Life and the lessons we...?
Where do I stand...?
And most of all... do I stand for anything?
It took me a long time to accept the fact that my parents were and are absolute morons. I hate to say that because they're so smart in many aspects of life. They have life experiences that I'll probably never have, they have knowledge about things that I'll probably never know or need to know, this is true; but at what point do you have to sit back, stop and realize that... life's not like it was when they were growing up anymore. Things have changed. They hold on to these old beliefs, these old and chaste, tried and no-longer-true ways of life that only seem to cause more trouble than they're worth.
My mother, God bless her, she's absolutely out of her mind. Right now, at this very moment, she's running around town with her Preacher Fiance pulling off every Christian stunt in the book whilst getting the Church van repaired and checking up on members and the elderly in the hospitals and rest homes. If I need her, I call her, she gives me excuses why she can't come and why she can't talk longer than ten minutes at a time on the phone because her Fiance needs her or her Church Duty's need her. More so than her son of course; after all, who the fuck am I? Just some kid that dropped out of her ass one day, I suppose.
I find that the older I get, the more I realize the fact that I was never actually a son to either of them, more so than a liability they could brag about. A trophy. I was the smart one, the one with the I.Q. off the charts and the ridiculously active Alpha Beta brainwave patterns. I was the kid they could talk about at tea parties and explain just how smart I was, getting first place in science fairs at the age of seven. The more I think about it, I don't think there's ever been a time in my life where I was actually just a kid. I've always had expectations given me, and limitations to restrain me. I've never actually had a life of my own, which probably explains why I bottled myself up when I turned seventeen and decided human beings were collectively not worth my time.
There never was a time in my life where 'Go outside and play' was actually a consideration. Sure I did it but I didn't enjoy it, I always felt like I was being judged or someone was trying to teach me some harsh lesson. I felt like 'going out' was simply what was expected of me and I did it, like it or not, so I didn't seem weird or out of touch. I didn't keep many friends because of it- still don't. This mental routine has done little else but spawn an obsessive compulsive, paranoid conspiracy theorist with absolutely no desire to grow sociologically. Something I've reasoned is decidedly not good.
My father, I love him. Sadly, he'll never love me back- never has. I'm a liability and a punching bag to him; I'm someone he can hammer his inadequacies into, someone he can mentally and verbally bully so he feels better about himself. Only recently when I started letting him know that I'm smarter than him does he turn ever more violent than before. He despises talking to me now because there's always a contradiction in what he says that I catch and expose. He tries to backtrack and when I close the noose around the conversation and disallow it, he coils and strikes relentlessly at me or pulls rank and says 'I'm your father, shut up'. And when all else fails, he can still get drunk and insult me under the pretences that he won't remember it the next day anyway.
My sister. A beautiful lady, five time Beauty Pageant winner, Creole, kind of pudgy after having two babies, but she still retains her former glory somehow. Like our mother, she's crazy as hell only she doesn't want to admit it. In a phrase: Not all of her Cokes come with a smile. We tolerate each other. Phone calls now and then are easy enough to fake. I love her, she has no feelings for me; certainly she'll do things for me as far as tasks go- help me handle business, but aside from that, we don't relate.
My Brother. If I'd heard from him in the past year, I'd tell you how he is. He's never liked me. Used to bully me a lot, I used to look up to him but now I realize he's just another bum looking for someone to leech off. He's a very fun and entertaining person- or was. I don't know what he's like now. I know he drinks and does drugs and that's enough for me not to want to associate with him ever again in this life or the next. Poor guy. I hope he gets his shit together.
Then there's my other sister. She's dead. She never liked me much either. Tends to make you wonder what kind of person I am, doesn't it? Next subject.
There's never been much in the way of relating between me and my other relatives and so, when it came time to learn life lessons or 'get prepared for the world ahead', I only had my crazy ol' Mom who doesn't have enough time for me and my drunken father who wants nothing to do with me but forces himself to lie and say he does, to glean some form of education from.
And you wonder why I'm so fucked up.
I realize that in the long and short of it, the only lessons I ever learned that were worth keeping, I taught them to myself. My morals came from me, my choice to find my religion and diligently stick to it came from me (even though I'm the shittiest Christian alive and the worst backslider to have ever graced the face of the earth), my choice to take care of me and avoid hardship as much as possible came from me, my will to avoid the street life in general... once again, came from me. In fact, most anything positive and good I can think of in my life, I was directly or indirectly responsible for. Every positive memory I have was because I'd engineered the occurrence to take place.
So what did my parents teach me? Besides how to perfectly duplicate an anxiety attack and how to grind my teeth in my sleep to the point of causing chronic migraines and hypertension?
Well, in short. They taught me how never to treat another human being. Especially a child.
So, yes, Dave, I sympathize with you 100%, even if- like my father and your father- I lack the ability to express this to you outside of this dry little sentence at the end of a post, seemingly an afterthought. I'm afraid it's just not in me to be able to do much more.
