I was never the daughter my mother desperately wanted. And my father never wanted a child. My mother had always wanted a baby doll she could love. Mom named me after the character Beth in the book Little Women, the girl who is a home body, who wanted to be just like her mother, who did everything her mother wanted without question. This was the child she wanted. Instead, I was much more like Jo from Little Women, the tom boy, the writer, the independent spirit. Mom wanted me in dresses, quiet and calm, feminine. She was bitterly disappointed when I expressed my own independence, complaining when I didn’t want to wear the dresses she made me or speaking my own opinion. My father’s hatred of me when I was younger was whenever I approached him as a child or treated him like a parental figure. He never wanted a child to take care of, he wanted a playmate. He had no patience, no time for a child. As I grew older, it was in the areas of play and fun that I found common ground with him. He would gladly play games with me, though he would never let me win. He always played his very best with me and would get upset with my mom when she told him to take it easy on me. I learned never to complain that I always lost. While there is nothing inherently wrong with not letting your child win, that was where I learned that what he really wanted was someone he could feel better than. He wanted to be the one that won. Not only did he win the games, but I asked him all the questions to make him feel smart, superior. In return he always played with me, took me to the movies, museum, art gallery, out to eat. As long as I was a friend who looked up to him all was good. I felt incredibly conflicted because despite it all, I loved them both with all of my being. To love people so much, to be so consumed with a yearning for that feeling of love back yet knowing you can never receive it was devastating. I loved them desperately, they were my only parents, my only support in the world. The rest of the family lived in the United States and I had no siblings. I loved them desperately, but soon felt I wasn’t deserving of their love, that who I was inherently wasn’t good enough, was lacking. I loved them desperately yet knew I couldn’t win them both. My parents’ expectations and wants from me were mutually exclusive. I couldn’t be who they wanted me to be individually at the same time. My father wanted a playmate to hang out with, as well as someone who worshiped him and would hang on to his every word without question. My mother wanted a doll, a pretty girl she could dress up who was obedient and quiet. I knew how to play the game with my dad and found it increasingly impossible to live up to my mother’s expectations of me. I had to make a choice between them in order to survive, in order to get any affection. I had to make the choice in how I would behave and who I would become. I could be a doll and try to do everything my mother wanted or I could become a mini adult and friend for my dad to hang out with. I chose the easier way, the “funner” way. I chose my father’s way. I learned to become my dad’s friend, which helped with his outbursts of violence and anger a bit. I learned quickly what I had to do to survive. I became his friend, someone who looked up to him, listened to him as he talked about his paintings, his art. It didn’t take long for me to be allowed into his studio, something not even my mother was allowed to do. Around ten I was creating short stories, to become an artist like him. In his studio I would sit quietly writing while he painted, listen attentively when he spoke, give him praise when he asked what I thought of his work (a difficult task as most of his paintings were nudes with explicit sexual activities in them). I in turn shared my writing. He praised my writing as I praised his art. It was our own private world in the studio, where I could receive the affection I so longed for.