We all look alike, especially at events like graduations. Like this one where Kailey (second from the left) graduated from the 8th grade. Don’t let the smiles fool you. We were sitting on bleachers right under the speakers. We were pissed. Really pissed.
Every family I have ever met is weird. Everybody has their skeletons, oddities, and great Aunt Mary who once got caught smoking the bathroom of an airplane. She’s like 95 years old and on an airplane. Let the woman have her cigarette.
Because I am taking the quarter off of school, I decided to take a few days off of work and come home. I got in yesterday and did nothing but drink with my parents. My dad picked me up from the airport, took me to lunch at The Lobster in Santa Monica, had my mom meet us there and ordered 2 bottles of wine. When those were gone, we left. At home, my dad decided he wanted beer so we went to the market and bought a 12-pack of Corona. When those were gone, we moved onto Vodka and V8 juice. Because my mom is healthy like that.
When people ask me about my parents I have a pretty standard response: my father is like your 12 year old brother with a lot of money and is able to drink legally, and my mother pretends to get exasperated with him, but she is really kind of like your 12 year old brother’s 21 year old sister who buys him alcohol. And she speaks with a mid-western accent. And denies that she has an accent. And people wonder why I INSIST that my hair color is natural. I will fight to the death on that point. IT. IS. NATURAL.
DAMN IT.
Growing up in my house was pretty simple. We had 2 rules:
I mean that was pretty much it. It fostered a sense of creativity, spontaneity, and a lot of drinking in high school. But you know what, I kept my shit together. I didn’t drink until I was almost 17, and I only did in settings IN WHICH I WOULD NOT GET CAUGHT. As in, not driving a car or in a position to get myself arrested. Because then I would have been caught. See the logic?
Did my parents know that I broke the rules? Of course, they are a lot of things, but they are not really stupid. But if they couldn’t prove it I WASN’T TECHNICALLY CAUGHT. It was a great system.
Because of my parents’ slightly unconventional (but highly effective) parenting style, I now have a fantastic relationship with both my mother and my father. I can tell them just about anything, and I don’t fear being judged. They may not approve, but they understand that I am 21 years old. That means a lot of drinking and bars and parties and boys (well just one boy for me) and pictures of me that look like this:
Because I can call them anytime of day for any reason, I don’t feel this need to cut them out of my life. Because they can help. Because they have both done stupider things that I have and lived to tell about it.
And that is badass.
When I was a kid my mother drilled manners into me. Every night, we sat down together as a family for dinner, and I was required to treat the meal like I was dining with the queen. No music, no TV, sit up straight, use the proper fork, make conversation, and do. Not. Chew. With. Your. Mouth. Open.
One of the longest running fights between my parents concerns the proper way to eat pasta. My father says you take a bite a look down to be polite, and my mom thinks that looking down at your plate while eating pasta is next to greed on the list of deadly sins. I think they’re both crazy, and yet I have never ordered pasta at an important meal. THE CONFUSION IS OVERWHELMING.
I was not a rebellious child, but I hated my mother’s manners lessons. And I only use the word hate because they have not yet made a stronger word to describe how much I resented my mother at dinner time. I didn’t understand why it mattered which fork I used or why I could eat until everyone at the table was served. Especially at family dinners, who really gives a crap?
In my “rebellious” years, my mother bought me an etiquette book for Christmas. The look on my face when I opened the present my face was a combination between terror and spite and just a little bit of surprise. I spent the whole day looking through it, especially 500 pages on wedding etiquette, and thinking that most of what was said was just common sense. YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T SCRIBBLE “ME AND SWEETCHEEKS 4 LYFE” ON CONSTRUCTION PAPER AND CALL IT A WEDDING? My romantic future is ruined.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized that my natural charm and perfect table manners came effortless to me because of my mother’s lessons. On countless first dates, when meeting my friend’s parents, and even at a dinner with my potential employer, I come off as polished, easy going, and professional. I don’t have to worry about thinking about the proper way to act, and I can focus on conversation and comfort. It’s actually awesome.
Sometimes, in a fit of fear or panic or confidence or simply stupidity, I get so passionate that I actually do something completely moronic.
For example, I decided at the beginning of last year that I was a grown up and needed a nice, decorated grown-up apartment. I spent $250, 5 days, and most of my new roommate’s good will to paint not only my bedroom, but our living/dining room. It’s one of those “labors of love” that you look back on as a “labor of stupid” or a “labor of wasted time and energy and money.” And to think, it could have been a “labor of cheap rum and diet coke.” These are things that college teaches you. You know, the things that you’ll actually use later in life.
I have also been known to put “easy” papers off for the last minute. Take right now. I have a term paper due at 8:00am. As in, 8:00ASS-CRACK MORNING. Have I started? No. I’m not sure if this is a fit of confidence or stupidity, but I feel like I’ll know that by about 2:00 this morning when I’m struggling to write a conclusion about the heteronormative queerness present in Giovanni’s Room.
However, sometimes, in fits of sadness or fear or debilitating nihilism, I manage to do some very smart things. Some very brilliant things, even.
