, the demon cannot let go of its role.

Over time, new pathways can form—slowly, one day at a time—to free the demon and show it that it can finally rest. We are not trying to erase the demon. We meet it with compassion and allow it to be held. After all, it was the demon that kept us alive.

This is a story of C-PTSD and recovery. I wrote it more than twenty years ago. I understood what I needed to understand, cognitively. But it took decades to become familiar with the feeling of safety.

I hope this helps you release the exhausted warrior within you.

Hannya’s Tear

An old woman stood on a desolate beach, staring out at the sea. The ocean wind blew through her long gray hair. The hour was neither night nor day, neither dusk nor dawn. The sea was calm. Beyond it, the blue-gray shadow of distant land floated on the horizon.

She had come a long way. So long that it could not belong to a single lifetime. She had walked through several lives to finally arrive at this distant sea.

I am tired.
So tired.
I want to die.

The wind moves through my hair—hair that was once so angry it flamed upward and burned the sky.

Blazing visceral anger burned my entrails like an ungutted fish thrown into a fire. It charred me from the inside out. Now my heart has lost the heat of burning coal and left me with ash-gray hair.

Every step I took was across shards of tile and gravel.

Every Breath I drew was studded with broken glass.

Where did I come from? I no longer remember. It was too long ago.

All the way here I slashed, stabbed and sliced. Blood gushed and sprayed over me—on my face, my neck, my arms. It burned my skin and hardened it into rusted iron.

I hid in dark places for days and nights, wounded and motionless while the shadows of enemies passed by. I was always watching, always alert. And when I slept, I dreamed of blood and dismemberment, waking to the smell of burning flesh.

That was the only way I knew.

It was my way.

In my hand I see a sword darkened with dried blood.
I have become the thing I feared.
An Oni who only knows how to fight.

And now I find myself standing alone on this beach. No more bodies to leave behind me. Where is my fire? Where is my anger.

It is gone.

There is no enemy left to kill.

What did I do to deserve lives of perpetual fighting? I have survived, and there is no one left to kill. And I am standing here alone.

I am tired.

I want to die.

I want to end this for good. No more fighting. No more bloodshed. No more hiding. I want to dissolve into total oblivion. No more memories. No more me.

Then what is holding me here on this silent beach?

The waves come and go, come and go, through thousands of nights and days.

Let me dissolve into that place where sea and sky are indistinguishable. That is the only way I can stop fighting.

Please do not make me turn into an Oni again.

“Who is it?”

The Oni suddenly turned.

For a moment her hair flared upward. Her muscles tightened. Her eyes widened. Her hand gripped the sword, ready to kill.

Then she saw a little girl.

The girl slowly stepped out from the woods and walked toward the Oni. With every stride she grew older—her hair longer, her legs stronger, her eyes wiser.

The Oni remembered the girl.

Three or four lifetimes ago she had begun fighting for the child, to protect a helpless, vulnerable little girl.

Then she forgot the child.

And after that, she forgot what she had been fighting for—or against.

She fought simply for the sake of fighting.

That was when she became an Oni.

And now look—the child has grown into a woman, soft as she wishes to be, supple as she needs to be. She is smiling.

And look—she beans not even a scratch.

The Oni felt her anger flare again.

I was the one who fought all the way here.

Where were you when I lay in a ditch, holding my breath in the darkest hour of the night?

The Oni faced the woman and raised her sword high.

She was about to strike when the woman said quietly,

“I am your way.”

The sword shattered in the Oni’s hands.

And in the woman’s hand a sword appeared—clean as the first beam of morning sunlight falling across a hill heavy with dew.

She thrust it through the Oni.

Sweet breath flowed through her like sunlight streaming through leaves.

The Oni shed a single tear.

With that tear she dissolved into her,

becoming the sea and the wind—

where she is no more and dreams no dreams.

You are home.

Images are AI created.

©J.U. 2004

Home

Posted on by SomatiCat

When Michelle’s sister, Norma, was diagnosed with cancer, she called their mom to tell her the news. Norma is strong-willed—not the type to break down easily. Her mom just listened quietly, nodding along. Then, at the end of the conversation, she simply said,
“You may come home if you want.”

And that’s when Norma broke down, sobbing.

“Wow. That was the perfect response,” I said to Michelle. “Your mom is really good.”
She didn’t try to fix anything. She just held space for Norma, offered her a safe place, and gave her a choice.

This would never happen in my family.

From what I’ve heard over the years, Michelle’s family runs on love. We’ve been friends for decades, and in the beginning, we didn’t really understand each other’s “normal.”
But as we’ve continued to exchange stories about our families, the contrast has only become clearer—how we think, how we move through the world, how we relate to others, and ultimately, who we are.

For Michelle, every relationship begins with love.
For me, every relationship begins with a transaction.

What would my mother say if I were in Norma’s shoes?
She’d say, “Come home.”
But not because I’d be welcome if I wanted to come home. It would mean I should come home—whether I wanted to or not—so she could step into the role of the devoted caretaker. My mom was a nurse, after all. She would turn the story into hers. She always does.
She dictates the narrative of my life.

