Selfish

I think that’s the worst insult one can deliver to me.  Selfish.  Self-centered.  Spoiled brat.  Any of the above.  Pick one.  Or don’t.  I’d rather you don’t.  It’snot some automatic turn off switch where if you say that to me I’ll never trust you again or something.  But after thinking about it this morning, I realized I remember so many different ocassions of being called selfish, or one of the other choices up there.  I’ve realized it’s not something I forget.

What brought this to mind, you ask?  At eight in the morning, not quite an hour ago, in other words, my mom comes storming up the stairs and into my room, demanding to know where Nana’s clothes are.  I said on the chair in the living room.  Last night, I’d taken them out of the washer and put them there because Mom’s clothes were still sluttering up the dryer, I didn’t feel like moving them, and she was already asleep.  So, I unfolded and laid out a few of the sweatshirts that were in Nana’s pile, figuring they’d dry on the chair overnight, washed what I had to wash, and ended up going to bed probably around four because I was watching Bufy episodes from the Box Set I bought.

Anyway, she runs rather loudly downstairs and then back up less than a minute later, demanding to know why they’re still wet and why I couldn’t put them in the dryer.  I start to say that her clothes were in the dryer and of course, she interrupts me and says yeah, she saw how I balanced them on top of the dryer.  I knew then that nothing I could say would be good enough, and just pulled my blanket over my head.  She slams my door a few seconds later and I hear her run downstairs.

And of course, after that, I’m awake.  But I tried to settle back down and get more sleep.  Unfortunately, Mike’s bird started squawking just then.

What got me on the selfish thoughts, though, was that if I tried to bring this up in any context later on, she’d probably start in on how “I do little enough around here, why can’t I do something for my ‘grandmother?'”  (And I don’t care what anyone says, she is not my ‘grandmother.’  My ‘grandmother’ lives in Washington.  Those clothes are my Nana’s.  It makes a bloody difference!)

And I don’t know why, but the general train of thought my mind went on got me really upset.  So now, instead of being hppily asleep for at least two more hours at this point, here I am, awake and crying.  And I hate that.  I hate that I’ve always heard from them how good my life is, and how much I have compared to others.

Heh.  Good life?  Yeah, I freely admit, my parents are better than Jason’s.  Yeah, we have more money than a lot of other families.  Yeah, we have a better house than a lot of other people.  Yeah, that house is filled with a bunch of sh*t that none of us really need, but that we keep for some unexplained reason.

I do freely admit that I have a lot more than some other people have.  But what I lack makes me ungrateful for it, I suppose.  Or maybe not ungrateful.  Just . . . wanting what I don’t, and seemingly can never, have.

I used to talk about how I wished I was a kid again, so I could crawl into Mommy and Daddy’s laps and they would make everything all better.  But not too long after saying that did I realize that . . . they never did that for me.  They never hugged me and told me things would be okay, that it wasn’t my fault, that things would get better.  No.  They blamed me.  They blamed me for the situation beocming what it was, saying how could they do anything if I didn’t come to them first thing?  My mom fed my insecurities about my weight and my face.  When there were kids at school drawing pictures of a huge balloon with a head, hands, and feet and saying it was me, where was my mom?  Back at home, saying I should lose ten pounds.  Where was she when the kids were making fun of my face, saying my ‘horrible acne’ looked like one of the moon’s crater’s?  (And of course, it was added that it would have to actually be a crater, since I was the size of said moon.)  She was at home, telling me to go up and wash my face, I was “breaking out like everything!”

I took these classes at this modeling place called Barbizon, down in Redbank.  I got into the entire thing because I think it was more of an acting school, than modeling.  By the time I knew I was wrong, my parents had given the unrefundable check in.  Anyway, we covered things on faces and facial care one week.  The woman looked around the room and I remember thinking she was gonna single me out as th one person who had such horrible acne.  But she didn’t.  In fact, she said that no one there seemed to have a major problem with zits.

I was surprised, to hear the least.  I mean, couldn’t she see my face?  Didn’t she see all the pimples covering it?

It took me years to believe, but there weren’t any for her to see.  Just the ones in my imagination.  Because I’ve seen pictures of me back when my mom was saying how horrible I looked and all that.  I had a pimple here and there.  Pretty normal face reaction for someone with oilier skin than normal.