Hybrid: Out.
And most of all... do I stand for anything?
It took me a long time to accept the fact that my parents were and are absolute morons. I hate to say that because they're so smart in many aspects of life. They have life experiences that I'll probably never have, they have knowledge about things that I'll probably never know or need to know, this is true; but at what point do you have to sit back, stop and realize that... life's not like it was when they were growing up anymore. Things have changed. They hold on to these old beliefs, these old and chaste, tried and no-longer-true ways of life that only seem to cause more trouble than they're worth.
My mother, God bless her, she's absolutely out of her mind. Right now, at this very moment, she's running around town with her Preacher Fiance pulling off every Christian stunt in the book whilst getting the Church van repaired and checking up on members and the elderly in the hospitals and rest homes. If I need her, I call her, she gives me excuses why she can't come and why she can't talk longer than ten minutes at a time on the phone because her Fiance needs her or her Church Duty's need her. More so than her son of course; after all, who the fuck am I? Just some kid that dropped out of her ass one day, I suppose.
I find that the older I get, the more I realize the fact that I was never actually a son to either of them, more so than a liability they could brag about. A trophy. I was the smart one, the one with the I.Q. off the charts and the ridiculously active Alpha Beta brainwave patterns. I was the kid they could talk about at tea parties and explain just how smart I was, getting first place in science fairs at the age of seven. The more I think about it, I don't think there's ever been a time in my life where I was actually just a kid. I've always had expectations given me, and limitations to restrain me. I've never actually had a life of my own, which probably explains why I bottled myself up when I turned seventeen and decided human beings were collectively not worth my time.
There never was a time in my life where 'Go outside and play' was actually a consideration. Sure I did it but I didn't enjoy it, I always felt like I was being judged or someone was trying to teach me some harsh lesson. I felt like 'going out' was simply what was expected of me and I did it, like it or not, so I didn't seem weird or out of touch. I didn't keep many friends because of it- still don't. This mental routine has done little else but spawn an obsessive compulsive, paranoid conspiracy theorist with absolutely no desire to grow sociologically. Something I've reasoned is decidedly not good.
My father, I love him. Sadly, he'll never love me back- never has. I'm a liability and a punching bag to him; I'm someone he can hammer his inadequacies into, someone he can mentally and verbally bully so he feels better about himself. Only recently when I started letting him know that I'm smarter than him does he turn ever more violent than before. He despises talking to me now because there's always a contradiction in what he says that I catch and expose. He tries to backtrack and when I close the noose around the conversation and disallow it, he coils and strikes relentlessly at me or pulls rank and says 'I'm your father, shut up'. And when all else fails, he can still get drunk and insult me under the pretences that he won't remember it the next day anyway.
My sister. A beautiful lady, five time Beauty Pageant winner, Creole, kind of pudgy after having two babies, but she still retains her former glory somehow. Like our mother, she's crazy as hell only she doesn't want to admit it. In a phrase: Not all of her Cokes come with a smile. We tolerate each other. Phone calls now and then are easy enough to fake. I love her, she has no feelings for me; certainly she'll do things for me as far as tasks go- help me handle business, but aside from that, we don't relate.
My Brother. If I'd heard from him in the past year, I'd tell you how he is. He's never liked me. Used to bully me a lot, I used to look up to him but now I realize he's just another bum looking for someone to leech off. He's a very fun and entertaining person- or was. I don't know what he's like now. I know he drinks and does drugs and that's enough for me not to want to associate with him ever again in this life or the next. Poor guy. I hope he gets his shit together.
Then there's my other sister. She's dead. She never liked me much either. Tends to make you wonder what kind of person I am, doesn't it? Next subject.
There's never been much in the way of relating between me and my other relatives and so, when it came time to learn life lessons or 'get prepared for the world ahead', I only had my crazy ol' Mom who doesn't have enough time for me and my drunken father who wants nothing to do with me but forces himself to lie and say he does, to glean some form of education from.
And you wonder why I'm so fucked up.
I realize that in the long and short of it, the only lessons I ever learned that were worth keeping, I taught them to myself. My morals came from me, my choice to find my religion and diligently stick to it came from me (even though I'm the shittiest Christian alive and the worst backslider to have ever graced the face of the earth), my choice to take care of me and avoid hardship as much as possible came from me, my will to avoid the street life in general... once again, came from me. In fact, most anything positive and good I can think of in my life, I was directly or indirectly responsible for. Every positive memory I have was because I'd engineered the occurrence to take place.
So what did my parents teach me? Besides how to perfectly duplicate an anxiety attack and how to grind my teeth in my sleep to the point of causing chronic migraines and hypertension?
Well, in short. They taught me how never to treat another human being. Especially a child.
So, yes, Dave, I sympathize with you 100%, even if- like my father and your father- I lack the ability to express this to you outside of this dry little sentence at the end of a post, seemingly an afterthought. I'm afraid it's just not in me to be able to do much more.
Hybrid: Out.