And I would say, “No.”
Because for me, “home” isn’t a safe place.
The only safe place I know is the one I’ve made for myself, where I live alone.
The only safe relationship I have is with my dog—whose love comes without conditions.

We all carry different meanings for the same words.
What “home” means depends on who you ask.
So does “love.”
So does “safe.”

Three Way Mirror Vanity

Posted on by SomatiCat

I had three mothers.

There’s a photo of them together, sitting in a living room. Every time I look at it, I think of the witches—not the ones from Hocus Pocus, but the ones from Macbeth. Together, they conjured me: a daughter with a fragmented identity.

When we are young, we come to understand ourselves through interaction with our parents. We need to feel loved and accepted—especially by our mothers. Our survival depends on them. They become the foundation of who we are.

In my early childhood, my parents, grandmother, and aunt all lived under the same roof. My real mother was a nurse and gone during the day. My grandmother took care of me. She was a woman of few words, rarely expressive. She fed me, probably changed my diapers, and otherwise left me to my own devices. I was a free-range kid. She was always busy—tending to our small rice paddies, vegetable garden, and housework.

I followed her around, watching her do everything by hand or with simple tools. I saw her harvest soybeans, shell them, sort them, boil and mash them, and finally turn them into homemade miso paste. Everything was made from scratch. That’s just how small farmers lived.

She also took me on her regular visits—to the neighborhood Shinto shrine, and to my grandfather’s grave. From her, I learned ritual manners. She was more superstitious than religious. To this day, I still visit that same shrine when I go home. It’s deeply rooted in me. As long as I physically survived and followed her instructions, I was allowed to exist.

Sometimes, when my mother worked night shifts, my grandmother “let her rest” by handing me off to my single, childless aunt. I often slept beside her. Only much later—nearly half a century on—I learned that my aunt had once had a child out of wedlock, a daughter she gave up for adoption.

To her, I was a baby doll. She adored me and constantly told me I was cute. Whatever I did, I was “cute” to her. Naturally, I loved her. Looking back, I see now that I was her emotional support animal. A doll she could pour her love into. I was a blank screen, an empty vessel for her to project her longing and affection onto. As long as I accepted her version of “love,” I had a place in her world.

My actual mother? She’s almost completely absent from my childhood memories—except when I was sick. As a nurse, she took care of my body when it broke down. But emotionally, there was no connection. With her, I felt like a utility animal—fed and maintained for function, not love.

Her “love” was always conditional. I was a “good enough” daughter only when I served some purpose for her. Most of the time, that purpose was to be strong-willed, fearless, and short-tempered—a stand-in, a surrogate warrior she used to push back against her verbally and psychologically abusive husband. I was her avatar, not her child.

As I grew up, I developed three distinct clusters of identity traits—not like someone with dissociative identity disorder, but more like someone sitting in front of a three-way mirror vanity, where each angled mirror is distorted and reflects a different version of her. And those warped reflections bounce back and forth endlessly, deepening the distortion.

It was deeply confusing, to say the least.

It took me decades—more than half a lifetime—to even begin to feel the original me. I spent so many hours trying to reconcile those mirrored fragments. Now, I no longer need the mirror.

As for my father—he hated that I was a girl. The only time he acknowledged me as his child was when I got good grades. Otherwise, I was worthless.

Mother

Posted on by SomatiCat

“After all, my choice was right,” my mother said, and I froze.

Since I was a little girl, she had made up her mind that I was destined to become a physician. She brainwashed me into believing it was my fate. Never mind that I loved reading and writing, hated math and science, and had terrible hand-eye coordination—she was convinced I was meant to be a doctor.

She had her reasons. My mother grew up poor and spent her early teenage years as a live-in nanny at her eldest brother’s house. He had been adopted out so he could get a better education and eventually became a physician. His wife was cruel and didn’t allow my mother to enroll in high school. But my mother, determined and stubborn, secretly applied to a nursing program and moved into a dormitory.

She became a nurse and later married—not to a doctor, but to an average city employee. So she shifted her dreams onto her children. She was going to be the proud mother of doctors. She believed this would elevate her status, allow her to join the elite “doctor’s family” club.

I never particularly wanted to become a physician, but I applied to a local medical school anyway. Thankfully, I wasn’t accepted. I could’ve tried again the next year, but by then, her focus had shifted to her new project: creating a physician son. She told me I was a bad influence on my younger brother and decided to “let me go.”

I had also applied to a liberal arts college in Tokyo, partly as an act of rebellion—and got in. She never asked what I wanted. She just decided I should go.

That was the “choice” she was referring to.

After college, I entered grad school and nearly earned a Ph.D. (Doctor!), but in my final year, I went to the U.S. to research my dissertation. There, I met an artist, fell in love, and got married. I stayed. Whatever plans she had for me, I repeatedly chose another path. At every fork in the road, she tried to map out my life, and I took the opposite turn.

She adapted. She became the mother of a daughter who lived in New York City. Her in-laws included a famous artist in Kyoto. She was no longer a poor country girl—she had graduated into the “cultured class.” She seemed to enjoy her new identity.

