It’s Hard to Please Assholes

“You work so hard to leave a place, and just when you’re about to, you find something worth staying for.” –Ethan Hawke in ‘Gattaca.’

So, here’s the weirdest thing. Straight out of Gattaca…

Today it struck me that maybe I could please everybody. Kate wants me to have more money and to stay in the area, my parents and family both have argued that I do not have enough to make it in California and that I should spend time earning more — though finding a temporary job was difficult but anyway. There are several people going to Cali in a year’s time, Nate is pretty sure, my younger brother might, Kortney I guess…and so staying around until then seemed to fit the plan.

I was the only one against it. Really really against it because I couldn’t handle my family’s constant arguing and incessant nagging. Had I gone when I really wanted to I would have had over and above the cushion that my oldest brother Dave, reputed by everyone to be the one to know things, said I’d need. Now it’s dwindled to about even because I do like spending money. Despite this, Jan. 1 or so was the launch point. **

Anyway, a bit of news has come my way that the SCVST is desperate for directors/actors and that the line-up of shows they’re doing this year is Chicago/Forever Plaid/Sisters of Swing and that I could be guaranteed prime roles in all of those shows if I chose to go back. Combine with that the chance to do ‘Sugar’ at UW-BC and to direct at the Red Barn, finished with maybe working as a substitute teacher or some part-time job and I could make myself some good money, add a few things to my resume, and enjoy my life again and make the people I thought wanted this happy.

But I guess I’m wrong. Neither my mother or father find it an exceptionally good idea to either go to California now, or to do what I’ve got planned…or at least not whichever one I decide on at anytime. Where does that fucking leave me?

Lost. That’s where. ** At the marked point my father stopped me and we had a conversation, or I should say he talked at me asking, pleading for me to talk to him about these things. But I couldn’t. He said he worried about me too much, but that doesn’t stop him from changing. He said he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he goes on the little he knows or assumes to know, but he won’t apologize for his ignorance nor will he trust that me, the one who does know, can handle myself. He tells me he wants me to get out on my own, but he ends that sentence with a demand to let him in on everything so that he can help me. I understand this last paradox at the same time I don’t. He wants me to help me get on my own, but he doesn’t want to help me do it my way. He wants to push me into whatever direction he decides and brush his hands off and say, “There. Great.” He complains about Dave and how much Dave has cost him and yet he stands firm in his constant yellings at me about how I won’t cost him the same.

He tells me to tell him at the very least he’s full of shit. But he won’t believe it if I did. He doesn’t know a god damn thing, and yet he won’t listen to a word I have to say. He wants me to talk, but only so he can tell me I’m wrong. He wants me to give up my secrets, so he can suck out the things he feels are inferior to who I should be. He believes that I’m the son to do it, but he doesn’t believe that I can do it. He’s a fucking asshole. And I hate him and every word that comes out of his mouth no matter how hard I try to like him.

I wish death upon him and I wish death upon me for that wish.

The fact is, I’m not the man he thinks I am anymore. For so many reasons. I’ve changed in a drastic way, and to most, a detrimental one. I don’t necessarily need the life I so longed for anymore, because I’ve found in myself pride and love. I love me. I love me so much. I know my own greatness, my wisdom, my experience. And the only thing that I don’t like in my life now, are all the people unwilling to love me as much as I do. And I don’t think anyone does.

This sounds weird and arrogant, but it really isn’t. It’s not really love I want anymore. It’s respect. I feel their eyes and their judgment and the reason I want to stay is not only for Kate and money but because a lot of these people actually respect me. I would dump Kate if she refused to like Nate, because Nate, despite all his flaws as a human, respects me so much that it makes me cry to think about it. I’ve never had that respect. I’ve been valedictorian, I’m a national merit scholar, I work so much harder than anyone thinks and give so much more passion and thought to the things I do, and the fact that I don’t go around parading it is the one major damaging factor that ruins it all. If I videotaped and recorded my worrying about people, my fretting over making them happy, my character examinations, my play analysis, my….ah fuck it.

I’ve told several people I don’t like talking anymore. People always told me I had a gift with words. But I can’t change a single person. I can’t get what I want, what I really want. No matter how hard I try, no matter what I say. I heal nothing, because I can’t get the offender to remove the weapon. And some nights I spend time exhaling deeply, trying to force out all the anguish and pain in my chest which is very very real to me. I can feel my disappointment, my depression, my anguish in my chest, like a thick black ball.

And I say these things and what do they do? Nothing. Nothing at all.