Amdir

"It will never matter what you look like because you're ugly on the inside."

Nmom said that to me during an argument. I think I was about... 13? Maybe in high school. I'm almost 23 now. I had forgotten about it and then out of nowhere I heard those words in my head earlier this week.

I feel like I'm trying to prove to myself (and other people) that it's not true. I teach high school math and I've had several students tell me I'm their favorite teacher and that they loved my class because I made math fun. Sometimes it's frustrating to work with a student who has not been turning in work and expects me to do all the work, but even with those students I try really hard to treat them with abso

As with a lot of other ACONs, I feel like I have to preface this with stories from my childhood that validate the fact that my mother was an abusive, cruel, disturbed person. This is going to be long, and I don't know that I expect anyone to read it... Maybe just writing it out will help.

Backstory:

She regularly yelled at me about my flaws until I cried, and then kept yelling. Whenever we went out in public or to see friends, I would dread the car ride home, when she would tell me all the things I did wrong because they made her look bad. As a pre-teen I was told that I flirted too much with other boys and that they were all going to think I was "easy". In high school, my mother would log