00:00I lived this very, quite sheltered life, really, in some ways. And then I moved to this situation
00:09where there were a lot of people who were cross-dressing and, you know, selling sex.
00:17There was a guy who was a prostitute. He'd left a wife and two little children to sell
00:23sex. He moved in with us for like three months. We lived in a tiny flat. He was very nasty
00:29to me. And I had expressed to my father that I didn't want him to be there anymore. And
00:35my father said to me, if you make more of a fuss about this, I won't love you anymore.
00:43You know, and this was, oh my God, I was what, 14? I would say that we'd had a very, very
00:49intense relationship during my teens in which he completely dominated my life. And I developed
00:56quite early on in that process a huge eating disorder. My father tried to starve me. So
01:03I would go and I would find other sources of food. I'd just go out and buy food. And
01:08I'd binge eat and things like that. I had metabolic syndrome. I had PCOS. But of course,
01:17that couldn't be recognized because going to the doctor for anything was something that
01:24my father didn't want to happen. Because really, he didn't want there to be any acknowledgement
01:29that there was anything wrong with me at all. There was no way I could have seen a therapist.
01:34There was no way I could have had any kind of help. I wasn't even diagnosed until I was
01:39at university, simply because he couldn't fail as a parent.
01:47When I look at children in the media, that's often in the front of my mind. You've got
01:55to pretend that it's all okay. You cannot admit that anything is wrong at all. These
02:01weird fake smiles on these kids' faces in news articles. I can see it because I have
02:08the same fake smile. It just doesn't reach your eyes.
02:15You have to realize that your dad has fallen in love with himself. And there's no part
02:20for you in that, where you're not just a prop. You're a child and you have this attachment
02:27to your father that you're always going to love him, right? Always. And then it's like
02:32this person came along and said, you know how you had a dad? Well, that was all a lie.
02:40And all that time, your dad didn't like being your dad. And my dad was kind of replaced
02:49by this other person. This other person who didn't love me like my dad loved me, wasn't
02:55interested in me in the way my dad was, and whose love was conditional. It's like my dad
03:02died when I was 11, but I didn't realize. And I've been mourning him for 40 years.
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