Not Much

It's funny, I feel busy 90% of the time, yet, when it comes to writing about anything in my life I draw a complete blank. I feel like "nothing" is going on and "nothing" has changed, but I guess that's just because I'm living it every day. I'm slowly untangling my dreads and my hair is soo long. I've lost all of my croche needles (I use them to pick my hair apart), so it's going to be a challenge to pull the rest out unless I take a trip to the Hobby Lobby. I hate that store.... it's like "Meijer: the Craft Store." You need a single pad of paper? Walk back to aisle 37, tell the hunting troll the password "needle-nose pliers" and he'll take you to the basement, dominate the labarynth, the 16th door on the left of the mouse with no teeth is paper, but the trip back will be tricky-- you need an old-lady disguise and four pairs of shoes under the size of a 6 men's. Do 13 jumping-jax, stand on your head, and run back through the labarynth. Once you've popped the 40 bubbles of shame, you may purchase your pad of paper at register 6 behind Betty, the silver fox who makes a weekly trip to buy 32 different boquets of fake flowers, while registers 1-5/7-23 will be closed 23 of the 24 hours the store is open. Ugh. But of course, I exaggerate and no store experience is NEARLY that easy. It only took us twenty minutes to buy milk, cheese, popcorn, and soup from Meijer: The Eternal Crusade last night, not counting the trek across the vast, windy parking lot. Oh well.

I miss having a dishwasher. I don't miss having to pay for water, but I definitely miss being able to load it up, put in the soap, turn the knob and let it whirl. These days, since we both work such weird sporatic hours, the dishes just tend to overflow out of the sink onto the counter and sometimes the stove. Call us lazy, but when we get home from our crappy jobs the last thing we want to do is an ass-load of dishes. I'm very glad we don't have kids, car payments, a mortgage... because I think we would be TERRIBLE at keeping up with all of it at this time in our lives. I take that back-- we wouldn't be terrible at it, we would just be stressed-out and pissed-off all the time, and that's not something I want to deal with. I had enough of that in high school and college.

I'm working at the radio station this morning and I'm trying to pass the time. What else can I talk about? I can't think of anything........ maybe more later.

peace and empty

KK:P2

I'm so angry right now I don't know where to start.

We were on our way home from a post-xmas get together with the Davis family ("we" included my dad, my brother and myself). My dad asked me how my friend was doing, referring to a couple years ago when this friend was still going through some maturity issues and it caused somewhat of a rift in the friendship for a minute. I was explaining that since then she has grown up a little bit after getting an apartment on her own and learning some valuable life lessons (of course now she is living back with her parents, but that is a temporary situation because she's saving up for the Peace Corps). I also went on to say that though she made those improvements, there are still some characteristics that get on my nerves at times. Despite those certain characteristics I keep her as one of my best friends because I love her like a sister. But I don't have to love every single characteristic of this girl in order to be great friends with her, in fact, I believe those differing characteristics shape what it is that we like about each other. While talking to my dad I also commented on how impressed I am with how cool my little cousin is turning out to be. When she was littler, she was weird enough in my opinion (and others) that caused genuine concern about her. I thought for a while that she may be autistic or had some learning or anxiety disabilities. These things I deduced from watching how she interacted with the rest of the family on the occasions we actually got together. She acted severely out of place and made noises without words at the ages of 7 and 8. She only pointed at things and didn't really speak much, except to her mom, which was still only in little quiet conversations. When we visited them tonight, she came in and sat with the rest of us and talked about her art. She has been drawing horses for several years and she is becoming quite the artist. This is really cool to me considering I thought something might have been off in the past. She has a little craft table in their living room and she plays video games. That's awesome!

So part of this conversation with my dad was about both my friend and my cousin. In the middle of it all, my brother had to interject. He never mentioned my cousin until way later after I left my dad's, so we'll leave her out of it for now. So he asks me why I'm being so negative towards my friend? and If those are such negative characteristics about my friend why am I still friends with her? and Even a good friend would adapt to those negative characteristics for the sake of holding together the relationship. and that THIS is one thing he doesn't like about me, that I talk about the same thing for 20 minutes at a time. He's insulting me in front of my dad and I'm slightly embarrassed because he's not allowing me to explain myself. (This is why it's hard to explain to a Christian why I'm an atheist... they won't shut the fuck up and listen for a second to understand what I'm saying... he came out of nowhere to $$insult me and didn't know what he was talking about. it pissed me off.) So the conversation became quite heated and my dad cut in to suggest we talk about something else. I wasn't done and neither was my brother. We kept saying things and it just kept getting worse, so I finally followed my dad's request and changed the subject. I didn't talk to my brother all the way to my dad's house, didn't talk to him when we got there, and didn't say goodbye when I left to go home.

