Chaos Attraction

It's Going To Be A Long Year

2011-09-26, 1:30 p.m.

It's going to be a loooooooong year.

Lasts for this year so far:
* Last "Fall Welcome" meeting/excellent breakfast spread at work
* Last "first day of school" even though I'm not a student
* Last trip to Apple Hill.

Yesterday was the last one on the list there.

This was a weekend on which, well, I probably wouldn't have wanted to go home this weekend (who wants to go out of town again right after you just got back? Not me, really), but Mom was bugging me to go home so she could drag me to a store that was supposedly willing to sell my jewelry. Then she didn't take me there because she went to a funeral and then diddled around at home with her 1800+ vacation photos. Which she is now making ME put online for her uber-Christian friend. I think she wanted me to volunteer my own web space for free for this, but I was all, "yeah, that would go over well once she figures out I'm not also uber-Christian, she'd probably drop Mom for that." I made her get a Flickr account, but she'll lose her shit once she finds out that 240+ photos = the limit for the month and then she has to pay. Um, yeah. Anyway, it was one of those weekends where it was pretty obvious that some trouble was gonna come up sometime. She is currently in this "Everyone is using me!" mood and demanding that other people pay for her and it's just getting ugly.

Sunday, of course, is when things erupted, because things always erupt on a fucking Sunday. In this case, we were going to leave for Apple Hill and she of course wanted to eat beforehand. (Don't ask me why she wants to be fed before going to a place with tons of good eats, but whatever.) Here's the infamous words that kicked off an hour-long argument that made me cry:

Mom: "Do you like Subway?"
Me: "Eh, not really."

People wonder why I don't like to suggest restaurants. THIS KIND OF SHIT IS WHY. Because I should have psychically read Mom's mind that her real question was:

Mom: "Let's go to Subway because I have a free gift card and then I won't have to pay for anything."

Which I did not know, of course, because I don't do fucking telepathy and she didn't say this out loud. And saying after the fact, "Look, it's not my favorite sammich place ever, but I'll eat at if I have to, I just went there last weekend already" was NOT ENOUGH to fend off the impending fucking war that ensued, her yelling at me that I was being a martyr for saying that I'd rather eat at Subway even if I don't luuuuuv it than have this fight, her refusing to eat ANYTHING and then going hungry all day long. This led into the oh so fun topics of (a) Why won't anyone pay for meeeeeee?, (b) the ex-IB, (c) giving the ex-IB too much expensive stuff to win his love, (d) nobody loves me enough, (e) why doesn't my sister want to be best friends with me, etc., etc. on her side, and on my side, (a) I can't act like an adult around you, (b) I'd be willing to pay for you if you didn't get so fucking psychotic about it, and while you're at it (c) stop crying poor and then spending a bunch of money, which one is it?, (d) that's why I need to move, among other reasons, dammit, I can't grow up as long as you're around, (e) you don't want me to grow up anyway ("Yes, I do!"), (f) no, Mom, I don't want you to DIE so I can get your money and move away, jeebus christ, (g) stop trying to buy people's love because clearly it isn't working for you and if you're going to insist on doing this, at least openly agree that you're bribing someone or something.... it just went on and on.

Between that and the weather threatening rain at any second, I was thinking at this point, after all the sobbing, that the day was so fucking trashed that I wanted to go the fuck home already and call a do-over.

But she shut up when we got there, and we spent the day getting apples and other foodstuffs and looking at craft booths and the usual, and it was a good time. And then she was all, "See? Now we can work out our problems and have a Good Day and make things Positive!" And while I'm amazed she managed to put aside her shit for the afternoon, I still thought, "Yeah, well, we'll just have this fight again next time I see you."

And sure enough, she called me at work today to tell me, "What if I really really don't want you to move to LA?" Well, no shit, Mother.

This is going to be a long year.

In the book Callings by Gregg Levoy, one guy gave up his prestigious lawyer job working for his dad to move to the southwest, for reasons he couldn't explain. He told people a year before he actually did it and then said he regretted it because then he got nothing but shit about it for a year. Now, I have my reasons for doing this (getting used to the idea MYSELF, for one thing, and for another being that I can't just pack up and leave spontaneously at all), but... it's going to be a long year. And the psycho will ramp up the more it goes on.

I am awfully tired of being punished for being myself. I am tired of being punished for not being enough. I am tired of being punished for not being enough of a kid or enough of an adult. I am tired of having to Pay The Price of drama, screaming, tears, and hell alllllllll the fucking time. But fuck if I know how to make it stop short of someone being dead.


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