“I ought to get up and just beat you”

It’s not funny. It never was.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I grew up hearing my mom consistently called stupid. Fat. Ugly. Everything she ever did was criticized. “I ought to get up and just beat you,” was repeated to both of us, regularly. And we were expected to laugh. And we did. We laughed.

We laughed because this was as good as it got. This meant he was in a good mood. When he…