I remember, when I was younger, Dad and I used to take random trips over to Perkins.  They didn’t have the fence up at that point, and the music store was still there.  So we could take the back way and go through this little alley.  We did that and for some reason, I think beofre we even reached the restaurant, we got into an argument.  And I remembered taking off running back towards the house.  I looked back once to see him chasing me.  Him, back-thrown-out-when-I-was-five-now-can-barely-move man, running after me, a nine or ten year old.

Then, another argument, I’m not sure how old I was during this one, but he had a broom and actually swung it at me.  He hit the beam that’s at the top of the stairs.  The indents are still there.

Then there was the time when I was thirteen.  He decided he didn’t want me slammed my door anymore, so he took it off.  Kept the door down in the garage for about three days.  I remember that happened around July 4th, because Joyce threw her anual BBQ, and I was afraid I wasn’t gonna be able to go.  The cardboard boxes I’d flattened and set up as a barrier wouldn’t keep the cats out of my room and away from Peti, the cockatiel I had at the time.

I’d like to find anyone who can tell me he didn’t deserve that slap I delivered . . .

And then there are the littler things.  Mom always promised me she’d make me a pair of Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, like the ones in Washington that I always played with as a kid.  She told me she’d make them when I was six.  I’m still waiting for those dolls . . .

And Dad, he always claimed he’d make me a cardboard castle.  One where I could put my dolls, or Maple Town figures, and it would be three feet tall, with floors and rooms, and all this other great stuff.  Yeah, never seen that one either . . .

And yet, despite that, they always claim to me that they won’t do someting for me, unless I do something for them.  Like, I gave my mom

a sweater months ago to fix the sleve of.  I bet you if I bring that sweater up in the next day or two, she’ll say that she’ll fix it if I do “what I said I was goingto last weekend.”  Despite the two having nothing to do with one another.  That’s just how it is.  Despite her saying that she’d do something, if she can hang it over my head that I have to do something first, she does.

Heh . . .  Oh, yeah.  I had a good life.  Right.

I am not selfish.  I hate that term more than any other.  It does make me question how well a person actually knows me if they can call me that.  I’ve worked very hard to get away from the, “you do something for me and I’ll consider doing something for you,” mindset.  I don’t just do something for someone else because there’s a benefit in it for me.  I do it because I honestly care.  I give advice because I honestly care.  I warn, I inform, I do any number of things because I honestly care.

And then to be called selfish for whatever reason . . . it’s like the one saying it taking everything I’ve done, how far I’ve come away from becoming my parents, and saying that I haven’t succeeded at all.  That I’ll still become them, because how could I ever become anything different?  Anything . . . worthwhile?

I just can;t believe there are actually people out there who think that they’re so cool or nice or whatever.  I mean, okay, maybe I bragabout some of my dad’s accomplishments.  Maybe I like telling the stories he’s regailed to me.  But as people?  I freely state, my parents are flops.  They suck as people, but they’re somehow good enough actors to pull off that they’re such nice people to others.

I mean, their 25th anniversary, where Mary did just about all of the planning and we had it at the church chapel.  Everyone there was saying how nice they were and how giving and blah, blah, blah, and I was sitting there, ‘Yeah, if only you knew why she did this,’ or, ‘heh, if only you heard what she said about you.’  Or randomly remembering situationslike the ones I mentioned above.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do thoroughly acknowledge that there are a Hell of a lotta situations I could have been in where this one would seem like Heaven in comparison.  But just because I could have been in worse doesn’t make the scars from this one any smaller.

My worst fear in life is probably turning inot my mom.  I can already see signs of it happening.  And I don’t want it to.  But I don’t know how to stop it except by one thing.  Never having kids.  If I never have a kid, I can’t treat them the way my mom treated me and the way grandma treated her.  She wanted to break the cycle, but she didn’t succeed.  Well, I will.  By not having any kids to screw up.  I will not do that to a helpless human being who was unfortunate enough to be born through me.  I am not parenting material.

::Sighs::  Well, now that I’ve gotten all this out, am still crying, and have a headache from lack of sleep, I’m gonna end now before I really go on a pity party.

Yeah, that’s the sad thing.  ^^This^^ was just ranting.