You can teach a child anything.

“Rejection teaches you how to reject,” that’s what Jeanette Winterson says. And maybe.

I was a very beautiful child. My mother liked to damage me. I don’t remember things but I remember enough not to think about it. My father liked to damage me in other ways.

I looked like a goldfish and I had no friends. I ignored my friends until they went away. I didn’t want to bother them. I didn’t want them to pity me. I didn’t want to tell them I was in too much pain to participate in their reindeer games. I didn’t want to tell them why.