At My Sister’s $5 Million Wedding, My Father Poured Wine Down My Dress and Called Me a Pathetic Spinster on the Microphone. I Made One Phone Call

And fear like that has to go somewhere.

So they poured it into me.

Every anxiety about their own worth, they set down on my shoulders and called it my inadequacy.

Every doubt they could not face in the mirror, they resolved by finding it, instead, in me.

It was never really about my report cards or my posture or the men who did or did not want me.

It was about the enormous convenience of having a person in the house who could be designated as the problem, so that no one ever had to look for the problem anywhere closer to home.