02 XII 2001 - 13:59 - tristitia8

Ooh, it's December. And it's raining outside and I have a couple of papers due on Monday (don't I always?) but I don't feel like writing them because I made two discoveries today.

1) I disappoint my father. He will no longer trust me.

2) No one really likes my company.

I don't think he meant it quite the way it sounded to me, but it hurts just as much as if he had. See, he told me this morning that he wouldn't come up and knock on the door of my piano teacher's house when he came to pick me up. I knew this, so I was going to leave, but then the person scheduled after me started to talk about his school days, and I haven't yet figured out how to politely remove myself from such conversations, especially when I enjoy them, you know? And it's weird, because my father seems not to understand that time-sense is not a fixed thing, that when you are waiting for someone five minutes can seem an eternity, and when you are talking with someone about an interesting subject, twenty minutes can go by in what seemed to be five.

And I don't know what I expected when he came up and knocked on the door. I don't think I expected an "oh, it's all right, you're young, you forget these things sometimes." I know better than that, because he did have a valid point - he told me, and I didn't do what he had asked me to do. That much I believe is my fault. Actually, I believe it's all my fault, that if I were better I could have ended that conversation, that if I didn't exist none of this would be happening (and how could it be?) But what I didn't expect was to be yelled at, to be told that never again would he trust me to do anything on my own, to be told over and over again that I had wasted everybody's time, to have muttered at me over and over again tao yen, a phrase in Chinese that defies my translation abilities but is as best as I can make it "you annoy me to the point of hatred." Or perhaps "you are odious to me."

And I wish it didn't hurt me this much, but it does, because I love him because he is family, because I respect him because he is not only my elder but also my father, because in my world blood and age combined matter so much, and it hurts as much as they say a lanced bubo did. It wouldn't hurt so much if I didn't believe that some - no, all - of it is true, if I could understand why people want to be around me, if I could feel that maybe it wasn't all my fault that I spaced out, that I couldn't remove myself from a simple conversation when the person I was talking to would have understood. If I could feel that I am a good son, that I am a good child, that I am not a disappointment and that there are things I do that are worth something in this world and that my parents can look upon me with pride, it wouldn't be this way. If I could feel that I was anything other than a waste of time, space, and good material, it wouldn't hurt so.

But it's not that way. And it does wound me, it wounds me more than I could say to him for reasons that I know I could never tell him because he would laugh and things would go back to the way they were except he'd know now what to ignore, what to dismiss, and I'm too wrapped up in myself to see why he looks at me that way when he sees that I'm crying quietly, and almost contemptuously says something equivalent to "Why on Earth are you crying?" It's more like "What need is there to cry?" but that doesn't matter because the subtext is always the same: you cry over everything except no, I don't. I'm usually better at cauterizing any wound so it's not as raw and i will. not. cry. but no, some things still reach deeper than deep and can pluck at me. And I know them too well and at some level my family does as well, or how would they be able to wound me - how would I be able to wound myself - so well? And what they can't or don't see, the tightening of my entire body, the shrinking within myself - that would tell them all they need to know.

There are some things you don't need words for.

But how to explain them when words are called for, I don't know.

And so I retreat, crawl into my closet, shut the door behind me, and revel in bolts of silence, soft darkness, the cloth that surrounds me; there's just enough space in there for me to sit if I curl up in the fetal position, and so I do, because I want to see nothing for a while. And the ache in the chest gets worse, and my breath grows hotter inside me, and the tears come again, and this time I don't have to swallow my sobs and I can breathe as raggedly and as loudly as I want to. Because I still believe that I am nothing, nothing at all, and once that's in your mind it's easy to think that you're nothing at all to anyone. And people contradict me but it's so many words, and words can't stave off a constant need for validation, not for long, not until I can provide some of it for myself to carry me through the times when I can't get it from other people. And I yearn for a touch to tell me that I'm not so bad - communication without words, again - and I know that that is so much folly, that I will never be satisfied, that it's too much to ask.

And I've got to fight my own battles but - what if I don't want to, what then, what's left for me?

And I think maybe that if my sisters were home, they'd understand, and that comforts me for a bit until I tell myself that they'd probably be just as disgusted with my inability to get anything done, my lack of focus, my inability to hold anything in memory and my terrible awkwardness around people. And even if it's not true, I'll guarantee you there's someone in my immediate family who will not forgive me those faults, who will not let me forget them.

And I want to disappear into something else, because I'm that one who won't let myself forget, and I want so desperately to be consumed, to be made better, except - again vain hope, because I still have to live with myself.

They don't sell cures for what I feel in neat little pills. This, I think, is a life's work, or at least a good part of my life.

And so, back to where we began, in stalemate:

1) I am nothing both to myself and to the people around me. Even you; I'm but a construct of the computer as it stands.

2) My father will no longer trust me. I disappoint him.

3) I cannot continue to live with myself.

4) Death is no solution.

So I shall continue to rage.

And this way lies madness...

nervus, i m. sinew, tendon; figuratively strength, energy, vigor; string especially of an instrument; a strap, a fetter

And hell, I know my father loves me. I love him, too. It's just, sometimes... doubt springs up so easily in a fertile mind.

I want to be held, but we don't do that in my family, not when I was younger, and certainly not now. So where do I go?