I noticed Sunday morning and spoke to my mother about it in hopes that she’d say something to him. All she said was, “Oh yeah, I noticed that.” Of course. So I took it in hand to confront him and told him that he’d better think twice if he thought I was going to accept his being drunk as an excuse for taking what isn’t his. He said he wouldn’t, and I left it at that.

It might seem like I’m making mountains out of mole hills about this, but it’s the principal of thing. He always does things like this and treats everyone else like they don’t matter with the excuse of, “but I was drunk!” My parents never do anything beyond wagging their fingers at him and lecturing him. They should know from experience that that never works.

My brother was drunk again last night, and when Ally and I woke up, the four biscuits that were left had been eaten. So, needless to say, Ally went to class without breakfast and I had to actually go out and buy myself breakfast. But I didn’t let it go this time. Before my dad left this morning, I told him that I was sick of them turning a blind eye to George’s drinking and how it effects everyone else in the house and that they were to do something about it. I explained that lecturing him, either of us really, has never worked for ANYTHING in the past. George takes it that if all he’s going to get is a stern talking-to, then why should he care? Basically, I told my father to actually be George’s father for once before I smother my brother in his sleep. Well, something to that effect, anyway.

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.

He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse’s neck.

I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.

–

I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what it was that I was supposed to be writing on. My role in the family, I think. But that role, now that I consider, breaks down to almost nothing. I can stand in between two people for as long as I like, but that doesn’t change how they act. It also doesn’t mean my efforts will be appreciated.

This was a very depressing week.

I have a friend who has no other friends, not really, and she’s pregnant and she thought she could depend on me to be there for her. I saw her in November, and then that was that. I don’t pick up my phone. It’s probably (definitely) selfish to ignore a person simply because you think you have enough problems as it is, but that’s what I did and what I’m doing. She calls almost every day, but I never pick up. It’s enormously easier to not pick up the phone now than it was a few months ago, a week ago, a few days ago.
My main goal in life is to live alone just so I don’t have to deal with anyone. I want to live in an apartment with two bedrooms so I can have an office with a futon. I’ll have a nice bed in my room, but I’ll mostly sleep on the office futon. That seems like happiness to me, but I don’t think that it should.

I haven’t been sleeping much lately because whenever I lay down I spend an hour or so tossing and turning and thinking stupid thoughts about stupid things that I did, or times that I should have done something or said something but didn’t, or times that I really wish I’d been any where but where I was.

But I never cry about anything. I measure it, now. I cry about once a year. In 2009, I cried on my birthday in my dorm room with the door locked and my music on high because crying is stupid and I might have been drinking a little. It was rum and it was a gift from a friend I’d made, and it was the first gift I’d gotten from someone (a friend!) outside of my family since 2005. She wanted us to watch a movie or do something together, but I told her I had homework so maybe next time, and then I went to my dorm and did nothing, no homework or anything.

I don’t drink anymore now, and that was certainly a rare moment for me even then. And I’m not as sad as all this might make it seem. It’s more that I’m pretty pleased some of the time and then pleasantly numb the rest of the time. I get angry, but I don’t fight with anyone anymore really because I have more self control than I did back then, before.

I was asked to write about things we talked about, and I think this covers it. I don’t remember all of it, and I may or may not be willing to discuss all of it. My brother is another issue entirely and I can’t write that, let alone talk. Thinking is even too much.

On the other hand, I’ve been utilizing my DBT skills at night. It’s working out all right.

Mostly I’ve been distracting myself since I realized it. Trying to go out with my family, writing, cooking, anything at all. It works, but the moment I get a second to myself, everything settles back on me like it never left. That’s always been a problem for me (idle hands are the devil’s tools?).
Just something I was thinking about. Oh, and also a snippet of something that I wrote, vaguely inspired by “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” though you wouldn’t know from reading it. My mind works in mysterious ways, apparently.

