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Oct 14, 2008 02:26

I'm having troubles sleeping, knowing Nate won't be home but unable to honestly tell whether or not he's ok.

I mean, I know he's ok, but it still sucks not be able to see it for myself.

He did call earlier tonight, but we only got to talk briefly, and then he needed to sign confidentiality paperwork. They won't even give him details on what we'll be doing until he signs it. And until I can make it out there to sign the papers, he won't be permitted to tell me anything, either. Thank god we'll both be working there.

He asked me not to fight with the girls while I'm here, but honestly, they make it so fucking difficult sometimes. I love them to death, but their living habits are awful, and, like I said earlier, I never really realized it until I'd moved.

I think I made mom feel bad, though, which I regret. When they came home today I was in the process of scrubbing down the kitchen door, and mom immediately set about teasing me and the girls by pointing out to them that I was cleaning. Both girls responded with varying degrees of insult, accusing me of wanting something out of her, and then accusing me of sucking up to her for other reasons, and telling mom that I didn't clean when I was their age and they don't have to clean the house for another seven years.

That's a lie, though. I had to either sweep and mop the kitchen floor and wipe down the kitchen counters, or else I had to clean the table, put the leftover food away, wipe the table down, and then vaccuum the floor. Mark would take the other job, and we would switch off. We also actually took the trash out every week. Even as little as we did, though, is far more than these two girls have done in their lives, which I resent, a little.

So of course I told the two of them to get out of the kitchen and leave me be; that I wasn't bothering them none, that I didn't like the disaster of a house they lived in, couldn't breathe, and felt that something needed to be done about it since they were too lazy to do it themselves, and continued rambling about it. Mom replied that Nate's parent's house is cluttered, too, and I shot back that Nate's parent's house, while cluttered, isn't moldy and gross and nasty and swarming with fruit flies. She didn't say much to that, probably because she didn't want me to stop cleaning, and I felt bad since it isn't really her fault. She goes to work five or six days a week, sometimes seven, so that this nasty house can be paid for and the girls have cable and internet to dim their minds with, and then in the afternoons after a brief nap, she goes to school and tries very very hard to keep her grades up so she can start working in a hospital soon. When she comes home she tries to watch a little tv, get on the computer and study, but the girls are always arguing. They never do what she asks them to, and they fight over the good chair and the good spot on the couch and what to watch on tv and who gets the computer when mom's done with it.

If that isn't tiring enough, she also feeds the ungrateful brats, too.

I never made myself out to be better than all this, mind. When they accused me of being like them, I replied that I knew it and didn't deny it, but that one day when they were in their twenties and thinking of starting families and living on their own and having their very own place, they would look around and realize just how badly we've treated mom, and they'd be over here one day scrubbing counters and floors, too. They both laughed at me, but we'll see.

And then Gretchen, who gets riled up when I'm over (she's never quite forgiven me for growing up), made some comment about not having to prove she's worth something, since she won't be a high school dropout like me and she'll be in college in her twenties and yadda, yadda, yadda, and that did it. I promised him I wouldn't fight but she backs me into corners and bites until I bite back.

So I took the soapy sponge and started smacking her over the head with it. Nothing to physically hurt her, just soapy suds in her hair and on her clothes to get her back. Mom didn't really object to this since she probably knew I wanted to haul off and punch her, so I walked back into the kitchen without saying anything. Allison decided to follow that up with some other comment, for which I sudsed her up, too.

When Gretchen insisted on making more mumbled insults, I told her she could just get off her high horse and remember she's 13 and lives with we, the dregs of society, and is, in fact, related to the failures and black sheep and will just have to get used to our company or go live with her aunt and uncle and their oh-so-perfect children and talk trash about us like they do. That actually got a bit of a laugh out of mom, so I figure I did well.

Gretchie drives me insane, though. She refused to go give the cats water because she had already sat down, insisting that Allison do it, even though Ally was helping Mom with dinner while I cleaned around them. She was told to empty and reload the dishwasher after dinner but didn't do it, even though Mom asked them several times. She decided that she needed a treatment and stole Allison's seat, even though the other couch was also close enough, and then fought with Ally about it. Allison decided to rip the mouthpiece through Gretchen's teeth in order to demonstrate that she could, in fact, reach the other couch with it, and Gretchen got that look on her face so I intervened and asked Allison if she would just let it go and do her homework on the other couch. My sister's response? "Well, my stuff is already on this one" (The two couches are right next to each other.)

Ugh.

Mom and I decided to watch Atonement, which Gretch complained about, Allison did her homework out loud and Gretchen made loud commentary on whatever she was doing on the computer, and I tried very hard to just focus on the tv.