Over the past year, I have felt increasingly… not normal. At first I thought new birth control was making me cry all the time. I mean, pumping myself full of hormones seemed kind of stupid at the time anyway, and seemed to be the likely culprit. Who needs all that estrogen anyway? Every doctor I went to said the crying would stop after a few months. But after a few months, the crying didn’t stop.
I stopped sleeping and eating properly. When I did sleep, it was only during the day and only when I had something pressing to do. Nighttime was sleep’s worst enemy. I tried everything and anything; tea, television, exercise before bed, books, boring books, my roommate’s psych studies (DO YOU KNOW HOW HORRIBLE IT IS READING PSYCH STUDIES?!), having Alex spend the night, sleeping with Alex at Alex’s place, sleeping by myself at Alex’s place, the list goes on and on. I would start falling asleep just as day would break, and sleeping until dinnertime. And when I did sleep, I couldn’t get out of bed the next morning; the thought of people and school and simply eating made me curl up in pain and cry.
The list went on and on; I just stopped being happy. I stopped enjoying just about everything. I stopped writing here on my blog, I stopped drawing and I stopped watching TV. I just stopped living, to some extent. Doing something made me feel like I was wasting my time and doing nothing made me feel like a failure. Thoughts of suicide and running away and escape consumed me; and I finally went to see a therapist, with much prompting from Alex.
We talked, I cried, and then today I went to see a psychiatrist referred to me by the therapist. She asked me every invading question you can think of, complimented me on being so aware and articulate, and then prescribed me Prozac. I start taking them in the morning, and I have appointments with both her and my therapist when I get back from winter break.
I’m getting help, and I’m hoping, praying, living the need that it works. I think it will, because sometimes, in fits of extreme sadness and loneliness and with the help of Alex and TBRE and everyone else that lets me cry in front of them, I manage to do some smart things. Some brilliant things.
I spent this past weekend at home in LA. The whole time I was there I was desperately trying to think of something to write about.
This wasn’t my normal case of blogger’s block. In fact, while I have had a dry spell of ideas as of late, this weekend I had nothing but things I wanted to write about.
But my problem this afternoon has come in the form of humility. It’s not what I want to say that is so important at this point, but how I want to say it.
If I were in the mood to avoid what I really want to talk about, I would make another speech about politics, and probably rant about McCain’s flippant use of “mother’s health” (his air quotes, not mine) in the 3rd presidential election.
However, there are many, much more eloquent blog posts on that particular issue already, so I suppose my best bet is to simply say what I mean to say.
This weekend was my sorority’s Family Weekend, a lame, cheesy, horribly awkward weekend full of events that I didn’t care about and dinners my parents didn’t want to attend. So you know what happened, they didn’t attend.
This weekend was picked out early last May, to give parents adequate time to plan. I struggled with the decision to even tell my parents about it. My parents are not the recital-going, flower-giving supportive type of parents. They are more the wine-drinking, scream-at-the-top-of-their-lungs-in-public-places type of parents.
(For those of you chuckling to yourselves at home, try to remember that that is not exactly a good thing… my senior year of high school, my parents left in the middle of a musical that I was a major part of because they were bored. Needless to say, I didn’t get any flowers like the rest of the kids.)
I finally decided that I wanted my family to come for Family Weekend, and at least give the image of a normal family. And they said, to my shock, that they would come.
Thursday night, the night they were supposed to drive up to Davis, I called my mom’s cell phone to make sure everything was going to plan. My little brother picked up. I asked him if he was excited to come to Davis, and he didn’t know what I was talk about. My parents never told him that the family was supposed to be in Davis for the weekend.
After I hung up the phone, I was hurt, angry, pissed, cheesed, sore, tired, and crying. I cried for hours. My dad kept calling back, apologizing, blaming everybody but himself, citing logistical problems, my sister’s volleyball tournament, and my mother’s inability to be in the same care as my father for more than a couple of minutes. He asked me to come down to LA for the weekend.
I agreed. I wish I hadn’t.
I’m not supposed to hate going home. I’m not supposed to deal with my alcoholic mother, foaming at the mouth, screaming about how my father doesn’t give a “fracking shit” about her or me or anyone else, about how I’m crazy and she’s going to take my college tuition away because I don’t deserve it. But it’s those words, “fracking shit,” disgusting and slurred, are sill fresh in my mind, haunting me as I write them. “Frrrrrracking (spit) shiiiiiit! (spit)”
I’m not supposed to be told to “get over it” by my father, because nothing upsets him. Except for the things that do upset him, in which case he is allowed to swear and yell at everyone in sight, drive around the neighborhood drunk, and then come back and yell some more. And then he’s totally justified. But I’m not allowed to be mad that my weekend was ruined because my family actually just doesn’t really care.
I feel like I’m trapped in a life that I don’t want. I’m not going home for a while. A long, long while.
Not until those words get out of my head and I can take more abuse and new words that will haunt me as I write them. Because right now, I’m kinda full, mom and dad.