Late-Night Vituperation
I think I've just spent the last 45 minutes or so railing in my head against my mother for a lifetime of complaints that I haven't had the strength to tell her to her face. And I'm actually happy about this, because now in my mind I somehow know that I *can* now tell her to her face if -- no, *when* -- it comes up again.
Here isn't the place to list them. In some ways in the grand scheme of things they're not that bad: I *did*, after all, come out of my childhood and build myself into a reasonably productive member of society. And some of my anger has probably been misplaced. Still, after many years I can now say that I know that I *am* angry about it, and I can say with great confidence that it wasn't *all* misplaced, and I have every right to be angry about it. This is, for me, a very liberating revelation, and another happy step in the deep personal growth that's been about a year now in the making. I owe many thanks to all of you who've played a part in that growth.
And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a mundane acount of the past few days of my life.
I didn't make it to Moondance with many of my friends. I liked the idea, but it conflicted with my little sister's high school graduation. The latter felt significantly more imporant to me, so I hope none of my friends think ill of me for it.
The drive to northeast Tennessee was quite pleasant on Friday afternoon, and radiantbaby and I made excellent time. Unfortunately my throat was a bit sore, but it gave us a good excuse to speed along the highway as a stream of good garage rock music filled the car. We arrived, put down our things, and socialized pleasantly with my family. My little brother -- 15 now -- is a proper geek in training, so we ended up talking about computer things, and I decided that before I left the house he would have access to a Linux box running apache so that he could start learning from the PHP book he got some months ago.
The graduation itself was nice. My sister was part of a small graduating class, so it was not too long, even with the standard mushiness that graduations are prone to present. One thing of particular note really drilled into me at that ceremony, and that's that modern school children as a rule don't really have much respect for their education. I've thought that for a while, but the overwhelming attitude of both the class and the attendees really drove it home for me. I don't have enough experience to know if this is a new thing or if it's always been this way, but it really struck me that night.
I was quite happy to see at the graduation an aunt and uncle of mine whom I hadn't seen for many years. With my sore throat worsening I wasn't able to interact with them much, but it was quite pleasant to chat with them as I could. I also was quite happy to see my sister and brother interacting socially with their peers much more readily than I ever did at their ages. We stopped for ice cream on the way home -- which my throat very much appreciated -- and after a bit more chatting and socializing went to bed.
It was a pretty fitful sleep for me, my condition was worsening, and I was coughing pretty badly by then. But I did get some sleep. I woke up late on Saturday. I spent most of the day nursing a headache and throatache, resting either in bed or on the couch, though I spent some good time resting in front of the family computer as well, helping my brother get a usable Linux distribution set up on a 1 GB hard drive -- the only drive they had available. My condition was still not improving, so near the end of the day my mother took my temperature. 101*F. Yuck. I took some medicine before I went to bed.
Sunday I slept fitfully and late again. I relaxed as my family went off to church. I rested as they had breakfast. I napped as they watched a movie. And around 4ish, I realized I wasn't either improving or accomplishing much, and I decided I wanted to be home. So radiantbaby and I said our coughing goodbyes -- she was starting to come down with something as well -- and left. We grabbed supplies for food and colds at the grocery store on the way home, and we cooked hamburger helper and crashed into bed with lots of medication.
Today (Monday) I slept until about 4pm. Then I got out of bed and rested on the couch for a few hours. I was starting to feel worse again, though the thermometer reported my temperature was hovering around 100, so radiantbaby -- who was feeling a bit better -- went to the store for foodstuffs and more medicine. I got up long enough to cook chili and then went back to resting on the couch. And that was about it for the day. Long day of resting, and I'm still not feeling much better. At one point in the day I tried calling a doctor, but offices were expectedly closed for the holiday. I finally got to bed about 1am, but that's when my mind started going about a mile a minute regarding my mother, leaving me not only restless but coughing rather loudly and probably keeping radiantbaby awake. I decided to come up to he computer to babble about it here for a bit and see if I can time myself out at all.
I'm not sure if I've accomplished the latter much, but at least my coughing's gone down a little, and at least I've managed to do something productive with my weekend. I'm off to try to get some sleep before I go find a doctor tomorrow. Wish me luck.
