It withers.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, working the holiday. The crew I liked was there, and we made sure we left the building as soon as we were able. We laughed a lot and joked around, and a few of the guys from the old store I was trained at even dropped by on their way to wherever. We kept talking about turkey and all the shit we were going to do when we got home. I even got invited to someone’s house, but I declined. I have to admit trying deep fried turkey was definitely interesting enough to cause me pause. But I knew my parents were expecting me home, and I wouldn’t have gone anyway, I don’t think. I am almost sure I have never spent a Thanksgiving away from my parents.

With these sort of days that gloom in me always settles down over the world like a fog, tainting it. It makes me forget about the good far too easily. I’m tired and depressed today, but there’s little reason as to why. I even stood in the doorway watching one of the guys smoke and coaxed him into giving me a cigarette. I don’t know why, really. I fiddled with it between my fingers then dropped it in a pocket for later, not quite getting why I asked or why it mattered, or why I didn’t feel a little bad at the look he gave me, one that seemed to say he had just handed over a death sentence.

I ate dinner alone at the table because no one wanted to clear it. I refuse to sit in front of the television with a TV tray with either the news blaring or some low-budget Christmas movie playing. I’m tired of those things, tired of the mundane shit that’s supposed to pass time. In fact, I hate it so much I’d rather sleep. I’m not even sure what it all is supposed to mean anymore. I stay home and do nothing because I have no idea what else to do since nothing seems to appeal to me. Yes, maybe it is sad to say this, maybe it sounds like some seriously pessimistic individual’s point of view, but fuck it. I’ve lasted this long, I think the least I should get out of it is my right to speak of my hatred of it.

They have these beautiful journals at the bookstore. I asked for one for Christmas even though I barely write in mine anymore. I tore out most of the front pages in my oldest one. I recall blood being smeared on those pages, once upon a time. Instead I found what was left: a pressed daisy and lots of ramblings and scribbles. They all nearly got burned not too long ago. I had shoved them into my backpack along with a lighter. I’m still not sure why I didn’t do away with them.

Yesterday was a terrible day. My ritual has started again. I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter anymore since there is no covering it up anyway. I was always so discreet about it. Now it’s blatant and unapologetic. Oh well, I never wore shorts anyway.

To avoid…

Another day off. Yesterday was…interesting, to say the least. I never went to bed the night previous, and all I had done was get up from my computer chair to go shower and get ready. I did my 8 hours, which was chaotic and horrible, naturally; not a good day whatsoever and all the higher-ups magically appeared to criticize everything while we’re trying to swim instead of sink. And there I am barely conscious, which was my own stupid fault.

 I also found out someone called in and made a claim that the morning workers were standing around doing nothing when the store was supposed to be open, to our boss. So being that she is quite nosey, she checked the footage from that day on that hour.

Sometimes you do get revenge.

Apparently on the tape I’m preparing food ten minutes before opening (which is how it is supposed to be), while my coworker and I are having a conversation as she puts on her headset (which she doesn’t have to put on until six; but we always try to be ready ahead of time…). I haul ass in the morning; I have no alternative. I must have all of the food out to last for the entire morning and have it cooked by six. I also have to turn on all the equipment, plug in the freezers, prep all the trays, and get all my supplies. One half hour is all I get to do this in, and I am completely on my own. But I get it done. And then I assemble and cook the food until at least 7-8 in the morning, if not later, until someone comes in to help.

For anyone to even suggest that I would be fucking around, infuriates me. Why don’t you get back there and try to do it, then? Why don’t you run the entire back of a store by yourself for a good portion of the morning and see how you fair? They’ve left me alone until 10 before. You want to talk about having a bad motherfucking day?

Anyway, once that was over I went home for about an hour, waiting for them to get the checks at work. Then I went back, stood around for awhile and got to see one of my coworkers, who was just about to go off to a party and get as drunk as humanly possible. She smoked and I giggled, out in the cold, watching all the people walk in and out of the restaurant. I ran off as soon as I got paid, then went to town, which was another experience in and of itself.

