#soft targets

When I was about 17 or 18 year old, I watched this movie Different for Girls (1996) for the first time; it was about a trans woman who was stealth about her identity and reconnects with a friend from her all-boys school days and they develop a romantic relationship. It stars a young Rupert Graves and this was at the height of the BBC Sherlock show’s popularity which I have to admit to being a fan of at the time. Every once in a while I consider rewatching it, but never actually can, because at the time, I watched it to distract myself from my arguing parents downstairs, where my dad was throwing plates at the ground. It was the first instance in which I had to acknowledge that something was very bad with my parents’ relationship, in the days following my mom would even show me the Facebook of the 25 year old woman he’d cheated on her with this time; my brother, whom my dad has raised since he was 8, would have been about 28/29 at the time. Darnielle talks about collateral damage, and I look back and see I was a victim of that, but of course, as any teenager would, I made it about me. And I knew plenty of statistics, like 30% of parents to an autistic child get divorced, so maybe if I hadn’t been born, or at least if I’d been born “normal” maybe my dad wouldn’t have cheated or would have been able to love my mom more. I know now that’s not how that works, but it was one of those low radiation thoughts in the back of your head that’s easier to ignore than to acknowledge how it affects your whole life.

I think about this song, and how john describes it, a lot

The mountain goats - soft targets