This is Personal

I've always thought that as my life continued I would somehow get more normal, I would get better, I would find some acceptance and fit in somewhere. This isn't just something I thought would happen, it is something I want, and probably need, to happen. This isn't something that has happened, though.

I was normal once, as normal as someone in my family can be, probably.. But that was probably 5th grade or so and then the trouble began in 5th grade. I've been thinking about this lately and I'm not really sure why.. as if remembering the things that happened would somehow cause some triggered release and make me "normal" again, and able to deal with people.

Somewhere in this point of my life I acquired a great hate for most people, and somehow I just couldn't stand things changing. And I haven't changed. I have thought and hoped I would, but obviously that will not help things. I must actively do something, and I thought I had been slowly catching on to some things. But that is not the case.

If you ask me, my 6th grade year is defined by screaming, yelling, fighting, angry words. Me in angry backlash about something I did not understand; me becoming my mother's pet and mimicking her every word and thought, no matter what she told me. This should not affect me so much but this period in my life obviously has, as much as I don't want it to, and I don't know why I am talking about it here other than just to talk about it and the fact that no one really reads this.

I became a little carbon copy of my mother, someone who I have now found to be a detestable person. There are so many things wrong I do not know where to begin.

I learned hate and intolerence, automatic distaste for what met my eye. I learned to judge just from what other people said about someone else. My mother would tell me all sorts of things about my father, and all these stupid things are ingrained into me, whether conscious or unconscious. She would make him do everything around the house-- yardwork, dishes, cleaning the living room, but would get mad--- and I remember this, I remember this from 4th grade or younger--- she would get MAD because he organized things and moved things in a way which he understood but he apparently didn't. Around my 6th grade year, she met a man named Howie and decided he was more worthwhile than my father, and therefore she had to come up with some horrible reasons to get a divorce so she could fool around with this man.

She trained me to be the speaker for all her hateful ideas and I, the trained, unthinking little kid I was, began a shouting match. I would stand there and yell these things at my dad, whether they were true or not I don't even know now but I said these things even though he was and always has been the one working hardest for things to be ok, and the one who is always kicked down lowest but somehow is still clinging around somewhere on the periphery of life and hoping someday that things will get better. This is what I did, to a man who didn't deserve it; because I myself did not understand what was going on, but was led to these misbeliefs.

I remember this, I was told this by my mother, when I was that young-- who says this aloud, much less to a little kid?? -- "he was never anything special in bed." She said that to me.

I hate things that are said to me or that I read or hear that I KNOW will always be in my head as something I heard and didn't want to know or hear, or something that I will never forget because it was something that ashamed me or something that I was upset that I did... Simple things even, like I walk down the street and I see someone but I happen to give them a bad look just because I am grumpy, and I just remember glaring at this person for no reason even though I shouldn't have.. Or I accidnetally slammed the door in someone's face instead of holding it for them; I walked out in front of a car when I should have paused and let them drive on past. I feel bad about everything but there are certain poignant things I can't even let go of for no reason at all and I can't stand it. I didn't want to hear my mom say that about my dad anyways, and it was the most inappropriate thing-- and the thing is if I mentioned it today she probably wouldn't even remember it.. so WHY do I?

I never, never had normalcy, I guess, from this point on. I was called upon to fight or I was called upon to do all of the chores at my mother's house once my father was kicked out. Somehow in this tug of war, my father got nothing, he didn't get a house, or anything. Somehow he was expected to make do on his two jobs which had recently become just one job, he was expected to find somewhere to live and he bought us all new furniture for that place,too. Somehow. And he was then, as a final blow, expected to pay my mother monthly. How she could reasonably expect this, and how she continues to expect this, I can never understand and will never know. How that could even be possible for my father, a college dropout, to afford that on his measly salary. And she working at the hospital.

I don't know, what would have happened, if I had not been conceived. I am the only reason my parents got married in the first place, because my father did the right thing. Hasty shit like that was not bound to turn out well and that would be an ovcious marker in why their marriage lasted barely over 10 years. That is why any expectation of normalcy was no longer a possibility, and what led to the events described as well as many others which have faded into the periphery of my life.

I never, therefore, had the genuine ability to learn from educated people what life was about. My mother stumbled through high school half drunk (so I gather from things she has told me or my grandmother has told me), therefore she obviously did not accumulate a great wealth of knowledge nor secondary education. My father went to college for one year for architectural landscaping or something like that, but being from a considerable family (in the way of children) did not have money to pursue his education. I only just found out that my paternal grandparents both attended UW-Madison in the 50s or whatever... With these things in mind, I did not know what education was. My father, probably, taught me hard work -- certainly not my mother-- and for some reason I picked up skills to do well in school through middle school, despite my dislike for, and ignorance of, math.