I sent him a text saying he had no right to say those things to me, especially in front of my dad, that I was upset and embarrassed. He sent one back saying he was sorry and thought what I was saying about my cousin and friend was negative. That he didn't know how else to say what he wanted to say, and it ended up coming out wrong. He also said he wanted to talk, so I called him.

I began to tell him that I was not bad-mouthing my cousin and friend. I was saying how impressed I was with both of them. That I was actually complimenting them on growing up a little bit and proving me wrong of my past convictions. I told him that if he doesn't know what to say or how to say it, not to say anything at all. [This takes me back to my first couple communication classes where I learned how to begin a confrontation while also keeping it a positive experience for both parties. You can never start a confrontation by blaming someone (YOU did this... YOU didn't do that.. YOU did this wrong..etc.) because you automatically place this into a "negative" situation and the other person will react with the same tone the confrontation started out with. If you start with a positive, the person will react with a positive.]

He told me I can't make people say what I want them to.

This was not the message I was trying to send out. Isn't one of the first you learn as a child "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all"? I heard that old adage at least 100 times by the time I was 5. I think it was a pretty reasonable suggestion that he should have either shut the fuck up in the car, or made a formula of what it was exactly what he wanted to say before he said it. But I said it in a much, much nicer way. I really didn't want to be shitty with him, but he pushed my buttons the way my dad used to be so good at doing. He came off as an asshole, so it only felt natural to be as much of an asshole back. I know this is not the right thing to do in ANY conversation, but it gets frustrating to bite your tongue saying positive things only to be shit on over and over. He wanted to play the "I'm Condescending" game, and I can almost never resist the competition, especially with my brother. This is a competitive world, I am becoming very aware of lately, but that is another conversation entirely.

My voice was shaking at this moment because I didn't want to cry. I felt bad that I was basically yelling at my brother, but I desperately believe his inability to talk to people has caused him more to grieve about than any one wo/man should. I don't want to be condescending because it's something I'm trying very hard to step away from. I'm in no way a professional talker, but I would consider myself at least a couple years educated on the subject. And I'm not the only one who thinks these things about my brother, so I know I'm not crazy. My dad actually stopped me on my way out to ask if my brother's combativeness is common with me. I said it was and that it really gets on my nerves. My dad said it happens all the time with him and he doesn't know how to deal with it. We exchanged looks of awe, as neither of us know exactly what to do, and I left knowing it wasn't just me. My boyfriend also notices my brother's combative behavior, so I REALLY know it's not just me.

The end of the conversation was him saying (again) that I can't make people say what I want them to, and me saying "shut the fuck up" and hanging up. I hung up on my brother, something I haven't done before in my life. Something only shitty ex-girlfriends do to their shitty ex-boyfriends. I was pissed. He had no idea what he was talking about STILL and I was trying to explain things calmly. So I hung up.

His name showed up on the screen when he called me back a minute later. "It's me.." he said. Oh. It was my dad. So I talked to my dad for a couple minutes about why I'm so sick of my brother's bullshit and that he'll never be anywhat successful in his life if he continues to treat people the way he does. He needs to shit or get off the pot and fucking learn how to talk to people, because if he's going to play the "I'm Better Than You" game, I'm pretty sure nobody is going to play in the places he wants to go. I want to help him but he won't let me. So I'm not going to talk to him for a while until either he calls me or I think of something intelligent enough to say that helps my situation.

Joey just says "you're brother's fuckin crazy."

Why do I care if my brother is successful in his life? because if he's not, he will continue to tell me his depressing stories of how something didn't work out. because when he does things that make him happier, he becomes a happier person to be around. because I will be able to ask him over to my house without feeling some semblance of regret first. because he wants so terribly bad to be somebody, and I feel I can help him pull himself towards that goal. because he's my brother and I have to love the guy.. he's my fuckin brother. that's a given love that can't really be looked over.

I'll simmer for a couple days. For now, tacos.