I was standing at the counter of another fast food restaurant around 4, trying to order food. For some reason I couldn’t seem to speak properly. The guy at the register kept getting confused, and I was feeling too anxious to talk at all, but somehow I blurted out something and did get food. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I didn’t have much of a choice; it was either get food or don’t eat at all.  I don’t know why I get so anxious out of the blue like that sometimes.  I can be okay with it one day, then terrible the next.

The same thing happened in Walmart, and then again at another store. I froze when they would ask me a question or try to make typical conversation. I’d mumble something and look at the floor until they were done ringing everything up, then I’d snatch up my things and leave as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. It got worse when I went to look at some Christmas things. This guy says something about what I’m wearing, which isn’t anything to worry about. I walk away, forget about it. Then there he is again, five minutes later when I’m carrying a few things around. He can’t seem to restrain himself from making a comment about the items, so I say something a little snide, and move to another aisle. But I can see him hovering in the corner of my vision. My lack of sleep has caught up with me by then and I am on the verge of verbally attacking him because I simply don’t want to be bothered. For any reason. Instead, however, avoidance kicks in and I end up on the opposite side of the store.   

Sometimes I feel like this wolf with snapping jaws, then other times I feel like the timid little rabbit that would prefer to run than face something. Sometimes I think suicide would be a rabbit moment, and maybe that is one of the reasons I haven’t gone as far with it as I would like at heart. I am a true avoider; the confrontational person that comes out at times is a temporary side-effect of annoyance and anger. I get fed up and I act. The rest of the time I’d like nothing more than to fade into the background and be unseen because I am too weak to try and the desire to do anything doesn’t really exist.

Finally, for the last round of stores I put on my headphones and blatantly refused to acknowledge anyone, even if they were speaking to me. No, I can’t hear you, sorry.

I’m not sure if I should be angry at myself for that or not. I didn’t want to be out in the first place, and only endured it because there were things I needed to get. I had even weighed myself before I left and nearly not gone because of it. I should have been home sleeping, truthfully. I guess none of it is really an excuse though. What’s funny to me is the more time I have been spending out in the world, the less I wish to see of it, when the words of anyone else are to integrate and try more in order to get better. Why then do I feel like there are even fewer reasons to venture out?

If it was up to me, I don’t think I would leave the house anymore. Regardless of how much I have been panicking in my time off, I would prefer to deal with myself, the real problem, instead of trying to be something I’m not. I feel wrong in the presence of others, more so than when I am by myself. I’m always lying and playing a game that I don’t really want to play. Why play when you care not about the pieces and their outcome, I wonder? The crux of this is that I can’t feel and I have trouble conjuring up any kind of feelings for those around me. And maybe I can’t feel for them because I can’t feel for myself. I can’t even care about my life, so how can I concern myself with theirs?

I’ll go on avoiding. Nothing else but that seems to make me last.

Still can’t find it.

I’ve come to despise getting up early. I can no longer sleep 14 hours as I used to so easily. I miss that now, because when I wake I have an entire day ahead of me, one I never quite know what to do with. I want to feel better. I want to wake up and feel as though it’s a good thing to have hours at my disposal. But now it is as if the hours left over after work are nothing but fillers that I ungraciously want to toss aside and forget about. I keep talking about this, maybe because I am uncertain what it means or what I can do to change it.

Every day off I try. I’ll go through ten different projects trying to find one to keep me occupied, or I’ll play some videogame for a very short while, or I’ll even sit down and make a rather sad attempt at reading something, even if it is a local newspaper that’s more mundane to me than perpetually watching the Weather Channel. Anything. Usually what happens is I eat. I cook throughout the day, and eat, over and over and over. I always end up sick and regretting it by evening, but that doesn’t slow the process. I continue until, finally, I find myself doubled over, my stomach so fed up that it will make quite a valiant attempt to free up space.

I might heave for twenty minutes, but I stubbornly refuse to vomit. No, I get to live with these consequences. I get to spend the night in pain, and the next morning nauseated, and go to work and pretend that there’s nothing wrong with me, even though the upper part of my stomach is so painfully swollen it will literally have gained inches overnight to accomodate whatever I ended up binging on. It takes about two days to return to normal, and by then I either begin again, or don’t eat at all.

