shaking, lonely, drinking again. tragic it seems, to be alone again. drink 'til i'm myself, because this stress has got me giving into you. again.

have you ever just looked at yourself in the mirror and have no clue about things, anymore?

it's like i'm permanently dining at the waffle house, and i have no idea why i'm teetering back and forth between two diametrically opposed ends of some bullshit emotional spectrum, and i have no idea if i'm teetering because i really am that fucking insane, if it's just the weight of my guilt pushing things off kilter, or if i really have no frame of reference for reality and am so averted to any emotional issues i'm just free falling and hoping something changes.

i'm all for voluntary falling...i'm all over the skydiving and bungee jumping and rollercoasters, but this isn't so voluntary and this has no safety measures to go along with it. it kind of sucks.

last night my mother went on this shpeel about how everyone in the family feels like they have to walk on eggshells around me because i've changed...that she and my father have backed off a lot in "dealing" with me because they feel like i'm constantly annoyed by them and aren't sure if i'll just be passive as fuck or yell at them for what they say. to my parents it seems like i want to have nothing to do with my family, and outside of money they think i want to have no ties to them at all.

"i want my daughter back."


that's what she said...a few times, actually. "my daughter would have called to see how i was feeling, you call at night to say you're home and goodnight. my daughter laughs and is happy, you seem unhappy and miserable. if you're miserable, tell me. we've let you decide your career and everything else. if you want nothing to do with this family, tell me. be straight about it, i think you at least owe us that."

in my own defense, i do talk to my mom almost daily online and ask her how she's doing and i really do think i'm the only twenty-four year old in this country who is mandated to call her parents daily for no other purpose than to say she walked the dog, she didn't die, and she's home for the night...but either way: ouch. big ouch. i absolutely adore my parents, i love them to death, and i have more respect for them than i do anyone else i've ever met...and here they are thinking i want nothing to do with them, that money is the only reason i tal to them, and that i don't give a shit about them at all because i'm stuck in some bastard limbo.

maybe it's the limbo of growing up? of realizing that you can't be a stupid kid anymore and you can't do stupid things anymore because there will always be consequences even if it's something as banal as a tattoo? or maybe it's just my way of dealing with the conclusion of my story--i will be a lawyer. it's not the worst thing in the world to be on a path to success and a self sustaining career, but i can't seen to consolidate that reality with the little kid who still lives inside me and has higher hopes and aspirations than working eighty hour work weeks doing tedious and unimaginative work. maybe it's harder than i thought to tuck away what you've always longed for, in some way shape or form, and succumb to reality, but i can say that having people consantly push you towards that reality in complete and utter ignorance and denial to anything you potentially wanted is strange. especially when you do love them, and adore them, and respect them, and constantly seek their approval.

it's tedious though...having the same four subjects be the focus of almost every conversation we have. with my father it's my work-out habits and diet, and my grades. with my mother...it's my weight and my (lack of) love life. even with the foundation set in stone that i can talk to them about potentially anything, the topic consistency makes it seem like i'm nothing more than the sum of my academic fortitude, my weight, and my finding marriage.

to say the least it's a double edged sword. they say "we want you to be happy," but i know full well that should i drop out of school and attempt those things that do make me happy that things wouldn't ever be the same. i did chose to go to law school, i can't fault them for that. but a large part of my decision to go to law school rested on the shoulders of their expectation. i remember the face my dad made when i told him long before i even applied to undergrate schools that i wanted to be a writer of some kind...i remember the laugh my mom let out when i told her that i wanted to do something with music, and i distinctly remember both of them saying "well you can do that on the side, but what are you going to do as a career?" the same reasoning applies to guys i date....they say that if he's got a good heart that's all that matters, but i somehow think bringing home a construction worker with a heart of gold wouldn't go over exceedingly well.

but i guess things aren't the same anymore, anyway. or, i'm not the same, at least.

kind of makes me wonder if the question that spurrned my blog move is in anyway related to the shpeel last night. the seven word question was simple: "do you even love mom and dad?" and it was posed to me a few times while discussing....what else? this blog. apparently i vilify and demonize my parents on here, and my brother took it upon himself--or so he said--to inquire about why i do that, to tell me to stop because it hurts them, and to remind me that we have awesome parents--something i've never ever denied or spoken contrary to. he anted up with that question, i guess...and my heart fucking broke when he asked it, and shattered into smaller pieces each time after that.

