I'm slept really badly tonight. I'm not sure what to do about my mother. I got a stick-it note that she's in town. Good thing, I had been debating driving up to Tennessee overnight even though I hadn't heard from her. My mother hasn't been the best thing for me in my life, she might be the source of all of my negativity and maybe seriously the possible strange brain chemistry I possibly have. I'm afraid to check something like that out though, not to mention the cost, because who wants to be told in black and white that they're crazy and have to be put on medication to be "normal". Normal people do stupid things, the only thing remotely appealing about normal on the face of it is that fitting in might interesting once or twice. I'm not sure that you can come back from normal though, like it's a strange line that you might cross and become suddenly seized by the keepers of hypocrisy and complacency. That's not what I want. It's certainly not what I want from my mother, who spends a lot of her time in conversations with me for the past few years meandering through the same old painful conversations and memories that she used to torture me with when I was younger. She makes me feel guilty about everything, even things I don't feel the least bit responsible for. As I was laying in bed I tried to recall a single moment where my mother made me feel good about who I am or something I had done, and I couldn't come up with anything. A complete blank, but I remember watching her with my brother before puberty or thereabouts and remember maybe something once or twice that she might have done to make him feel good. It stands to reason that it might be possible that she's only good with smaller children. She was lost raising us.

My dad would go on a trip across the world and we'd stay home with mom. We'd gather ourselves together for school, come home and feed ourselves, say hi to her for a few minutes before she'd go and spend the rest of the night on the phone or drinking wine in the bathtub until she'd finally look in late at night and yell at us to go to bed. Dad was more threatening when he was around, but he at least would talk with us. Mother still doesn't do that much, she talks to us or she listens but there isn't a real conversation going on there. It's like it is all pretend. Now, don't get me wrong...I love her, but I worry that sometimes that might just be a conditioned response. That I could love anything that I spent that much time with when I was weak and small and vulnerable is somehow terrifying. There was a time when I hated my dad. Not only was he pushing me in exactly the wrong way to be something that I wasn't, he was screwing up his own life and asking for opinions only to gather himself into insecure rages when I gave him them. When he married his second time I could only blink my eyes in disbelief. I think some part of me held my breath the entire time he was married to that woman, dad thinks he needs people to take care of but he really needs people to take care of him - his choices in women are always interesting accordingly. Dad also gets off on ho's, but I can understand that urge since he somehow infected me with it. Anyways, I hated my dad but I think I hated him more for cutting off our communication than us never having any communication. With mother it's just not there and I want to be angry about it not being there with her, because she was the adult and she should have been the one to make sure that we were always really talking when I grew up not me.