Why I do this is still not clear. Stress, I would think, though I rarely show any kind of panic or anger at work. All of it seems to come to me when I get home, like the gates to hell have been opened, and it swarms me suddenly. Our turnover rate is extraordinarily high, particularly in the area I work in, and it’s easy to guess why. We must have begun our original orientation about six months ago with about a hundred people all together, that were spread out over four different stores to be trained before coming to the store we are at now. We have a board the in breakroom with congratulations signs on it for those who made it to the sixth month. There are about fifteen names on it, nearly all of which are those who became managers.

We constantly get new crew, and I find myself struggling to remember their names. Most of them won’t last, I can tell already. They spend their first two weeks being willing slaves, then get lazier and lazier once they get comfortable. I get irritated and will literally walk around them if they aren’t going fast enough for my taste. I’m sick of being blamed for their inability to do a very simple job. All it takes is energy, but they whine constantly about not getting their breaks when all they do is stand around, while I’m busy doing most of their job and my own. I’m lucky if I get two breaks out of three.

I come back from breaks and generally find everything backed up, with a screen full orders, shitloads of empty trays (all of which should be filled with food), and two managers in the front screaming orders at people, trying in vain to sort through the chaos, while their shitty front people continuously hand out the wrong orders. There have been times where they will pull me from my half early because one of the newer crew has gotten too far behind to catch up on their own.

I hate breaks. I hate them. I need to sit down; I shouldn’t be running around for 6-9 hours straight, but because nearly all the crew in the back is new and all of the girls I generally work with aren’t around because of training at the moment, it’s like going into a nightmare. The floor will be a disaster, slicked in grease and covered with bits of fallen food, then there will be a screen blinking, with four orders up and god knows how many pending. The machine that prints out special receipts will have a tail of paper hanging down to the floor, sometimes with more receipts shooting out the top and floating down into a pile. The managers always give me a sympathetic look. And then of course, I have to fix it.

One particular instance, several weeks ago, I finally got so irritated I sent the woman away from the table (I had already been pulled from my break twenty minutes early and wasn’t a happy camper). I wouldn’t even let her work with me, that was how badly it was going. She’s a shift manager (highest you can go unless you are the store manager) who has been working as long as I have, and the woman can barely make a sandwich. To top it off she is incredibly slow about it for no reason other than that she doesn’t want to work. I finally looked over at her and said, “Go do prep”, because she was standing there looking at the food more than she was making it. No one said a word.

And still they have been constantly hinting to me at my promotion as some kind of manager (they all seem to have different ideas…), which I don’t even know if I want. In all honesty, I’m an idiot. When I talk about this job like I’m good at it, all that I mean is that I’m willing to do it. That’s the only problem with employees: they don’t want to do it like it should be done. It’s an easy fucking job. You memorize some shit and make food, how hard can it be? But apparently no one wants to work for their money, or deal with that fact, that yeah, we get screamed at, yeah, there are some angry customers who come in and treat you like shit. I’ve had people standing at the counter give me step-by-step instructions on how to make their sandwiches because they ‘don’t trust the grill people to do it properly’. Yeah, because apparently if you work in fast food you must be a dumb fucking cunt that can’t read ‘add 1 cheese, no mustard’ on a screen.

It’s fucking insulting, the way people will look at me if I walk down to the local supermarket to pick up a few things and happen to be wearing my uniform. At the bank they always ask me, ‘where do you work?’ and when I answer they have to restrain themselves from raising an eyebrow. Yeah, I know, I’m not in the white-collar job my parents wanted me to have, I’m not going to college to become yet another of the supposedly educated masses. I stand over by some grills all day, making minimum wage, then go home and never leave the house.

To be incredibly honest, most days it seems like being dead would be more rewarding. I’m still not sure how to change that perception for myself.

Senseless

I’m really hating on myself right now. Another bad day I don’t want to think about. It really does seem to be getting worse, this workplace. I’ve decided that I don’t just dislike my boss, I hate her. I can deal with her, sure, but I constantly have the urge to be a real ass to her, which isn’t the greatest of ideas. I even cursed in front of her today, and couldn’t be brought to give a shit about it. She surprisingly made no comment. I think every other word out of my mouth is ‘fuck’, because every time I turn around something is going wrong or I do something clumsy that I end up having to clean. Interestingly, so is the same with everyone. We all cuss, we all get annoyed.

