the goat was me. I was pretty young so I just acted as if I didn’t hear him. Occasionally my mother would tell him not to do this but it went on for some time. This was just baffling. That really hurt. It was such a painful negative judgement on me. It was so belittling and made me feel so small. By the time I was 15 years old I was drinking a lot. My father never spoke to me about this although I was pretty sure he knew. Sometimes, late at night, I would make a very noisy, stumbling passage down the back hall and past their bedroom door on my way to my room. It was like they didn’t notice. In September of that year my mom announced we were going shopping for clothes for boarding school. That was the first I heard of it. I received two weeks’ notice from my mother that I would be moving away from the family and would live in a boarding school. I cried and cried in disbelief. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. It
was like, “Fuck! I really don’t count!” I broke down and felt like such a child. I didn’t relate the move to my behaviour at the time because no one ever addressed that with me. I felt so alone and scared shitless. My older brother was sent in to comfort me. I knew there was something wrong about that. I wanted to tell someone to fuck off. I wanted my dad there because I knew he was the one who made all the decisions. There was no discussion about any of this from my parents. Two weeks later they drove to the school and dropped me off on the appointed day. I knew at the school I needed to be tough. It was a male only school and it was supposed to teach us how to live in a “man’s world”. I refused to show vulnerability or weakness there. I sent the message, “Don’t fuck with me!” I felt isolated. For the first year it
