currently: huh?

*listening to Apoptygma Berzerk's Backdraft*

I just finished up my com paper. Eh, it sucks, but it'll do.
Leave for class in 10 minutes.

I continue to work on the webpages. I touched up the colors of fonts and such yesterday. How delightfully blah.

I was reading over what Fox wrote and sympathizing with the whole family bit. Each American family is dysfunctional. Some more than others. She's the older sister in her family. I'm the younger sister in mine. There are no similarities in our relationships with out sisters, but it got me thinking, anyway
My sister is four years older than me. In school, she was far ahead of me because I missed the set age to enroll in kindergarten because my birthday was too late or some shit. Then I was held back in the 4th grade by my dad. (oddly, my grades sucked the second time around, too. Yet in the 5th grade, I never made anything below a C. I was even an Honor Roll student. And it had nothing to do with my habits--they hadn't changed at all from the year before)
So, anyway, my sister was far ahead of me in school. Mentally, she thought she was my superior, too. So superior, it seems, that losing her virginity at 14 must have sprung her right into adulthood. At least, in her mind.
She never looked out for me as most older syblings feel obligated to. When she was home, she disrespected my mother and me. I'm not exactly buddy-buddy with my mom, but I never verbally abused her like my sister did.

Ah, time for class. I'll write more later.

Okay, it's later.
Where was I? Ah, yes, my sister played a very miniscule part in my life. So tiny, in fact, that I hardly think of her as my sister at all but more as that wretched girl who always treated me like shit.

The rest of the family?
Well, there's an episode of Oprah waiting to be taped. My mother's mind is a psychological nightmare. For some unknown reason, she was reared more by her aunts than her own mother and father. Even my father isn't sure why, but he suspects some sort of abuse. Alcohol or otherwise. All my dad remembers about my mother's dad is that he was an asshole. I never met him. He died before my time. Same for my maternal grandmother. Before my time. I knew my aunts. They seemed normal enough to my child mind. They died when I was too young to really get to know them.
My mother had married before. I think her first husband's name was Kerry. I'm not even sure of that much. I don't even know how long they were married. =/
So, my dad moved in to the room my dad rented from the aunts and met my mom. They were together four years before they had my sister. I guess things must have been going okay. Four years and two miscarriages later, I was born. Sorry, Dad, no sons for you. I didn't start to recognize that something was wrong until I was four or five years old. They divorced a few years later. Dad got custody.
My mom told me a while ago that she was still hurting from that. Her two daughters stripped from her. All I could do was purse my lips and nod. I was never one of those children that wanted my parents to get back together. I knew that it could never work out, even at seven.
I have a few hazy memories of the fights they'd had when I was a toddler. Some of them I'd like to wash away with bleach.
My mother never displayed any affection for my sister or me. Never hugged us or kissed us, except for on Christmas. Never once in our lives so far has she told us that she loves us. She tried to buy our affection with toys and clothes. Great rewards for being a child in a two houses. Didn't work.
As a result, I've never been able to talk to my mom about anything. I get this ache in my chest every time I think about her. I have it now. I know that her idea of family was warped by her own childhood. Sometime in my childhood, she was committed to a psychiatric ward. I'm unclear as to why, but I'm sure it was either a breakdown or a suicide attempt that put her there. It happened twice. Same hospital, same kids left in the dark as to why. I know that my mother was and still is a deeply disturbed human being. Her depression is focused on blaming others for her life.
She once revealed to me years ago that she never wanted to have children, but my father did want kids, so she provided them. I think she knew she couldn't be a mother.
Around ten years ago, she remarried. She had a son by a man I thought had a few screws loose (and I was in no way comparing him to my father. The man was literally not all there. He had broken his neck in a car wreck long before he met my mother, and apparently it still affected him). They were a couple of troubled people. My little brother seems the perfect product of this marriage. He's not all there, either. His father and my mom separated soon after. She was committed to a mental hospital once again, and this time I knew why. She'd threatened to kill herself, holding a kitchen knife to her stomach. Her husband was the one that called the police. Least he had that much sense. Skip a few years into the future, he's found dead in his apartment (they were separated, but still married). His body had been deteriorating for a few days, but they believed he had died from either a stroke or one of the seizures he was prone to have since his car wreck. My mom had him exumed from his grave to have him autopsied just to be sure. I think she really had to see him with her own eyes to believe that he was dead. She bought a new plot for him and had him buried in our town (he'd been living in his home town--hence the reason his body wasn't found for a while). I didn't mourn him. He'd always been nice to me, but I just didn't know the man.
My half-brother is ten now. Still has the intellect of a five year old. My mother took advantage of me when I was a young teenager and used me as her babysitter quite a lot. I resented it. I knew less about mothering than she did, and I was a fucking KID. Finally, I saw the only way to get out of being used was to distance myself from her as my sister had done. I stopped coming over to her house. Didn't work too well. She started coming over to my dad's house. We're the only family she has. Does that mean we're obligated to accept her? Because she wasn't a real mother to me, I didn't feel any obligation to put up with her. Somehow, she's gotten it through her thick skull that she isn't welcome to just show up whenever she likes. She still calls sometimes, and I'll go over to her house--the house I grew up in--just to visit and talk.
It's impossible to communicate with her because of the psychological barriers she's built over me. I still get a knot in my throat when I try to talk to her about my childhood, my problems, her problems, or anything important. She's shown me all too well that she isn't sane enough to understand that hers is not the only heart in this world. And I'm afraid that if I tell her anything about myself, she'll latch on to me like a parasite and blame everyone but herself.
She's not entirely to blame. I'm aware that my problems originate inside my head. I think too much. I started doing that in the fifth grade. And it's not as if I was thinking about worldly matters or things which could progress my education, oh no. I was thinking about ideology, theology, philosophy, and logic. I thought about killing myself as early as six years old. Maybe younger. I can remember my first suicide attempt. I laid down in the middle of the road at a busy intersection. I had guts back then. If my playmate's mom hadn't pulled me outta the way, those guts would have been on the pavement.
I've never expressed to anyone exactly what I feel on a daily basis. I can only describe it as a heaviness in my chest. My dad's clueless to how emotional I am. The only time I've cried openly in front of him, other than when hearing the news of his mother's death, was when he told me he planned on moving to Florida and taking me away from everything I knew. Well, my little breakdown was enough to make him stay here and possibly ruin his chance at a better job. Bummer. My mom's never seen me cry as an adult.... unless she saw me cry at my sister's wedding. I couldn't help it. I suddenly got all sappy, thinking, "She's happy, and I'm happy that she's happy, even if she is a bitch!"

*sigh*
I'm very repressed. That's obviously why I write so much. Being emotional all the time is a burden. Being a pisces on top of that is a curse. I feel everything. EVERYTHING. Even if it's on TV. I cry when people are in pain. I cry when people are ecstatic. But I haven't been able to cry for myself in a few years. Repressed, I tell you.

Aw, Hell, I've rambled enough for one entry.