#estrangement

Today is Father’s Day in Guatemala. I watched a father interact with his seven-year-old daughter today, and I was uncomfortable with how much care he put into making her happy. (more…)

(or: my current existential crisis about how books transform us into unrecognisable humans to our cultures) Keywords: becoming through reading, estrangement, cultural conflicts, finding yourself in reading Genre: personal confession for a cathartic liberation Length: 6 minutes reading time Country: anywhere On relating to characters and stories I still remember the day I decided that I…

Adam Peaty won three Olympic gold medals and eight world championships. His older brother Jamie Peaty was not there to watch. The brothers have not spoken in years. Their silence began with a death and hardened around a remarriage neither could process the same way. Mark Peaty’s Death and the Unraveling Mark Peaty died April 14, 2018. He was 49. Bowel cancer killed him after a fight that lasted…

So stubborn of you not to appear, be so aloof. Prince of long holidays— body a jet of blood, a ship of rage and restlessness.

My aunt died the 23rd December 2025, during Chrismas holidays, after battling cancer. Her death revealed how much my mother's remaining siblings were... toxic. My mother took the decision, a few months ago, to go NC with her siblings and nephews/nieces, and my father, brother and myself followed.

And... it's a strange grief. Of course, there is the grief of losing my aunt, the trauma of seeing her sick, but there is the grief of losing all my family from my mother's side as well. My brother and I weren't really close with them, we and our parents lived at +6h of car, so pretty far, but still, it's weird to mourn aunts, uncles and cousins who are still alive. And even if they are toxic, even if we know it, it's difficult because we loved them.

My mind is divided between anger after what they have done and grief of what could/should have been.

For work, I have changed regions, I live and work in the south of the capital's regions, and the estranged family lived in the north of the capital's region. While there is still a certain distance (min 2.5h if you take the car), there is an infime (because capital and everyone knows someone) possibility to meet one of them by random luck. It's disturbing to think about.