to me it's a fucked up and unbased question for him to ask me. not because i'm the one who always sends gifts on birthdays and anniversaries or for when they're sick/have surgery/down and never ask him to pay a penny for it, always put his name on it, and always tell my parents that he did pay me back and was fully aware of the entire idea in the first place...not because he's sitting there hiding his own secret from my parents because he'd rather not deal with them constantly nagging him about it...not because it's easy for my brother to wax poetic about the shortcomings of our parents when his falls from grace have always been slightly less significant than mine...nope, not even because he has had his moments of completely going off on my parents and signing off from the family station...but because he founded the question on my blog....and at the end of the entire conversation he simply said "i may hide things from them, and get pissed off at them, but i don't leave a paper trail. you did."

how like law school---do what you have to do to make yourself look good and happy, and remember not to leave a paper trail for anyone around you to find...let them labor under your false pretenses, and ethical and moral fortitude, all the while you go on about things as you wish. don't leave a paper trail, and everything will work out fine. that's some fine ethics huh? what's worse is he's been telling my parents that i refuse to talk to him and haven't been returning his calls. unless my phone is an accessory to some kind of covert operation to get more inheritance money or make me look more shitty (which really doesn't take much..honestly), i don't have one call from him in any of my phone logs--recieved or missed--and no voicemail. i haven't heard from him since last friday when he asked me what i shall now dubb "the question." this whole thing isn't really helping whatever cause i have, and i'm sure it just affirms in my parent's heads that i'm slowly drifting away from the mighty family and want nothing to do with them.

but it kind of makes me wonder if this is something they have all talked about in concert...that my parents have expressed this concern to him which is why he took the path he did and arrived at the inquest of what is now dubbed "the question." it makes me wonder if all three of them are at the edge of giving up on me in some way, and that this is perhaps their final attempt.

they have an idea of who i am, but rather than fill the holes with my own verbage, it seems they just filled them in as they saw fit and left me to figure out how to fit the mold. i don't fit the mold, and for a few months now i haven't wanted to fit that mold. one of these things is not like the other, and in my family that's me. it's always been me. i'm the black sheep and and i've always know that, and it's blatantly obvious to anyone who meets my famnily in entirety. i'm really not a believer in zodiacs, especially the chinese zodiac, but it's slightly coincidental--to say the least--that my mother, father, and brother are all dragons, and i'm a dog. dogs and dragons are mortal enemies.

regardless...i don't mean to be a bad daughter...or a bad sister...i don't mean to lock myself up behind the walls of my own thoughts and ideas, and i certainly don't hold them accountable for the way i feel about certain things because, to put it bluntly, they have no fucking idea. how do you tell your family:

"sorry i'm an incorrigible cunt, and sorry i seem lackluster and miserable to you, but i'm taking thirty six credit hours so that i can finish two graduate degrees in the most economically and time efficient way possible, and all the while i'm sitting here trying to get my mind off this sick possibility that i'm destined for something else and something more, because you don't believe in destiny, and fate, and predisposition. you believe in working hard and doing what you have to do...and that's what i'm doing. i'm just not happy about it, and despite this being my choice, in the subliminal it was your cajoling and my incessant search for your approval and pride that brought me here. i've given up a lot to get here and to do this, even if you think i'm absolutely insane for thinking so, and it's finally caught up with me. it's one thing to ask me to be logical in my approach to life, it's another to expect me to be logical and happy as a pig in shit about the direction my life has taken. you got the logical...so just let me wallow in it for a while and convince myself, again, that this is what i want out of life. if dealing with me sucks, don't deal with me--and don't give me idle threats about money or the lack thereof in my future...i don't care about money, i never did..and i'm grateful for the way of life you've let me live, but if that way of life is conditioned on me having to smile constantly and fake my way through every family affair and "logical" endeavor i undertake, fuck it. keep your money, i'll keep my sanity."

that's the thing, though. i don't want to alienate myself from my family--at least not anymore than i already have and nature has automatically done. i admit it's really easy to fall into a groove of doing my own thing and going along only thinking of myself given the fact the future of my parents is primarily tied to the locale my brother chooses, but easiest isn't always best...and easiest at the start doesn't translate to easy ever after.

if i have to choose between my own volitions screaming at me and this sick feeling of my family thinking i want nothing to do with them, then i guess volition can kiss my grits and get some lozanges because it's going to be screaming for a long, long time.

as my mother said last night: "shape up, because dealing with you lately is a nightmare"

i'm not sure how, exactly, it's been nightmarish, but it doesn't matter. time to try and fit back into the mold. i can live with regrets and i can live with denying myself a chance to try to figure out what i want out of life and what i want to do with my life, but i can't live knowing that my family think i've effectively dwindled them out of my personal landscape, and i can't live without my family.

this world is lonely enough with them in it, i can't imagine how isolated it would be without them.

unless that isolation feels like this.