tourniquitfit

ok, so much happened yesterday.

i'll start with the unimportant, then to the extremely important and then to why i called out of work today.

let's just put some more character descriptions in of my co-workers. i'm leaving, going back to philadelphia in a month or two, and want to remember these people; but not in the, let's take a picture together feigning this camaraderie we never had anyway, way.

karen. i like her... sometimes. she lent me her benjamin franklin book. she's intelligent. she doesn't know to work the register, but who truly gives a shit? what i don't like is her NPR-syndrome. Intelligent, rational, strong-willed people love to subtly sing their own praises.

contribution to a conversation about what merchandise is cute in the store: "i'm not a consumer."

contribution to a conversation about yoga: "i've always been quite limber."

contribution to a conversation about staying in shape: "i just live a moderate lifestyle."

i'm not quite articulating well what i'm trying to get at. she always has this NPR elitism to her. a.) she talks a lot and b.) the subtext of what she says is always "i do what's right... always."

fine and dandy, right a manual on clean living for all i care. it just irritates me; that pompous, overly rational tone. intelligent people hang out with other intelligent people and develop this aura of superiority, which may very well be deserved, but such a downer on playful banter, which is what retail thrives on. many of them are just too serious.

i do like how we talked about her generation. she was an idealistic youth of the 60s. i said how i think my generation has no identity yet (what are we? the naughts? i don't think we even have a name), and how compliant we are. she said we'd get one in retrospect, which is probably right.

so...

last night after work i had this blowout with my parents. i barely talk to them. i have a lot of hostility right now in my life. it's not fair to them, given i feign niceness to the nouveau-riche trash customers at my job, but not to my own hard-working parents.

i'm really immature.

my mom is always on this oxygen machine. she sleep all day. she watches tv all night. she goes out once or twice a week to shop. she's a shut-in really. she has been for the last 9 years of my life.

it's so hard.

when i was 12, coming home to see my mom in an oversized t-shirt, hair all messed up, passed out on her bed, made me LOATHE her. how can you be a sufficient mom when you're never awake? prior to that she was a workaholic.

so i get passive aggressive towards them. she never takes care of herself. my parents are turning into old grandparent caricatures. they talk loudly, and argue about asinine bullshit.

i don't know how push came to shove, but we ended up getting in this huge argument. i think it was because my mom was screaming in the background, while i was on the phone with my friend everett, and i said something bitchy to her upon hanging up the phone.

we ended up getting in this huge blow-out.

i told them everything that is fucked up about how they raised me. how i came home to no one every day of my life growing up. how hard it was seeing my mom be bed-ridden, and doing nothing to change that, to better herself in any why. how much it sucked to be lied to about her smoking. how much contempt i had for her for not ever dealing with issues. we never talked about anything that was going on. i didn't even know the name of the disease she had for the first year or two.

in high school she then got cancer.

i've always had this cloud hanging over me regarding my mom's potentially pre-mature death. someone stronger, more positive and better would have simply taken that as incentive to live life more fully. instead, i used it as a license to be a bitch.

my mom has always been sick. she just accepts it. she just sleeps all day. she is supposedly catholic, but totally gluttonous and slothful. it's not fun having a mumu-wearing mom attached to an oxygen tank. she wonders why i practically lived at other people's homes. because when you're not awake, you can't be there for your kids. i needed something.

so, whenever i see her passed out, like now at 12:20 PM, i get livid. i truly do. it's obviously to disguise sadness, but still, it sucks.

upon dan asking me yesterday what religion my mom is, i said "apathetic." "no, really becky, what does she believe in?" due to her love for the mind-numbing HGTV i said "bob villa."

just stupid quips like that piss her off, which i can see, but so does her inactive lifestyle. to me

i'm ranting now.

but my dad got all upset over the fight, and kept yelling. at one point he got really close up in my face, screaming. i was like "Dad, your breath stinks, get away from me." he got even more furious. finally, he walked away, and started crying harder than i had ever seen in my life, on the staircase. up until that point i was just being sarcastic back to them, deflecting blame.

granted, i'm not perfect either. far from it. i'm a spoiled, ungrateful bitch (or so i've been told).

i hugged my dad. he let me. i started crying as hard as he. i apologized. he said words mean nothing. he was right.

i was like convulsing crying. i went up to my mom and hugged her. i remember saying "all those times i said i hate you, i really meant i love you." it was true too. the reason that i hated her so much is because i was so scared and hurt that she might die, that she wasn't there for me, that she robbed me of herself.

she was so happy to hug me. i never want to hug her. i'm always dwelling on what she isn't, so that i never enjoy her.

my house is a pig-sty. my parents never maintained a hospitable home. i was embarassed to bring friends back. i had depressed and mental illness in my past. i found out i was bisexual. i was an alcoholic/pot head for a while. i was slutty. i was self-destructive. i dropped out of school. i ran away from home. my mom has anger issues and my dad has depression. my home has always been full of issues.

no one's perfect though.

i'm just going to have to learn to accept them for what they are. i'm going to stop flirting with the idea of suicide. i'm going to start living life with more vigor. i'm going to stop blaming them as an excuse to justify my own tendency to not pursue that which i love. they didn't beat me. they offered what they did.

i think about myself too much, and not to sound like an urban outfitter's t-shirt, it has been "all about me," much of my life. no thought was given to what my parents were goign through. so, we touched base finally.

it ended on that.

then i went to barnacle bill's. open bar. i drank a lot. this kid pete, who dated my friend colleen in high school, brought his girlfriend of like a year there. she told me how she still thinks they fuck. colleen calls her, comes into her work, and pete still has pictures of her on her phone.

all signs are pointing to... yes.

i just met the girl, and felt somewhat obliged not to tell her that yeah, i think he probably is, given i don't know everything or her very well. so i just listened. pete pretended not to notice what we were talking about.

i danced a lot. dan came eventually. i saw some people from high school; the grade above and below me, which wasn't so bad.

there was this one guy, jay, who i played a racist in a play with. he used to flirt with my friend everett in that "oh, i'm not gay, but i'd totally fuck you if no one found out" way, that i saw so many athletic guys at my school do. he was dancing with tons of girls.

dan and i made jokes accordingly.

that's about it.

i'm hung over and called out of work. love days off.