And thanks again to all my friends. Really.
(LJ Genius of the day: throatache -> reattach)
Here isn't the place to list them. In some ways in the grand scheme of things they're not that bad: I *did*, after all, come out of my childhood and build myself into a reasonably productive member of society. And some of my anger has probably been misplaced. Still, after many years I can now say that I know that I *am* angry about it, and I can say with great confidence that it wasn't *all* misplaced, and I have every right to be angry about it. This is, for me, a very liberating revelation, and another happy step in the deep personal growth that's been about a year now in the making. I owe many thanks to all of you who've played a part in that growth.
And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a mundane acount of the past few days of my life.
I didn't make it to Moondance with many of my friends. I liked the idea, but it conflicted with my little sister's high school graduation. The latter felt significantly more imporant to me, so I hope none of my friends think ill of me for it.
The drive to northeast Tennessee was quite pleasant on Friday afternoon, and radiantbaby and I made excellent time. Unfortunately my throat was a bit sore, but it gave us a good excuse to speed along the highway as a stream of good garage rock music filled the car. We arrived, put down our things, and socialized pleasantly with my family. My little brother -- 15 now -- is a proper geek in training, so we ended up talking about computer things, and I decided that before I left the house he would have access to a Linux box running apache so that he could start learning from the PHP book he got some months ago.
The graduation itself was nice. My sister was part of a small graduating class, so it was not too long, even with the standard mushiness that graduations are prone to present. One thing of particular note really drilled into me at that ceremony, and that's that modern school children as a rule don't really have much respect for their education. I've thought that for a while, but the overwhelming attitude of both the class and the attendees really drove it home for me. I don't have enough experience to know if this is a new thing or if it's always been this way, but it really struck me that night.
I was quite happy to see at the graduation an aunt and uncle of mine whom I hadn't seen for many years. With my sore throat worsening I wasn't able to interact with them much, but it was quite pleasant to chat with them as I could. I also was quite happy to see my sister and brother interacting socially with their peers much more readily than I ever did at their ages. We stopped for ice cream on the way home -- which my throat very much appreciated -- and after a bit more chatting and socializing went to bed.
It was a pretty fitful sleep for me, my condition was worsening, and I was coughing pretty badly by then. But I did get some sleep. I woke up late on Saturday. I spent most of the day nursing a headache and throatache, resting either in bed or on the couch, though I spent some good time resting in front of the family computer as well, helping my brother get a usable Linux distribution set up on a 1 GB hard drive -- the only drive they had available. My condition was still not improving, so near the end of the day my mother took my temperature. 101*F. Yuck. I took some medicine before I went to bed.
Sunday I slept fitfully and late again. I relaxed as my family went off to church. I rested as they had breakfast. I napped as they watched a movie. And around 4ish, I realized I wasn't either improving or accomplishing much, and I decided I wanted to be home. So radiantbaby and I said our coughing goodbyes -- she was starting to come down with something as well -- and left. We grabbed supplies for food and colds at the grocery store on the way home, and we cooked hamburger helper and crashed into bed with lots of medication.
Today (Monday) I slept until about 4pm. Then I got out of bed and rested on the couch for a few hours. I was starting to feel worse again, though the thermometer reported my temperature was hovering around 100, so radiantbaby -- who was feeling a bit better -- went to the store for foodstuffs and more medicine. I got up long enough to cook chili and then went back to resting on the couch. And that was about it for the day. Long day of resting, and I'm still not feeling much better. At one point in the day I tried calling a doctor, but offices were expectedly closed for the holiday. I finally got to bed about 1am, but that's when my mind started going about a mile a minute regarding my mother, leaving me not only restless but coughing rather loudly and probably keeping radiantbaby awake. I decided to come up to he computer to babble about it here for a bit and see if I can time myself out at all.
I'm not sure if I've accomplished the latter much, but at least my coughing's gone down a little, and at least I've managed to do something productive with my weekend. I'm off to try to get some sleep before I go find a doctor tomorrow. Wish me luck.
And thanks again to all my friends. Really.
(LJ Genius of the day: throatache -> reattach)