Today one person made a comment that it’s always livelier with me around. I thought it was funny considering what I’ve been doing on my breaks. We started singing the hokey pokey about an hour into my shift, quite obnoxiously, which made everyone cringe and laugh. It’s the only way to make it through these days. We all try to be nice and polite, because the rest of the time we’re either pissed off or irritated.

We’re always shorthanded because of the shitty scheduling the manager does. Even one of my shift managers gave me a bit of a look when she was talking about her and the hours she’s been giving people. That, and we’re always out of something and far too overstocked on other things. I’m just tired of it, already. How long has it been, even? It hasn’t been a month yet and I am already worn so thin. I came home today and just wanted to collapse in bed. I don’t want to talk to anyone, and everytime my parents ask me, ’how was work?’, I want to scream. You can ask me a few hours after I’ve been home, but not right when I come in the fucking door. Tomorrow will be my first day off after six days of working. Then I go back to work again for a few more before I get another day off. It’s not that bad, I realize, but I’m kind of going a little crazy. It’s the pills, it’s the food, it’s everything. All of it is fucking with me at once and I’m not strong enough to try and deal with any of it, so instead I try to ignore it instead.

I almost feel like I’m purposely being helpless. Like I want to drown, so I’m swimming out as far as I can go, as deep as I can get, so that when it happens I won’t have any energy left to turn around and get back to shore. I know how to get myself to feel a little better, to get my mood up a tiny bit, and I’m not even doing it. I’m not doing anything. I’m continually making it worse, knowingly. I seem to like being in misery or something. Everything is so confusing. I want to die and I can’t even do that yet. I don’t have anything in me to go through with something; I drift along because I don’t have any drive to try something, no interest in pursuing some dream like everyone else does.

There’s nothing that makes me go forward except boredom and apathy. I have no interest in stopping or going, so I merely go because that happens to be the direction other people pushed me in. If they had never pushed, I would have never started in the first place. I wouldn’t be in the game anymore. Maybe that would have been a better alternative, I don’t know.

All I know is that I am doing things out of duty with no desire to go anywhere with it or do anything. Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to bring myself to care about that.

Restless

I feel like I’m waiting for a train that’s never going to come. I realize it’s hardly been any time at all, and that I need to give it awhile, but already I’ve grown very impatient with this whole deal. I feel like shit, and no matter what I do it doesn’t go away. This is beyond the regular numb/apathetic I-couldn’t-care-if-the-world-exploded attitude. I haven’t done anything. I had the day off yesterday and I must have slept a good 20 hours, if not more. It’s not tiredness either, which is what I first suspected. I’m not tired, not physically anyway. I have books to read, games to play, a quad to mess with, yet I find myself with no desire to go through with any of it. I’d rather sit and do nothing it seems, or sleep and dream my strange dreams instead of staying awake only to feel perpetually restless. Nothing pleases me, and that is a little scary. 

Work was fine, though still as unorganized as ever. Two of the guys from where I used to work came to help out. I hate one of them, but the other and I are almost—dare I say it—friends. I pretty much spent every late shift I used to have with him, so we got more or less used to each other and traded bits of language back and forth. Today he somehow ended up with me, which was nice since it meant everything got done much more quickly than it usually would of had I wound up with someone else (e.g. one of the shift managers who STILL doesn’t know how to assemble). The other employee was cordial with me, even joking around a little, which isn’t anything new, but this time it was much less…vicious. He has that way about him that is joking bordering on serious, and the looks he’ll give you say enough to relay that he often thinks exactly what he’s laughing about.

I made the most money I’ve ever made in two weeks. I guess that is something to be excited about, though I was as flat about it as ever. I really wish I could feel a sense of accomplishment or something, but nothing has happened, not even the slightest rush. If there was one thing I could change, it would be to make myself feel something about all of this. Even if I can’t care about it, at least feel as sense of self-worth or something, rather than constant hate. It’s hard to get by when you loathe yourself this much. But I feel like I can’t stop the cycle that has already begun. Maybe I am nothing without it. Maybe if I didn’t hate, I would never have tried to do anything at all.

