What did you fear that you may or may not be afraid of any longer?
My father. He was half-insane and unpredictably violent.
His notion of a mild rebuke was a hard slap to the head; if you cried, he would whip you with a razor strop to "give you something to cry about." He countered defiance with fists. Dangling in the air by one hand while being beaten is one of my earliest memories. He could never understand why he couldn't beat me into submission; I could never understand why he kept trying.
I went from terror to the caution one takes around a rattlesnake once I was too big to beat.
Now he's dead, and I'm not afraid at all. I also know much more about what made him what he was, and I no longer hate him.
™ Version 4.2
