So I have had a thought bubbling in my head for over a year now. It is a story. Everything in the story is true, and checkable. But it also involves a type of parallel thinking that might, to the outsider, look like ideas of association or delusions of association, all based on a parasocial relationship. I know all those things are true, but I also know that what I am saying is objectively based on factual data.

A while ago, over 15 years ago, I met a woman online, during the booming period when Facebook was still cool but not overwhelmed. The wife of a former co-worker, but a fun poster. For some reason, through the magic of the algorithm, her posts started bubbling up more. And then one day, she posted an article about being the child of a celebrity. And not just any celebrity, but one famous for somewhat strong and unusual content. I didn't even realize she was talking about herself, until seeing they had the same last name. And I was, of course, a little surprised, maybe amazed. And curious: what would it be like to grow up in a household where topics of sex and violence were part of a relative's job?

So here is the really weird part: the tomato surprise. Sometime in the fall of 2023, I suddenly realized that I had a relative who was famous for producing strong and unusual content, and not only that, but pretty much the exact same topics. I had just never, before that one day, sitting on a bench at my language school in Costa Rica, thought about the connection. I don't really talk about my famous relative, because I don't want to be seen to be bragging, and because (based on the type of content they made) they had some unstable fans, but honestly, just because it wasn't really the most important part of our relationship, like I remembered pumpkin pies and watching The Price is Right together, not their day job.

(nb: after I had met my friend and before I knew who she was, I had sent a project of her relative to my relative, an atypically calm one, which my relative had said she liked. Afterwards, I would want to let the creator know about this approval, something I sadly now can not do)

So anyway, there I was looking out into the sky on a break time in Spanish class and I thought about this parallel, and thought "oh", and then I thought about it a little more and thought "ohhhhhhhhhh", because (and I didn't figure this out until after a little more research), I learned that at one point, our relatives had created television shows for the same network, the same year, with the same setting and the same basic dramatic theme. And this made me start thinking about aspects of my childhood, because I had considered it a little weird that my friend had sex and violence as part of the family business, so to speak, and had never reflected that, yeah, that was totally in the background of my childhood, too. I have also wondered (and have read articles in magazines like The New Yorker as well) about just what motivated my relative's career, and where her trajectory was leading her. And I spent a lot of the past year wondering about my friend's relative, who despite creating material with the same disturbing subject matter, cast it from a very different angle.

So it is a bit weird (like I said above, I know this all sounds weird, despite being true), but I often wondered if this could be the key to understanding certain things about my own family life. It was a long shot, but I saw an actual connection there. One that is now not available.

I honestly did not write this to be some type of roman a clef, and I am not trying to be coy. This is something that has been rattling around in my brain for over a year now, a jagged split tooth my tongue has been passing over, something that to me obviously explains a lot of things...if I could just find the right angle to explain such a bizarre, but (again) objectively true situation. So I am not trying to leave a trail of bread crumbs (although maybe I have? Or maybe this seems like nonsense, or fiction?) but to explain something that has been bubbling in my brain and I just need to write down to continue to straighten out other things.