Work Text:
"When I was a baby I was adopted, my 'dad' was around 60 at the time and thought it would be funny if I called him grandpa.
Grandpa had a lot of hobbies. He liked guns and machines and traveling and death. He loved death. The walls of our house were covered in big game trophies, there were ancient mummified bodies in every room, and tall suits of armour that still had blood on them.
As a kid I could rationalise this. They were trophies, hobbies, like my dolls and posters. And any animals he killed would become the meat we ate.
It was important to grandpa that I learn how to hunt, how to handle death. Cut it open. Stuff it. Hang it on a wall.
I could understand this too. It was protect myself, to feed myself.
But I could never understand the butterflies. Grandpa always seemed to hate them, he would kill them in the most violent ways. When I was 5 I watched him shoot one with a bazooka. He made me learn to kill them too. To see them as useless, not even worthy of being hung up on his wall.
He died when I was 13. It wasn't until I was 17 that I could leave the house without a gun strapped to my hip. It took another 5 years to leave the knives at home too.
I think I'm a strong person, adaptable, independent.
You could drop me in the middle of the Amazon and I would be just fine. But if a butterfly lands on my shoulder I have a meltdown in the fucking starbucks bathroom. Because everytime I see a butterfly I remember my grandfather's violence, his senseless destruction. And I dont think I'll ever be able to forget."