The point is, I didn't have it instilled in me, really, especially by my early mentor, my mother. I had no older siblings, I was virtually blind and following others. I felt lazy all the time and obviously didn't need to dedicate much time to school or anything else. But I was not, either, taught to aim high. No one ever said that I would go far or I could do anything, I never knew of possibilities of things like that. I didn't know what it meant to have a college education and therefore have a job of substance. My mother was a desk clerk as a hospital and my father split his time between a gas station and a Maytag store, repairing washers, dryers and other appliances. These weren't high-praise jobs, and my only spark on interest was go-to-work day in 3rd or 4th grade when I went to the hospital and played with human lungs and such; and later, in middle school, going to my uncle's work at DoIT, where I saw new things with computers and so on.

I wasn't shown a path of capability. What happened was this. I found throughout middle school, a similar pattern developing. My mother had made my father do all of the household chores. But now, I was the new chores-person at her house, now that the divorce had occurred. She attempted to make me do everything around the house except for laundry and usually cooking (I sometimes had to do that as well). As soon as this pattern emerged, and I realized that this did not mesh with the laziness I had learned from her (as well as a developing social disorder in the form of me becoming obsessed with websites and the internet) I began to ignore her orders and demands. This led ot epic clashes. I turned 13, she told my ped. doctor I should see a therapist. Out of nowhere, she told this man I needed a therapist. I was upset and begger her not to do that to me. She was just pissed I wasn't doing everything she wanted me to, but I recognized the pattern and recognized a growing evil prescence. I didn't want to deal with that and somehow I evolved a notion that I had to beat my mother. I had to better her. I wasn't going to almost fail out of high school. I had to somehow make it to college.

That became my plan, although I didn't know what I was doing or why. And that is where I am now. I am in such a state of hopelessness now that I can barely think of what to do next. I learned bullheaded determination but nothing else from my days in high school. I learned not to be lazy because things had to be done, and I learned to detest everything my mother stood for, laziness, weakness and a number of other flag words that I have used again and again. She never encouraged me. She would try, and say some half-hearted things but deep down she was just jealous and that would cause her to explode on me and start fights over nothing but her jealousy that I was going somewhere, even if I didn' tknow where.

All I learned was to beat her, somehow. I didn't learn what to do, or how, and now here I am, indecisive on having made it to college. I didn't learn hard work, so now I sit here amazed that I have to do work, and amazed that there are possibilities beyond what I knew growing up. I didn't have that expanded horizon a bunch of people here have. I have never been told I can achieve. I have always tried for some reason to go somewhere, but it was only a competition to beat my mom. It wasn't with the recognition that I could do something useful with my life, and now I am compltely unable to believe that notion, much less act on it. I keep pushing through work and so on but I can't find a reason, most times, to put in extra effort. It wasn't eingrained on me, and I don't know how to do it. THis and many other things I have realized and I cannot use them as excuses, but I have tried teaching myself. I have tried, but it is difficult when you don't know the nature of that which you are trying to teach yourself-- and that has been where I have failed. I don't have, still, the level of self-discipline necessary to do what I want to do, to somehow buckle down and pass all the classes I need to pass in order to be able to evenAPPLY to the kinesiology program.

That's the main thing this whole discussion comes down to. I haven't been prepared at all by any challenges I face, but for what I have taught myself- and that being very little. I still can't stand weakness, and I can't stand laziness. In the past year living separated from my mother, I have started to lose the determinations I made while living under her tyranny, and I have forgotten some of those rules and the tolerance I learned from her extreme levels of INtolerance. I've started to drift back towards being her copy rather than her opposite. And I can't let that happen. I don't wnat that, and I can't live like that. But it seems to easy, right now, to just cop out. So easy to just give up now that my defeat seems to be in hand, to just back out. I can't stand seeing lazy bums everywhere who don't work for anything, but it seems so easy just to become that. Become just like my mother, a little leech. But how can I do that? There is always something that won't let me quit, and that is why I cannot understand lazy bum people who don't work for anything, or who just don't want to. I don't want to do anything. I would rather sit around and read or something all day. But I don't. I sit here and put myself through torture, which wouldn't be so much torture if only I knew how to teach myself some discipline.. discipline I was never taught when younger. Instead I was taught it was ok to do wahtever I want. I was never shownt he capabilities of what could be done.

I can not believe even now that I am capable of things such as actually affecting others by becoming an athletic trainer or even an archaeologist. These things are impossible to imagine: me, out there, actaully doing something. How can that happen? I see this same thing with running. How can I run something like a 2:23?? I am an average person who is not meant to do anything other than average things. That is what I was taught to be, and that is why I am having a lot of trouble trying to be higher than average to pass these classes and get where I want to be. I'm trying to learn, to teach myself, but its just not working anymore. I was taught to be an average person, a do-nothing, and now I'm trying to be something more than that. It isn't working, I'm quickly getting defeated by things too complex for me to understand in my simple mindset, and I fucking hate it.

I've finally found one direction I want to go in, something I really truly want to do, and my way is being blocked by silly filler classes that are required but in actuality have no direct use in the field I am interested in. I don't know what else to do, and it feels completely hopeless. I just once want to have things figured out and have something good working for me.