–

I had a leaky faucet. It wasn’t something that honestly bothered me, per se, but it was a bit eerie, like hearing something both unpleasant and familiar. Pity that the plumber couldn’t seem to do a damn thing about it.

“I’m telling you! The damn thing’s broken, and no amount of your tinkering is going to fix that!” I felt my face heat with frustration. The man just kept scratching his head, as if trying to claw out whatever the solution was. From where I stood, it just made him look unclean and lice-ridden. “Now, are you quite done?”

“Sir,” the man sounded weary—as if it were my fault that he kept fucking it all up!—as he stood, legs shaking, “I’ve done everything that can be done for it. I think the pipe is faulty.”

“The pipe is not faulty!” I hissed back. “Don’t blame your deficiencies on my pipes!” The plumber’s eyes were shooting from my face to the door, filled with trepidation. I was angry, hysterically so, and all over a leaky pipe. But there was something behind that feeling, a niggling sensation in the back of my mind, pushing me to boiling. It was a heady, powerful feeling, and it felt normal. I can’t say how or why, but there was something almost comforting and familiar about that sort of rage.

Of course, then the plumber had to go and ruin my good mood—why yes, I do consider that a pleasant mood—and blow up his own head.

Really.

His own damn head.

I was yelling louder than I would normally dare to and with each word I spoke, a part of his face began to swell. It was bizarre, and god knows that it should have been terrifying, but watching his eyes bug out like balloons inflating and his ears swell like a tire float seemed to goad me on. His pores swelled fast and tiny rivulets of blood would occasionally break through the skin and trickle down his neck into his hideous, sweat-drenched collar. And then, as though there was simply no more room for anything to swell a single bit more, his head just exploded and coated my kitchen walls. As his body hit the ground with a solid thud, all I could do was blink. Stranger things have happened in the past, and I was fully willing to let this one go.

But then my landlady walked in, took one look at the decapitated corpse of the plumber, and promptly burst into flames.

It all went downhill from there.

–

Florida//December2009

There isn’t much else to say right now other than that I’m really feeling grateful to have friends.

I’m pretty sure that making friends wouldn’t be a real problem. I’m not terribly outgoing, but when I do “get out,” people have a tendency to gravitate towards me whether I want them to or not. And as far as the whole romantic relationships thing goes, I’ve had prospects that could have gone somewhere. Like Jon.

Jon was a guy who went the the Atlanta Anime Weekend convention with me, Ally, and Koko. I spent most of the time at the con with him while Ally and Koko ran around in costume. He’s really smart, reads a ton, and keeps up with all the same sorts of things I do. We traded phone numbers and talked back and forth. He even hinted at inviting me out to a rare/used book store down in Atlanta for the day. And what did I do? I found a catch. I pointed out the one thing that would make me not like him and to cease answering his phone calls: I met him through my brother.

They lived together in Roswell during the time that my brother wa out of the house. Jon, at the time, was a raging alcoholic. He’s two years sober right now.

But–the fact that he was close with my brother–and still is–was enough to put me off him. That’s something I noticed abou relationships in general. There’s a trend: I get close with a person, they hint at wanting to ask me out (or actually do it), and I find a reason to push them away and act like it would be a bad thing.

I’d really just like to be able to have a normal relationship with someone. The only person I can really handle being around a lot, disagreeing with, and all the things that normal relationships have is with Koko, who’s basically like my sister in a lot of ways.

Just something I was thinking about.

What?

And my mother’s the same way. She had jury duty on Monday, so I came and picked her up during her lunch hour so we could eat together. When she called me to come, I was just finishing my walk for that day. When I finally get to her, she starts this long tirade about how I’m “getting obsessive” just because I happen to be walking on a daily basis.

They’ve been telling me for years to exercise and watch what I eat. They KNOW that I want to lose weight. So, when I finally start to do something, why do they have to act like I’m scarily obsessive? It’s not like I’m really doing anything differently. I’m not counting calories. I’m not exercising for hours a day.

It’s disappointing. I thought we were past the point where everything was a big deal.