I have to say though, I no longer consider nothing to be a bad thing. I think it’s all just a matter of where you are in your head at the time.

It is none of my concern.

I must be under stress, but I’m so numb, I can’t tell. All I know is that I hate myself a lot more than I usually do, because I am completely out of control. I feel like it’s horribly obvious, that everyone must know, must have figured it out by now. I realize I am probably just being paranoid, but I can’t shake it. I’m fixated on this notion that I am failing. I must be breaking, but I’ve been too far in my own head to stop the degradation. Now I’m watching the fractures crumble further and I can’t bring myself to care. I’d rather the destruction. I’m too lazy to fix this anymore. I can’t care enough.

Apparently I am going to repeat myself over and over. I still haven’t figured out much logic to any of this. But if it makes me feel even slightly better, I suppose it is serving its purpose for now. 

I went in at five this morning. Naturally, for the entire restaurant, they scheduled all of three people to open. I spent the entire time running to the freezer prepping everything, which is the job no one is keen on doing. Somehow they expected me to have all of the food ready by the time we opened. Right. No one bothered to tell me this either. Somehow I got it all started up, late, but at least it got done. No one else showed up until later. One of my favorite people ended up doing grill (the meat and all of that), and for the whole of breakfast, I did all the orders alone until the changeover to lunch. I was incredibly grateful that she was there. She’s a bit like a mother hen with me, and she did several extra things that she didn’t have to just to help me out. I really wouldn’t have made it without her; she was one of the few people to even pretend to give a shit that I was having trouble keeping up with everything all on my own.

There’s no use getting pissed off about it anymore. They just don’t care, therefore I won’t care. It will get done when it gets done. I’m passed the point of giving a shit. Fuck them. Fuck their business. They aren’t worth this misery, and on second thought, neither am I. I don’t know where this will go, but I guess it’s not all that important.

The longest day.

I confess: today I feel like death warmed over. I got up this morning and actually had breakfast because I wasn’t sure if I’d be alright without it. I had no appetite yesterday, and didn’t eat all day while doing an 11 hour shift. I got home and more or less force-fed myself because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling like shit. There seemed to be a group consensus that we should all pack up and leave, and even one of my favorite shift managers was joking around with me that she was going to lock all the doors and let us go. We all were more sluggish than usual and constantly asking the time.

I was ready to just stop. I was so groggy and out of  it, that it was like operating half asleep. By the time I was four hours in, I knew I had to eat something or go home, so I went next door to the gas station and bought a bunch of sugary junk to try to revive myself rather than stand around the rest of my shift being entirely useless. I need not have worried, really, because we were all fucking up, dropping things and taking longer than usual. Thankfully our forgiving shift manager was just as exhausted (I worked with her at the other restaurant, so we were already acquainted).

I have the day off tomorrow, and I know all I am going to do is sleep. I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m so numb nothing makes sense anyway. I’m sure it will all get as blurred as this day already has, as all meaning already has. Nothing at all seemed to matter today. All I could think of was sleep and getting away, far, far away. And death. But when don’t I think of that?

Damn this apathy. Damn it to hell. I’ll sleep it off.

I truly wish I would just die. I am weak and want the world to do it for me, because most days I don’t have enough left in me to follow through like I need to so badly.

I don’t have to be anyone.

The food didn’t taste like anything this morning. I didn’t want it. I finally gave up at trying to make it sweet and settled for bland. I ate as much as I could convince myself. I want to be Raymond. I want Tyler to put a gun to my head and see if the next morning I have the best breakfast I have ever tasted. I want to see if I wake up that morning and don’t feel sorry. I want to see if something comes to me in the morning haze, a feeling maybe. I want to wake up and experience something besides dread and a wretched disappointment with myself. 

People are in love with an idea of themselves. Maybe in a sick way, I am too. That vision is supposed to propel us through life, make us desire improvement and recognition for our efforts. We all want to appear better than we are, and as a consequence this gives us motivation to live, to have the satisfaction of not only pleasing ourselves, but receiving praise from others for being so fucking incredible. A vicious little cycle.

