thanks everyone for the kind, supportive replies to the above post. it means a lot. <3 as a sort of update… i ended up emailing him (because calling would have been too awkward) and finally, after tap dancing around the issue by joking about him spying on me, we had one of those extremely-rare-between-us conversations about something serious. my dad, a man of relatively few words, caught me totally by surprise. me: i saw you followed me on Twitter using a newer account than the old one that had been following me. trying to get back into Twitter? dad: No I just signed back in to the account. Just never looked at it much.  That’s all. Is that why you thought I was spying on you? me: ….i was joking but yes. 😛 dad: No I’m not spying sweetheart.  And you’re old enough to feel how you want.  I’ll always be…