This is just a teaser. Or at least it was when I started writing it FOUR hours ago. It's pretty inclusive of everything that's been running through my head for the last 3 weeks. It's long. It's a borderline diatribe in certain areas, such as my grandmother. But it's all in here. It'll fill you in.Things are wrapping up quite nicely right now and it's hard to believe that it's only one week away from this school year being over.
Things change. They evolve and they move forward if not stifling themselves and falling behind.
I have fought this week for a few things but all of them have been in defense of my friends. Kevin and I had a distaster of an argument this past weekend that almost killed us and would have killed me if it had. I never realized how much he meant to me until I was faced with the prospect of having to create a sort of schedule for our mutual friends to hang with either of us without him and I interacting. But now we're okay. And now I'm happy.
Let's see...other things on a list of shit I haven't written about.
Nick's roommate Paul told me a few weeks ago that he had feelings for me. I don't feel the same and I've told him so. No issue there.
I hate typing out this next issue because even thinking about it gets my mind all fucked up trying to consider where to put the adjectives and which statement to say first. So, here goes: My brother David was "Catholicized" (confirmed, baptised and communioned) on Saturday, April 19, my Jewish father's birthday. This was Passover/Easter Saturday. Now, my father has expressed to me, weeks before the event, that he felt hurt by David's decision to become Catholic. He had only decided to do so after his marriage to Marisa. This calls for a tally: Sally's family consists of 1 jew and 3 other people who consider themselves primarily Christian/Catholic. The rest of this is just shit from my head, it's nothing that's been said to me but are some of the things I've had rolling around in my head since I first heard of David's decision.
My father's brother has no children with his wife so in order to carry on any sort of Jewish name with direct lineage to my grandmother, someone in my main family would have to marry a Jewish person and/or consider themselves Jewish. Jeremy sure as hell isn't going to do that because he's on a Christ trip. Constantly. That leaves yours truly.
And I've been thinking about this for months, perhaps years, since Matt assaulted me (7 years ago) and I've been examining why I'm so uncomfortable with the Christian/Catholic religion itself. I don't believe in Christ. I think that's what it comes down to for me. Whether this means I'm Jewish or not, I haven't yet fully decided but that's what I'm feeling for now.
My antidepressants have given me a boost in making tanning easier. Yay for that.
The summer session begins here in two weeks. TWO weeks. Two weeks and I'll be a second semester junior. Where the fuck did that time go? I guess my friends were right.
I've been mulling over the issue of my grandmother not being as nice as I've always thought. She doesn't know me but she uses the fact that I need her money, to do things in my life, as a means of showing her affections. Truth be told, if my grandmother really knew me, she wouldn't like me and it's not that I'm a horrible person. It's just that she and I are fundamentally different but our tempers are the same.
She does not like that I'm Liberal. And, because this will come in handy in just a line or two, I told her about my car accident about a month and a half after it happened, when my father and I had gotten the Saab. Even though we've spoken about massage school several times, when I brought it up with her while she was up for Passover/Easter weekend, it was like I'd said it for the first time. She has no comprehension of any modern idea of a career. Gramma asked me how I knew so much about massage therapy and I told her that it was because I was getting it as a result of my accident.
My grandmother then asks me "What accident?" I tell her "I told you about this, I got broadsided last June, remember?" She swears she had no recollection of it. Then she digs into my desire to be a massage therapist because if I want that, then, in her words "Why are you bothering with college right now? I'm not made of money (THEN STOP FUCKING APPEARING AS IF YOU ARE). I can't afford to spend $60,000 on your education."
Okay. Uhm, I'd stop treating you like you're made of money if you stopped treating me like that's all I want from you. Now that you've gotten over cervical cancer, you act as though you've got to make up for all the time you missed during your treatments, which could have been better used to hassle my mother. One day, you're going to die and all I'll really have known about you was that you never went to college but became the pretentious wife of a rich lawyer who then allowed you to hire a maid to come in and take care of your house. You seem to forget the latter part of that because, if you remembered that you had to PAY someone to do the job, which you think "every wife must do well or else their husband will leave them," you'd have to stop making my mother feel as though she can't keep a clean house with 3 kids.
You had 2 kids. Of course that's FAR more easy.
Gramma, you never went to college. I'm getting further in my education than you did. My mother barely graduated highschool and you know this. So for the first few years of my parents' marriage, you decided to send back all her letters with corrections instead of a reply. Whenever we get together with you for Passover or whatever time you come down to guilt trip us into remembering you, you make comments about how my mother has lost her figure. At least her breasts don't drop to the floor. But that's besides the point. It's your fault when I have to stick up for her because you've petrified my father into ever standing up to you. I won't deal with your shit now.
I wish you could see the way you make my mother feel after a simple phone call with her. You bring up shit from the past that you've claimed you're "ok" with now. You talk about how MY birth name, "Amanda Sarah" was too "servant-like" to be added to a last name such as ours. You show love by giving money and there's always the threat that you'll give that up too. So that's your insurance that we won't say a goddamned thing about the disrespect you show us. But I will NEVER forgive you for the damage you've caused to my mother's self-confidence and self-perception.
You were a poor immigrant from Poland, who had nothing to her name, no education and under your terms, you were LUCKY someone as wonderful as my grandfather found you. In my bedroom, two years ago, you told me that I had to keep the house clean or else my future husband would leave me. I told you what I still believe now: if I was dumb enough to marry a guy who would leave me over that, then I deserve to have him leave me. Simply put, I'd never marry someone who would do that in the first place. I wish my grandfather was still around. Even though he'd be about 99, from what I've heard about him, he'd have put you in your place every time you've said something disrespectful about my mother in the last 25 years since he died. I wish I'd been there when you and he were visiting my parents at their first apartment in Massachusetts back in the 70s. You were railing on my mother for something as always and he was the only one to put you in your place and tell you to shut the hell up already.
In conclusion Gramma, though you'll never hear these words, I think you need to understand something about why my parents' marriage has lasted for the last 34 years: my mother never had to conform to your fucking standards of bigotry, silence and status obsession. My mother never fell victim to your beliefs and strategies you must have used in order to maintain your idea of a happy marriage. She loves my father and what he gives her in return: the assurance that he will stay with her forever because she is nothing like you.
I'm growing content with the way things are right now.
1. Name one song you hate to admit you like.Justin Timberlake - "Rock Your Body."
2. Name two songs that always make you cry.I can name more: Barenaked Ladies - "Long Way Back Home"Damien Rice - "Blower's Daughter" John Mayer - "Comfortable" Dar Williams - "Iowa"Nields - "This Town is Wrong"Train - "Drops of Jupiter"
3. Name three songs that turn you on.Again, I'm going to list more: Eminem - "Superman"Moxy Fruvous - "Sahara (live)"Beatles - "You Really Got a Hold on Me"Jason Mraz - "So Unusual"Led Zepplin - "Lemon Song" (It's a goal of mine to have sex in a car while this is playing).David Gray - "Lead Me Upstairs"Andy Stochansky - "Hymn"
4. Name four songs that always make you feel good.Again, too many to name but here goes: Alice Peacock feat. John Mayer - "Bliss"Aerosmith - "Amazing"The Nields - "Keys to the Kingdom" or "Jack the Giant Killer"Andy Stochansky - "Superman"
5. Name five songs you couldn't ever do without.Jeff Buckley - "Lover You Should Have Come Over"David Gray - "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye"Elton John - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"Matchbox Twenty - "Push"Moxy Früvous - "The Drinking Song"