That’s what I’ve done in the four hours I’ve been awake. I had to get up at six this morning to drive my dad to work since my mom needed the other car to go to jury duty.

I actually tried to talk myself out of going to the track. Things like ‘where the hell am I supposed to park anyway?’ and ‘the track is visible from the road! people will be able to see me!’ almost convinced me to not go, but in the end, I just went anyway. It was actually pretty fun, too. Well, relaxing, in any case. I’ll be going back tomorrow, too.

I finally spoke to my parents yesterday about school. And, just as I thought, they were both horrified that they’d stressed me out and promised to censor themselves better.

It always feels strange to me when things go well in my life. Not that that thought makes any sense whatsoever, but I suppose maybe I’m just used to things going downhill. In retrospect though, it’s usually thoughts like that that ended up causing me to mess up in the first place. Perhaps I should be censoring myself better as well.

Relationships. Romantic. John. My brother.

Sixth grade. The skating ring. Touching is off limits and I don’t know why.

“No one will ever love you like I do” is actually a very damaging statement, in my opinion, but it’s hard to say whether or not I can actually say anything about it yet.

Here’s something that I loved and related to when I was in sixth grade, which seems to be an important year in my life, shockingly enough.

“Alone” by Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

It’s my mom’s birthday today, so I went out to pick up ice cream for her. As I was pulling out of the Kroger parking lot, I saw two guys, probably between my age and my brother’s, standing on the sidewalk talking and looking thrilled to be doing just that, like loitering outside of a grocery store with friends was just the greatest thing ever. I don’t even pretend to understand that.

But for some reason, I felt lonely. I was sitting in my car with a gallon of ice cream on the passenger’s seat, and I felt lonlier than I can recall feeling in a long time. It was stupid. That’s really the only word I can use to describe it. It was heavy and painful and it just settled over me in a matter of seconds, and I was actually jealous of two boys standing on a godforsaken sidewalk, simply because they weren’t alone. What does that say about me?

It’s not as if I don’t have friends. I do. We talk every day, and I see Ally everyday. Really, Koko and me and Ally, that’s all it is for me. Sometimes I let Ally drag me out with her newly acquired friends–and by drag, I mean I chauffeur them around because obviously, I would otherwise not be going–and sometimes, I make smalltalk with people who I used to know online or when I run into them. But really, I don’t like the idea of having to keep up with too many people. It’s tiresome, especially when they’re all sniping at each other. I tried that, had a large circle of friends that I did things with in my first semester at GSU, but they all fought and fell apart and tried to tug me to one side or another. I don’t like being used a stepping stool in an argument or anything else, so I erased their numbers the moment I moved out of the dorm.

Not being in school this semester has given me a lot of time to think about things like that. But it’s also given me a lot of time to realize that the future I had begun to picture for myself is unraveling. I’ve switched majors once now, thought about doing it twice, and I still can’t see anything anymore. It also doesn’t help that my parents, at any given opportunity, find it wise to plan my future for me. They always tell me I’m meant to be an English major, that teaching wouldn’t suite me, that I’m clearly meant to work as a copy editor in a publishing company, so on, so forth.

I don’t want to do any of that. I love English and literature and the mechanics of it all, but I just don’t want to spend my time studying something I already know and love for the next four years. I want something new, something I’ve never done before, but my parents say things like, “You’re just feeling insecure. You shouldn’t make any rash decisions!” or “Just keep on where you are. You already know you like it, so why bother changing?”

It’s infuriating that they think so little of my ability to make decisions on my own. Right now, I’m registered as a Literature and Philosophy double major. I’m dropping the Literature part next time I go down to campus. Philosophy will set me exactly where I need to go, which is law school. I want to be a lawyer, and I want to work with intellectual property law. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.

I also, of course, want desperately to be a published author, but I know better than to bank my future on that. I love to write, and I’ll never stop, but it’s impossible to say whether or not that will ever actually take me anywhere.

Today is a very melancholy day.