We never finished the movie, however, because at some point Gretchen started fretting about her asthma and finding a purple inhaler and needing to get cake batter ice cream, and, once she decides she needs sweets, she badgers Mom until Mom's ready to kill her, and usually gets her way. We ended up driving out to Kroger.

They didn't have cake batter ice cream, so Gretchen pouted and tried, thankfully unsuccessfully, to get Mom to go off in search of some, and she settled for the same bag of chocolates that I had picked out, even though she claimed not to like them a few weeks ago.

We made it home in one piece, though I had missed half the hockey game. I turned it on (Gretchen claimed she would kill herself if forced to watch Hockey, and I told her certainly no one was trying to keep her in the room; she sulked, and even Mom complained about the sports on her television, gah) and got to watch most of the third period. Gretchen did loudly interrupt every five minutes, however, claiming, when I asked her to stop, that I always talk during her shows.

It seems like, now that she can't lash out at me for smoking, she's going to find EVERY thing else wrong with me. She even admitted that she doesn't really know why she feels like doing it when I'm around, but she does. She made a few more complaints about me, and decided to lay down on the couch I was sitting on, pushing her feet up against me and complaining about something else, and I finally snapped for the night.

See, Gretchen likes to do this to me. She'll back me into corners, hurl every insult she can think of at me, call me dirty names, and wait for me to come back at her. When I do, I throw some well aimed insults her way and she whines and cries and plays the victim, and claims that I hate her and that I'm always mean to her and she just wishes I would go away and never come back. And I don't really understand why she does it, but like I said, this has been happening ever since I moved in with Nate. She's really, really pissed about that and thinks it was this sexist move, that being married will only make me miserable and she won't listen when I tell her to butt out and let me decide for myself what to do with my life.

So, I snapped, and asked her for the millionth time why she's so self-centered. She sat up and claimed not to be, and I told her that was a lie, since she won't get up off her ass and do anything if it doesn't directly benefit her in some way. That she never does anything simply for the sake of helping someone else out. So she threw some huge emo-teenage-woe is me response at me, along the lines of, 'well, excuse me for not having the money to feed starving children!', and started up her victim act. I would have left it at that, but she brought up the drop-out thing again, and said something about me being miserable all my life for getting married (see what I mean), and I told her at least I had someone now, and had friends I could hang out with that, far from merely tolerating me, actually enjoyed my presence. I could see that hurt, but she bit back with something to defend herself, and I threw her ex-girlfriend at her (I know, I'm a bitch), and asked her why, then, did Tori break up with her and write her that letter about being selfish and never bothering to figure out whether Tori was happy or ok, and basically told her that she was a cold, frigid, witch?

At this, she went into the other room and laid down on the floor, and mumbled, carrying the fight on with herself, where she could win it. And I felt bad, but I also felt justified in, for the millionth time, defending myself against my know-it-all sister. The stupid thing is, she's only thirteen and I forget that because she looks much older and she's so damn booksmart. I wish she'd get over this "Aubrey's a horrible wench" thing. I get enough of that out of my brother.

She also decided to get me riled up over my 'father,' by informing me that he made mention of me being horrible to him, and when she defended me and told him that all girls love their daddies, he responded with 'Aubrey's not one of those girls,' and, like Gretch, played the victim, as though I'm the reason he was never around. It boggles my mind how dumb he is. He also told the girls that he positively hated Nate and didn't want to walk me or be at the wedding anyway because he didn't approve of the match. Nate's ecstatic about this. He told me on the phone that he will do everything in his power to always be standing between me and Dad; that regardless of whether or not I want to forgive him again, he's not going to let Dad continue insulting and hurting me. My father has no idea that he will never see his eldest daughter's children, or get invited to holiday dinners. He won't be a part of his daughter's biggest day, and won't see her graduate from college one day. He's going to miss every good moment of my life, and as much as I want him to wake up one day when he's old and dying and utterly alone and regret this, I don't know if he will. And I feel bad about it, because Nate's not being the bad guy, he's trying to protect me. He's spent so many nights holding me while I cried over what Dad or Mark had done and said, that even if I want them back in my life in the future, he'll never ever permit it. And that's sad. And what's worse is that Nate's so much more important than those family members, and I won't fight him on it, I don't think.

I've been rambling for a while now. Sorry. I'm so tired but I still don't think sleep will come easily.

Tomorrow's plan is to clean the rest of the kitchen, possibly start on the front room/dining room, and also start dragging furniture upstairs to clean it off.

Good night guys.

sleeplessness, gretchen, family, thoughts, mark, insanity, lonliness, dad

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