I AM NOT STUPID, are you listening Dad?

So many years ago I finally shed the label of stupid that I felt both of my parents, but especially my father, had put on me. I shed it and I knew myself to be smart, very smart. Then a few days ago my father and I are talking and he is going on about smoking, bugging me about it, pissing me off, making me more determined to smoke, and he says that smoking makes me stupid. Now he doesn’t say I’m stupid once, or even twice, but four times he says smoking is making me stupid. And there I was, that eight year old who felt useless and stupid and incapable of anything. I was lost again; I lost hold of who I know I am. It hurt, oh God did it hurt. I had to go and talk to the Is to ask why, why would my father want me to feel bad about myself?
I am so tired of feeling bad about myself. I begin to feel better about me, I make progress and then the word stupid can pull me back to a place I no longer want to be or even belong.
Do you want to know what I think is stupid, staying married for over 30 years to a woman who treats everyone like shit, who makes you choose between her and your oldest daughter, who is so awful verbally and emotionally to her own kids her son’s suicide note says he hates her. That is stupid. He is stupid to stay with her. I think he feels as bad about himself as he wants me to feel about myself. The difference is I realize I don’t feel good about me and I am taking steps to change. I have changed. I reject the labels of shame, and other negative labels that my father and my family have placed upon me, fuck them. I am smart, I am pretty, and I am capable. I’ve been stagnating someplace safe, but I am working to change that as quickly as possible.
I am changing my life now and every minute.