Recovered from the private logs of Dr. Batuk Obi.
Dated: 12/02/2024
So... Here's the thing...
My daughter is not a Daddy's girl by any stretch. She's not a Mommy's girl either, if that's even a thing, she's just a girl. An independent woman, and that's that.
Now don't misunderstand, there's no ill will between the three of us. No final argument, no tightening of privileges, no slammed doors, no groundings or rebellious moments or anything like that. My wife and I love and trust our daughter, and she loves and trusts us. At least I haven't heard anything to the contrary.
All in all I'd say we are an exceptionally average family.
Which makes what came next all the more earth shattering.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, I don't know... my therapist, god bless him, suggested I get everything that's on my mind down, so that our meetings aren't so difficult, not that he'd mind of course, his rates go by the hour. However the fact that he wants to make our sessions easier means that he's hoping for real progress. I don't know... He doesn't know of course, I mean... How do you go telling anyone about this kind of stuff? Even with the doctor patient agreement, I still could never be confident that he wouldn't tell someone. Best case scenario he'd only tell my wife, worst case...
I suppose I'll give an incredibly abridged version of my life up to the point of its dramatic changing. I'm born to a Bengali mother and Nigerian father. The two of them were reasonably wealthy and met while they were both attending Harvard University for Law. Yadda ya they graduate, Dad works at the DAs office and Mom starts her own private practice and a few years later I pop out.
My upbringing was what it was, and eventually I'm 18 and I'm accepted to Harvard Law. While I'm studying I meet this girl, Amber and years later she and I get married.
Amber still looks as good now as she did then. She's trimmed her blonde hair down just below her shoulders, her blue eyes still piercing through all my walls whenever we catch each other's gaze. She's stunning and perfect and I do love her. She's confident in all the ways I'm not, she laughs at my bad jokes, and not that I'd ever tell her so, but she is much smarter than I am. I suppose that's why she thought she could go for a fine arts degree. She's an accountant now, but there was a time when she had everyone convinced she'd be the first household name screenwriter.
Anyways, Thanksgiving 2002 arrives and Amber and I shared each other's nighttime company as normal, only this time we're both a little half in the bag, and forgot to put on the condom. (We had moved to Mississippi for a few years in the early 2000s, and the pill wasn't super easy to get. Post 9/11, support for W Bush was high and contraceptives especially in the deep south? Forget it.)
Come July of the following year out pops Aubrey and she's so white she's practically translucent. We get the paternity test, just in case, and yup she's mine all right, not that I was really worried. Amber was kind of a recluse, and even if I was worried, as the weeks and months passed the more and more Aubrey looked like me. Her pale ass skin and green eyes had to have been from her Mom (or maybe me I have no clue how eye color genetics work when Mom has blue eyes and Dad has brown, how do you get green? Anyway.) but her jet black hair was definitely my side of the family.
It was a deadly combo of genetic traits and though she never developed very much in a curvature sense, I knew she'd be a heartbreaker for the ages.
We had gotten a taste of baby fever though and a year and a half later Amber and I went at it again and in December 2005 out popped David. Again the whitest baby I'd ever laid eyes on when he came out, but as he got older he got darker. Again same jet black hair as me and his sister, but with my brown eyes and an almost identical facial structure. My wife frequently says that looking at David is like a time capsule of me 20 years ago.
At adulthood Aubrey had elected to spend a gap year, which then turned into gap years, until just last April she surprised everyone by applying to Yale, and against all odds she was accepted, that's where she is now.
David had gone to college straight out of high school and is currently attending UC - Berkeley, with his major (for now) set to Film Studies. He always took more after his mother.
Anyways the point of all this...
This was a few years ago, 2022, I guess was when it started. Can't believe it's been two years already, time flies...
Anyhow, if I could stay focused for a minute.
So, 2022, it was December, and David was still in High School, Aubrey was in her first of two gap years, so she was out of the house a ton. Anyways, by some miracle all four of us found ourselves not only home, but completely available on David's birthday. None of us had any plans whatsoever. I'd expected this from Amber and I, but the fact that Aubrey was available was surprising to all of us.
Long story longer, we sat around the living room early in the morning. We'd all separately gotten up within 20 or so minutes of each other. Just one of those days when we were all in sync I guess...
So we'd been in the living room chatting and Amber asked David if there's anything special he'd like to do with the four of us on his birthday. David says he doesn't need to do it with all four of us, hell he didn't really need to do it with any of us, but he told us that he was going to watch all the Lord of the Rings movies, and sort of make it a day long movie marathon.