Meanwhile, my brother did become a surgeon, just as she’d dreamed. She didn’t need a physician daughter anymore.

Then I got divorced, and she lost that identity too. She wanted me to go back to my cheating husband.

For a time, she was the mother of a daughter who lived and worked in New York. She had no idea what I actually did for a living—a low-paid office secretary—but the title sounded impressive enough.

Since my father passed away about ten years ago, I’ve taken care of her, even from afar. I visit once or twice a year. I send gourmet meals every month. Compared to some of her friends, she realized she was lucky. She finally saw that it was possible because I didn’t have a demanding medical career or a family of my own to care for. And she said—without irony—that she was glad I was divorced.

And then, she said it again:
“After all, my choice was right.”

She took credit for all of my choices—every one I made against her wishes.

That’s my mother. I can’t recall a single time she ever asked me how I felt.

Father’s Day

Posted on by SomatiCat

Probably fortunately, I only ever had one father—so I assumed all fathers were like mine. I didn’t understand why Father’s Day was such a big deal.

He passed away long ago at the ripe age of 87. From the outside, he looked like a “good enough” father. He provided for us and supported my brother and me through much higher education than he ever had. And yet—I hated him. As far as I know, my younger brother felt the same.

He never hit us. But he was emotionally and verbally abusive, especially toward my mother and me. When I visited my parents, I stopped talking to him. My brother wouldn’t even set foot in the house. Later, when Alzheimer’s took hold, he was admitted to a nursing home. I didn’t love him, but as a “good enough” daughter, I visited him every day while I was in town. He didn’t recognize me. I sat beside him, spoke gently, massaged his shoulders. He wasn’t as nasty as before—maybe because he no longer knew I was his daughter. Still, from time to time, he shouted cruel things at the other residents. The staff would smile and say, “That’s the dementia talking, not him.”

But I turned to my mom and said, “That’s exactly how he always was.”

Since childhood, I’d been the main target of his emotional outbursts. In a nutshell, having a daughter was, to him, a waste. He made it clear he wished I hadn’t been born a girl. He told me I was too ugly to be loved by anyone. That became the foundation of my identity.

I grew up believing I wasn’t lovable as I was. That I would never be good enough for anyone. I didn’t trust men. I hated him.

Still, I did what I could out of duty. He died alone. I made it to his wake and funeral. No one cried.

I have a friend I’ve known for 30 years. Her worldview is completely different. She loves her parents deeply, and they love her. Her father lives in assisted living and is adored by the staff. He always told his three daughters they were cute and pretty, just as they were. Being his daughter was reason enough to be loved. Her older sister treats her own daughters and granddaughters the same way. My friend says love flows naturally in her family. She believes in love. She knows she is beautiful, and she knows she deserves love from men.

I once told her, “I don’t understand love.” She didn’t understand what I meant—until we shared our stories.

Not all fathers are the same. Not all families are the same. Not everyone’s idea of love is the same.

I can understand, at least partly, what made my father the way he was. I can feel compassion for him. But I still don’t love him. I never felt loved by him. That kind of feeling, I reserve only for my dogs.

So on Father’s Day, while many people celebrate, please remember:
Some of us can’t.

Multiverse Madness

Posted on by SomatiCat

You may have heard the famous Eastern philosophical parable about a man who dreams he is a butterfly, only to awaken and wonder: is he a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he is a man?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness reminded me of that parable. In the film, dreams are portrayed as stories unfolding in alternate universes. Interestingly, the only person who can travel through the multiverse is the one who has never dreamed.

Have you ever had the same dream over and over? Not exactly the same, but different variations on a single theme? I used to have dreams like that.

One of the recurring dreams I had after a messy divorce was about my ex-husband. In those dreams, he had remarried and had a daughter and a son. They were some of my worst nightmares. He had cheated on me while I was undergoing infertility treatment, and by the time we divorced, I was too old to conceive. I had lost my chance to become a mother.

I dreamed this scenario again and again. The emotional anguish felt so real, it lingered even after I woke up. His betrayal stained the landscape of my inner world with grief and suffering. In waking life, I felt mostly anger—but underneath it, I carried a deep well of loss and sorrow.

In these dreams, I always lived in some kind of apartment. Each one felt strangely familiar. Sometimes I would find myself in the exact same apartment I had dreamed of before—with the same landscaping outside, the same scent in the air, the same humidity in the walls. I knew that place.

It’s been twenty-five years since the divorce, and I’ve finally stopped having that dream. Still, it feels as if I once lived in that apartment—in this life.

Then I began to wonder: maybe that was my life in an alternate universe. It’s about the inner choices we make—who we decide to become. Every decision spins off another timeline, another universe where a different version of you lives out the consequences of that choice.

If I had clung to the anger and suffering, maybe that nightmare would have been my reality.

These days, I rarely dream. Maybe my life has finally settled into this reality.

P.S. My ex-husband did remarry, but he never had kids. As for me, I’ve made peace with the fact that motherhood and I were probably never meant to be. Crisis averted—for the children.