Resolving Issues.

I’m having computer issues right now. Two weeks ago I clicked on one of the top results of a Google image search and was immediately bombarded with a barrage of popups that seem to have deeply infected my computer with Spyware and Adware, and said Spyware and Adware seem to have in turn infected my computer with an array of viruses. I immediately ran Spybot Search and Destroy, Lavasoft Adaware, my computer’s virus scanner, plus a free online virus scanner. I deleted the couple of infected files that they found and thought that I was finished.

Oh, no.

For the past week, I’ve been getting an attack of popups advertising everything from Absinthe to Zoophilia. The popups are all in Internet Explorer, which I never, ever use. My array of security programs, all of which are constantly updated, found nothing. I threw a fit.

I did a little bit of research this morning, and decided to scrap all of my current programs and just start over. I uninstalled the whole McAfee suite — Firewall, Virus Scan, Spam Killer — and installed ZoneAlarm’s Firewall, Avast’s Virus Scanner and Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware. Between Avast and Microsoft (which, despite its name, is a surprisingly good program) I found OVER THIRTY virus and spyware infected files on my computer. How many of them were from this recent attack and how many of them have been lurking for months, I don’t know. I completely cleaned up my computer and so far I’ve yet to see a single popup. With any luck, this new array of programs will keep me better protected than McAfee did.

I’m also having life issues right now. Specifically, the issues are with my mother.

As many similarities as she and I have, the things that are most important to us are completely different. She cares so much more about what other people think than I ever have, and it’s starting to cause a conflict. She measures her happiness by the standards of others — I don’t give a damn what they think of me.

I disappoint her. She won’t admit it, but it’s obviously true. She wants a daughter who is successful and renowned, intelligent and respected, thin and beautiful. She hates it that I’m a broke, chubby, struggling artist. I’ve spent my entire life trying to be what she wants me to be, and it’s overwhelming. She gave me lectures when I was twelve about getting fat — which for the record I wasn’t; I was just growing boobs — so I threw up everything I ate for three years to try to make her happy. I didn’t want to go to college, but I never said so because I knew that it was expected of me, and then instead of telling her that I wanted to leave, I intentionally failed my classes so that they’d kick me out. I fought with her for two years to get her to “let” me to move out, and once she finally accepted that I am going to be an actor no matter what, she immediately started to daydream about me winning awards and going on talk-shows. Whenever I get cast in something, I have to embellish it for her because I know that all she wants to do is go brag to her friends about her wildly successful daughter. Never mind that it’s just stupid dinner theatre.

I see the disappointment in her eyes every time I go home. She always hopes that I’m going to walk in the front door and be a size two. I used to starve myself for two weeks before each visit just so she’d tell me that I looked good, but now I just stand there in my size fourteen jeans and watch her face fall over and over again.

My mother put me on a diet. Let me rephrase this. My mother put me, her twenty-three year old daughter who lives in another state on a diet. She signed up for this service to have prepared food sent to my house, at a cost of nearly $300 a month. This is how badly she needs me to be thin.

I live my life to make me happy. I don’t worry about impressing people. I don’t care what they think. I don’t care how much money I make, or how many heads I can turn when I wear a short skirt. Happiness for me means having a tiny bit of space all to myself, a person to love, and a stage to sing on. I don’t need that space to be 3,000 square feet or cost $2,000 a month, as long as it’s warm and safe and mine. I don’t need that person to be an investment banker or a GQ model as long as he’s caring and kind and beautiful to me. And I don’t need that song to win a dozen statuettes or be sung in front of a million people a week, as long as I’m the one who gets to sing it.

It hurts. It hurts like a million tiny hurts all at once to know that my own mother so deeply wants me to be another person. I’ve been a wreck for weeks because while I don’t care about the impression I leave on the rest of the world, I desperately want the support from her, and I don’t think that I’m ever truly going to get it. She pretends, and she means well, but I know that she wishes I were different. And I’m never going to be different, not as different as she wants me to be.

I stood on the street corner last week waiting for the light to change, and I felt an overwhelming urge to step in front of a bus. It scared me. I scare me.

Something has to change.