[8/17/2025]

Listening to Aeroplane with a clear head, without any outside
influences from how I felt about the artist or album in 2024,
I remembered a lot. I need to write it down before I forget it.

I remember in detail why I left my dad. I haven't had this 
much clarity when it comes to this topic in what feels like
years. Listening to Aeroplane brought me back to when I lived
with him, when I was on the ranch, everything. I remembered the
inside of the house, I remembered what I watched at the time,
I remembered how I felt, I remembered the deciding moments
for what made me leave him.


For one, while it is true that he wouldn't work me really hard,
he wouldn't feed me and he'd made me work on christmas eve during
my break as a punishment for not working hard enough during 
winter break. He also tried to streamline my life by scheduling it,
my entire life, even my weekend, became a scheduled ordeal. 
Nothing was expended, and I had like two hours of break throughout
the week. His reasoning was that I would only really get two
hours of a break anyways. It felt like I wasn't a kid anymore. Keep
in mind, he has yet to apologize for any of this. He never has and
he will never.

I would sit in the warehouse he put his tools in and contemplate
what I was doing with my life. I remember contacting my older
brother about it, to paraphrase my foggy memory, he said that
it wasn't fair, my entire life became work. 

I found the texts I sent to my brother, these were sent 
on febuary 14th, 2024. From what it says, I'd be doing
the same thing daily for 10 hours with two hours worth
of a break everyday during the weekdays. Over the weekend,
my life would still be put on a schedule where if I wasn't
taken to the ranch, which I would go during the weekend at
least once for 5-10 hours, I would still have to do
four hours worth of work. That's if I was getting straight
A's. If I wasn't, each B would be an extra 30 minutes worth
of work, and a C would be an extra hour. That goes for each
class I was taking. I remember explaining to my friend that
if there wasn't enough time in the day during the weekdays 
for the extra time added by bad grades, then it would bleed 
into my weekend. Febuary 14th was a couple of weeks before 
I went to my mom's for a bit and a month before I officially
left my dad. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. 
Something which I didn't remember, making me think that the
entire situation was grey in me leaving, making me question
myself.

I am writing this down and publishing this to SDF as a reminder
to future me, as I will forget that I ever wrote this eventually,
and will spiral once again, and maybe contact my dad and repeat
this cycle over again, just out of pure ignorance for what got
me out of that situation to begin with. I need to break the cycle
and hopefully, since I re-read a lot of these logs every three 
months or so, I will be reminded of why I left my dad. This is the
most sure I've felt of myself, and who I was as a person in a long
time.