frak this

i found out earlier today that my dad is heading off to iraq tomorrow. i've written about this before. (although that was all hypothetical conversations and such.) it's put me in a fowl mood for most of the day.

my dad is an asshole. which is where i get it from. (and from my mom, too.) it's also where i get my stubbornness from (ditto, again).

there's lots of shit that happened between my parents and me in my childhood and adolescence that i will not go into on here because it's so TMI and i'm sure you all don't want to read about it. (although i probably will end up lightly touching the subject for some color.)

one of the reasons i've put a moratorium on going home for the holidays is that the holidays end up turning into "let's cut down mando." i'm the black sheep of my family because i'm in my mid-20s, single, childless, and focus on my career and trying to make friends because looking to my family for support is like asking zeus for relationship advice.

yet my family seems to always be haunting me. in a way. maybe i'm too much like lorelai on gilmore girls in that maybe most of the decisions i've made in my life are based on how my family will respond. a negative reaction from them equals something positive in my life.

to most people it seems like i'm being largely selfish with the decisions i make. and i am. i lived too much of my life sacrificing shit for my family, with results that usually drove me insane. when i first decided to go back to school and move up to san marcos, it was a decision for me. it's what i needed. for once in my life, i was acting for me, and not for what my family needed from me. because my family will always need me to be the scapegoat, and that's not a role i'm willing to play for the rest of my life. at least with me present. i'm sure in my absence my family is still ridiculing and judging me, and i'm fine with it. they can judge all they want as long as i'm not around to hear it.

when i dropped right back out of school a couple of years later and went back to work full time, my family was there to tell me how much of a screw up i am. and maybe it's ok that some people expect that from their families and are ok with it.

but not me.

i have and have had too many friends over the course of my short life that are close to their family and their family supports them and all that good stuff. maybe this is why i tend to be drawn towards those who have close-knit families.

the fact that my family is only drawn together by spite and looking down on everyone else to make yourself feel better is reason enough to stay away.

the fact that most of my family insists that most of the traumatic events of my life never happened should be enough to convince others that i should stay away.

the fact that my parents can largely never be adults about anything themselves yet deign to tell me how to live my life to its worst (coming from a couple who cheated on each other and blamed me for it and a father that once told me that when i was married and had a girl on the side, i'd know what he was going through and a mother who openly invited her lover into our house and made out with him in front of me), well, i think my parenthetical just proved my point.

my father called me while heroes was on. i didn't answer it. i just now listened to the message, and he's saying he's leaving for iraq tomorrow (something my sister told me via a very cold sounding e-mail earlier today) and that i should call my mother so she's not so lonely all the time. and all i can think about is how she wouldn't be lonely if he would just fucking grow up and get a job that didn't involve him leaving the country and making his family deal with shit he won't deal with. and i don't plan on calling my mother, because all she's going to do is try and guilt trip me about being a horrible son because i never call and i let her husband leave the country again. (because i control what he does, apparently.) which results in my sister calling me and telling me what a horrible son and brother i am because i don't care what goes on with my father or mother. (and yes, i know that this will happen because it's exactly what happened a couple of years back the first time my dad went to iraq. and yes, i was to blame for it back then, too.)

and you know what? they're right. i am a horrible person. i'm a horrible person for trying to still find my identity after all these years and failing miserably at it. i'm a horrible person for not trying to comfort the people that made me doubt every single thing i have ever done. i'm a horrible person for trying to find something (or things or people) that makes me happy.

if all this makes me a horrible person, then i'm fine with that. and i could use another drink.