But if you don’t care? If that vision is all about being the cruelest person? You must find enough satisfaction in what you selfishly get out of it. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t always selfish, in fact, come to think of it, conventionally this is less so than most visions. In truth, you have to settle for less than everyone else. You have to be alright with the fact that no one is going to understand it or appreciate it as you do.  You have to go it all alone and hope that the monsters that lurk aren’t going to feed off of you in the dark. Your suffering means nothing to anyone, and they will laugh at you and attack you until you are beaten down and weakened. No one will tend to your wounds. No one will regret that they tore that wretched thing down. Ugly things shouldn’t be suffered to live, after all.

And I am not ready. I leapt off the tower of humanity out of fear instead of faith, and there was nothing below to break my fall. I crashed all the way down, condemned to be a mangled heap of something that once was. In my eyes you either accept yourself (even if it is reluctant) or you spend a lifetime doing the job of killing yourself rather than allowing the world to do it for you.

Maybe the true escape is being nothing and having no qualms about it, not being burdened by what you’ve been taught or by whatever inadequacies you see yourself as being afflicted with. Maybe we are being stupid by trying for something that we all know is as pointless as anything else.

All we do is struggle constantly against who we are because we are so enamored with what we could be.

Murphy’s Law.

Unfairness knows no bounds, it appears. It’s been a nightmare week, if I’m to be completely honest. I think there was a brief period there where I forgot what it was like to have the foundations of my life be shaken relentlessly, until the world feels like it has no right side up. Moods I can handle. I can take the thoughts. Bring them. It’s the rest, the things that are out of my control yet not out of my control.

I go on autopilot so much that it doesn’t feel alien to me anymore. Even doing things that are enjoyable has this sensation of being automatic. Everything has lost its magic. It’s not new, it’s not fresh and exciting. It’s what it was yesterday. It’s what it was last week. It’s what it was a month ago.

It starts off with my quad needing to get repaired. Even the tires are being replaced. So lately I’ve been borrowing my father’s quad to go out with, if only to get myself out of the suffocation of the house. The other day I was going up a steep hill and went over a bush to discover that it had a huge boulder concealed beneath it. I centered up on it quite violently even though I was going pretty slow. I get to the top of the slope and stop to check out what damage I’ve done. At first glance it doesn’t seem like I’ve done anything too terrible besides scratch it up a bit, so I shrug it off but decide to cut the trip short just in case. I’m dreading getting home, because I know my dad will give me one of those looks and probably won’t talk to me without a grimace for several days—if he talks to me at all.

Naturally he makes a big to do about it. I go inside and decide that he can throw his tantrum by himself. He made it out like I’d done something horrible, but I know there’s a good chance he was just exaggerating. He tends to do that so that he can have an excuse to be angry with me and give a long speech about how nothing ever goes right for him because everyone else is always fucking it up. It’s not until a day later that I realize something is missing.

I’m hurrying to get dressed for work. I barely slept at all, having stayed up all night staring at the television screen in one of my typical bouts of numbness. Then I go to get the cellphone and can’t find it. I search everywhere, throwing things off of my messy desk in a huff. I don’t find it. I’m running late. I leave without it, using my dad’s instead.

I get home and he is in a mood. Hostile as fuck, and not someone I want to be near. I search through my room, search everywhere, and can’t find it. I begin to think that I lost it on a trail. It could have easily fallen out of my pocket. I spent the next few hours looking for it. It was hot and I was tired, but I looked. I managed to find the trail where I’d hit the rock, but it wasn’t there. I even walked down the entire hill, checking.

I get into this mode, the autopilot one. I misplace things perpetually. I forget what I’m supposed to be doing, or why. It drives me insane at times that I can’t keep up with the demand. I feel like I’m so barely alive.

