Frozen In The Snowstorm

My father was obsessed with his toxic, hardcore style of tough-love parenting.

When I was a kid and brought home straight A’s, he sneered and said, “Grades don’t mean shit. A real man proves himself by jumping off the third floor.”

When I got a community award for saving a drowning child, he scoffed, “You didn’t even get a scratch. What kind of coward wants praise for that?”

For years, I believed he only did this to make me stronger.

Until that freezing New Year’s Eve, when he dumped me alon