和 敬 西 洋

Came home from a more-or-less uneventful Tea class and found that Mom had spent much of the day with cubicalslinky. No biggie.

Except that she spent that entire day, including the dinner that just concluded, making a point of bringing me down. Talking trash, whatever.

The ugly truth is that I won't deny it; I was a lousy kid and I'm not exactly a stellar adult, but what hurts is her consuming NEED to make it known to the world. Some parents brag about their kids' accomplishments. My mom has decided that she will brag about everything that makes me suck.

Aside from being born, I'm having trouble figuring out just what it is I did to earn this. I don't get it. I got good grades, I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I don't wear clothes that let my T&A hang out. . . Everything that people bemoan about This Generation, I'm pretty much free of. So I'm a slob. So is she. I sleep late; hi Pot, this is Kettle. I don't do much on weekends. I never have. In both the academic and professional world, weekends are meant to be time off, time away from the Mondays of the world, the pantyhose and dry-clean-only blouses. I spend money, 'more than I should' - uhm, hello, *I* didn't buy the $8k sewing and embroidery machine still sitting in its box, mmk? The angry side of me wants to smack her upside the head with a mirror - nature AND nurture to prove my point, here.


And after 24 years, you'd THINK that this wouldn't hurt anymore. That I'd be well and done with the frustration and the hurt and the anger and the sense of helplessness that it will NEVER matter what I do, Mom will not find a single thing nice to say about me, either to my face or to other people, that she cannot follow up with a barbed comment about my personal failings. You'd think that I'd be used to hearing all this and not quietly dying a little more inside, or having to excuse the watery eyes and running nose for a sneeze, a cough, an oncoming migraine. Something that doesn't scream "hurt feelings, everybody!" at every turn.


Mom now wants to read my LJ; I told her she's going to have to get her own, then. Unless one of my illustrious readers wants to hand her the link and twist the knife, I'm just not going to go there. Or I will, after running this thing through the hidejournal machine. We'll see. I sense either better communication or an impending trainwreck. I think I'd better stock up on Kleenex, either way,

Been thinking a lot lately. (I probably should get that book 'Women Who Think Too Much'...) All the stuff below is what has been rattling around and bouncing about in my head the last month or two. You've been warned, etc.

Mostly, about myself and the head-check department. What I'm noticing lately isn't that the pills aren't working, but that they're working on everything they can - the niggling sense of never doing well enough, of just sliding by, of being my own worst critic... They can take the worst edges off those thoughts, but they sure don't make them go away. And I don't expect them to.

I've felt better than I have in the last few years. I think, subconsciously, I've finally accepted on some level Dad's death as a finality, not an eventuality. That after spending 22 years of my life waiting for that horrible phone call, I was never actually prepared in any way to get it. It's not much of a hill to have crested, when it comes down to it; it started off as a mountain when the phone call hit, but now, I dunno. It's almost anti-climactic. Sure, it still hurts, it never won't hurt, but... I can safely say "Life goes on" when I do feel that hurt. I don't stop and curl up in it and wallow and wish things were different. And while it wasn't a conclusion at the time, watching one of the other Tea students who is 2 years younger with her dad there to see her in the tearoom, I think I came to that point later that day. I was lucky - my dad's illness never EVER made him any less of a father or best friend. And however much my inner self may rail against the unfairness of it all, that people who hate their parents and are abused by them get to watch those people grow old and senile and reciprocate with bad nursing homes... And unless I'm counting those days where Dad was in the hospital, there weren't any moments worth regretting, like some people may do with their parents. Sure, I wish Dad were around to see me do all this crazy Tea stuff, because aside from watching me practice (badly) in the living room at one point, I don't think he ever did, he was always around for other things, like my very bad piano practice, tennis (similarly bad, if not much, much worse), and yearbook (not bad, and I think he was rather proud of the publishing streak in his youngest). So. Long story short, I've come to the point where the positive memories are steadily outweighing the negatives of grief.

Now I just have to learn to live with myself, a whole other challenge entirely. Not only live with myself, but actually like myself. In all reality, I feel rather oddly like I'm back in junior year of college again - I'm not entirely sure what my Thesis (life) will be, or how I'll go about it, but it's there and dammit, I'm going to do something about it, etc. I'm independent, I'm me, I'm not taking crap from others, and I'm having regular fights with Mom. Everything is normal. [And if I could kill that fighting with Mom part, everything would be pretty damn skippy.]

I think my biggest hurdle right now is missing school. I miss being a student, having tasks that involve learning rather than pencil-pushing, label-making drudgery. I miss the active and constructive feedback of a mentor, rather than the usually harsh or entirely absent responses of a supervisor. Maybe it's because all I've known prior to graduating from school was (you guessed it) school. Maybe it's watching everyone go 'back to school' now that the shiny-and-new feeling of "neener, I graduated so I don't have to!" is gone. But I miss it. I really do. I really need to go online for the local community college and start signing up for evening classes. Something, anything. Auto 101. Lit 100. Accounting basics. Pottery. Something. Because however much fun it may be to go home and rot my brain with the latest Netflix and a watered-down cocktail, it's sure not satisfying.

BPAL order came.


I think I could bathe in Tushnamatay, I luff it so much. [Which is good, because I bought the 5ml of it upon the number of high recommendations.]

I plan on dousing lord_sojourn in Highwayman and Vicomte du Valmont at some point - they're very masculine scents. (Does anyone else find Vicomte reminiscent of Brut aftershave?)

Aside from the imps I ordered, BPAL also threw in Coyote, Snake Oil, and one other that I'm too lazy to go figure out. Fwee. Lillith, I think.


This almost makes up for the spectacularly shitty day I've had. Entirely self-inflicted, no less, which makes it WORSE because there really is no consolation with the realization that you are, indeed, your own worst enemy.


I was supposed to be somewhere at 4. I had about 3 hours of errands to run. What happens? Why, I sleep in until 3:45pm, despite my alarm set for 11:30am, have to call in and apologize for not showing, promise to be there by 6, and between 3:45 and 3:55, have a fantastic blow-out with Mom. Again. And yes, this time, it's not her stale meds, it's mine.

[In sum, the pills AREN'T WORKING anymore. I can take 5mg, I can take 20, but at the end of the day, all I want to do is sleep and hate myself. I usually succeed. So.]

Anyway. My room now smells rather like a perfume factory exploded everywhere. It probably did. :D