What a fucking mess
July 18, 2009 / 3:02 p.m.
I'm still hungover and it's 3 pm. Weird thing is, I didn't drink that much. Mixing wine and liquor? I don't know, I think the weather is catching up on my body more than anything else. I physically don't have the constitution to be able to go through heatwaves like this and come out the other side feeling fine. My head starts to get groggy, I feel slightly off balance, I'm always dehydrated... I just feel out of it.
Anyway, here I sit, having stared at the computer screen for the last 6 hours. I need to move soon. Was gonna go down to Belmont and drop off my overdue items, than go over the Fred Meyer and read the Times without paying for it as I sit in the deli section.
It's funny, because everytime I try to sit there and read, I end up just watching people walk by and trying to crack the human code that never comes through a series of random people walking by for 20 seconds.
The wedding last night was a mix of awful, with little bits of moments that were nice.
It's funny, too, because there was literally no way that it could have come off as being a comfortable and enjoyable experience. My dad saw to that. They way he introduced me to Joan, to her family... How i went to a lunch and there they were embracing and I didn't even know who she was and her son's showed up and started eating with us and I didn't even know if they were family...
And then the proceeding months where I would go over to his house and know with a certainty that some incredibly, inexplicably ridiculous form of miscommunication was going to happen, resulting in an eventual drunken christmas where I charged out the door without saying goodbye for the tenth time probably, and stumbled to the bus drunk, got off on Clinton, and tripped and banged my head softly on the sidewalk stumbling along to Sarah's door.
You can't do stuff like this and expect it to go over well in the future.
I sat there last night, looking around, and knew hardly anybody. And those that did know me, passingly glanced at me, made niceties, and pleasantly moved along after getting the asshole vibe/ the I don't want to be here vibe, from me.
And some family members I can't even deal with. Aunt Cathy... I haven't seen her 14 years, and we're at a BBQ a few days ago, and I know she's a wignut (my dad has amply warned me about that), but within 20 minutes she starts spouting out this Poor-hating, healthcare reform hating, Obama-hating, Rush Limaugh/Sean Hannity republican garbage, and I want to throw up right there on the spot. Why would I have any interest in engaging someone who talks like that? I don't care if you're my family, If you have no respect for yourself and me by being that willfully fucking stupid and ignorant, I'm not gonna waste me time. Let me know when you plug the hole in your head that your brains are falling out of. Sorry if that's harsh. Your fault.
I didn't even introduce Sarah to Grandma last night. She sat there, withered, at a table on the other end of the courtyard during the reception, bent over and slowly picking at her food weakly gripping a fork, and I just watched her out of the corner of my eye and remembered all the bullying and harassment that she's subjected me to since I was literally a toddler, and just figured what the fuck is the point?
I hate that I feel that way about a close family member, but she did EVERYTHING in her power to make our relationship to each other miserable, and if she's offended I didn't come over with Sarah, she can look in the mirror and think back. Too bad she'd be patently incapable of ever doing that.
And what for? Because she still holds a grudge against my mom for leaving her son...
Anyway...
One particularly perverted thoughts that kept running through my mind was the most violent event between me and my dad. I kept seeing my dad put on the charm show last night, as he's so great at... having people eat out of his warm, welcoming hand. I kept thinking, what would they do if they could have witnessed the time we were sitting on a couch watching TV 15 years go, that time... me, Erik, Jason, John... and dad comes up with a plate of food to sit besides us, trips on a backpack on the floor, spills his food, and immediately goes into a rage, grabs it up off the floor, and picks me to start throwing it at... flinging it at my face and cussing.. stuffing it down my shirt... insulting again and again. And it wasn't even my backpack, it was Erik's, that he tripped over... but I was who to throw the food at. I was it. And there was literally a profile of a head on the blinds that were behind my head where the food spatters rested.
I wore a suit that was rented... the shoulders were huge and shapeless, and I looked like I had just come from a junior prom.. cuffs down to my knuckles when my arms were straight down. So fucking embarrassing. And I got charged $70 to rent that piece of shit suit; and the pleasure of looking like a troll on this sacred day.
There's nothing to say. What an experience. Life is such an experience.
I refuse to be a phony asshole, though, so some people probably came away thinking I was being just an asshole. What's he have his ass in a knot for? Can't he be happier?
And I'd be an asshole if I tried to explain to somebody the history of my family... every little bitter detail... and how it effected me as a human being. And I have no control.
I can't do anything about it. There is nothing anybody can do about their past. You just have to grin and bear it, be a man, stew and hate yourself a little more until you can finally leave, and everybody else just goes away... forgotten again. But at least I can respect myself today.