Other things went wrong that I don’t even want to think about. The cellphone had to be shut off. That same day as I’m using my computer in the living room, it suddenly shuts off. I plug it into the power cord and leave it for several hours. When I come back it hasn’t charged. The battery gave out. Fortunately when I ordered it, one of the things I did not skip on was an extra one, so I used that. Just as an example of how stupid it can get, as I was taking the back panel off to replace it, the flashlight I went to use to better see where it was attached, flickered and died. I feel like everything I touch is doomed.

My cat is sick. He keeps shitting everywhere. He’s done it on the floor, in my chair, on my bed. This morning I went to go to sleep and as I start pulling the covers over me I let out a groan. It was the second time in a week that he’s decided to leave me a nice present. I was so tired I just removed the offensive material, balled up the blankets, then left them in the hall and snatched up a few clean ones from the cupboard. I only slept a few hours on the bare mattress, then threw myself a nice private tantrum.

And here I am now. I know I’m being a baby about it, but what does it matter? I haven’t said anything to anyone, just went on my merry fucking way as I always do. It seems like there is no point to say anything. My mother gave me an earful this morning, going on and on about how bad dad was yesterday and how he was saying all his bullshit about me.

The one thing that pisses me off the most about all of this, is that if it was just me on my own it would have been fine. I would have bought a new phone and not worried about it. I would have looked at the quad, my computer battery, and shrugged. But you can’t do that in my house. I can’t say how many times my dad has done something stupid with his phone. He’s left it on top of his car, lost it, dropped it in the lake…. And of course it is no big deal. I do it once and the world stops spinning to punish me for my simple little mistake. Gee, dad, so fucking sorry.

Over, done with, gone, I suppose.

Don’t look back.

I don’t like turmoil. I think everything is still building as it was before, going toward this insane climax that I am trying to ignore. Things keep stopping and starting, and I miss the sense of sameness that I am so used to.

The other day, my mom decided to have another of her moods. She gets distraught over things very easily. I don’t quite remember what it was (yes, it was that important), but she was bitchy when I got up, and she was pretty rude when I said good morning to her. I happened to be in an alright mood (a rarity for mornings), so it kind of irritated me, but I just thought to myself, “whatever” and rumaged around the kitchen, pointedly ignoring her. I could hear her talking on the phone, sounding tired and monotone.

She always changes her voice when she’s upset about something. She loses inflection and kind of croaks things out as though her throat is sore or something, and it really pisses me off for some reason. Maybe because I feel like that all the time but I don’t have to make a fucking show of it to get some sympathy.

So I decide I’m going to go out since it is relatively sunny, and I shower and get dressed and all of that, then go back into the livingroom to tell her that I’m leaving for awhile. She’s sitting there in front of her computer playing solitaire. Her head is bowed down and she’s crying. I can tell from across the room, even.

I say it flatly: “What’s wrong.”

It’s not even a question, because I know she’ll elaborate. She’s like that. If I do something that bothers her she goes straight to my dad with it, like a child that doesn’t know how to handle a problem. And she always sits there and prattles on about things to me, things she knows I don’t give a shit about. I have told her on more than one occasion that I could easily go into a monologue about the digestive system if she wants to keep talking about the price differences on food from different stores. We’re nothing alike; our interests are like night and day. Finding things in common is quite difficult, which is probably why we often fall into constant arguing.

Of course, she jumps on the chance to have someone to talk to. I know she’s lonely, but fuck. It’s not like anyone is going to pay me the same courtesy. She goes onto explain the whole thing, and blah, blah, blah. I’m standing there with a helmet in my hand, impatiently waiting for her to finish. I don’t bother to tell her that I’m missing half of what she’s saying because I have my headphones on. She doesn’t notice. But I make it obvious that I’m not in the mood to commiserate.

All I say is “Yeah.” 

She wants to say more, I can tell, but my heart is like ice to her. I don’t know what I feel toward her anymore. I’m a physical guardian, it seems, nothing more. It does not go beyond that much of the time, and it scares me a little. I should feel bad, try to help, but all I can think of is all the times I suffer alone, constantly. The ache of misery never leaves me, even if I am number than numb. I am not a savior, and I refuse to be hers. She can mourn her loss all she wants, I will not stand by her and offer my shoulder. Those times are gone.

I look at her. I sigh, more out of annoyance at being delayed than anything else.

I walk away.