Another reason to just not leave the house EVER.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even with a certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling them, but have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take fright at the whole truth.

Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground Part XI

[That has nothing to do with this post and everything to do with writing about things that I have avoided even thinking about. I reread Notes from the Underground this morning and the parallels between the Underground Man and myself within these two particular situations seemed like something worth remarking upon.]

My mother needs to shut her mouth. I wish, really really wish, that she could handle not talking for a few minutes. Nowadays, it seems like we can’t speak for more than a minute without her finding something to critisize me about which then sprawls into a disturbingly long laundry list of my faults. But in the last few days, she’s been getting upset with me for not being sensitive toward her. I’ve been trying; I really have. But it’s it so difficult to try to be pleasant to a person who has absolutely nothing good to say to you. And anyway, what right does she have to tell me to be sensitive to her when the only things she can say about or to me are insults?

Today, we went to the bookstore which, as you well know, is a very normal thing for us. I was standing with her and asked her offhand if there was a possibility of her buying me a book. I didn’t think much of it. If we didn’t have the money or she wanted to wait, she could just say no. I was in a very good mood.

She turned to me and said, “I think we should talk first.”

“All right,” I said dubiously.

“It’s nothing you want to hear, though.”

“What do you mean?” I was getting angry already, but I’d told myself I would keep my mouth shut, that it was probably nothing.

“You aren’t in school and you aren’t working,” she said. She looked down her nose at me, and I felt impossibly small. I felt young and stupid and like I wasn’t worth very much at all.

“You know I’ve been trying to get a job! I’ve been applying for things every–”

“But you want me to spend money on you when you won’t even cook dinner for the family?” She looked smug. She’d been saying that same thing for the last few weeks since we’d had a dispute–one time, mind–about me cooking dinner.

“Oh good,” I bit back. “I was waiting for you to start in on me. Anything else?”

“I only said it once,” she said back. “I said you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

I ignored her until we left. I ignored her on the car ride home. And now, sitting in my room, I’m still ignoring her. It’s completely stupid and childish of me, and if it had been just the one time, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me much. But she always has something to say, whether it’s about how I’m dressed, whether I have acne, what my plans for the future are, why I have no friends (which I do, though apparently not enough in her mind), why I don’t date, who I should date when I finally do, and the list goes on and on. She can complain about anything and everything I do.

And for the record, the fact that I don’t get to go to classes until March and that I don’t have a job and can’t find one right now is a very sore spot for me. I hate feeling like I’m having to depend on someone else to get the things I need, and that’s where I am right now, as she likes to remind me over and over. Is it so much to ask for her to just stop talking, just for a little bit? To have a conversation that doesn’t involve her trying to put me down?

Apparently it is.

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