I started Brideshead Revisited yesterday. I feel like I must be reading it to please someone else. When does anyone ever get an urge suddenly and cry out, "I must read Evelyn Waugh!"? But it isn't. I started it only because I know it's classic, blah blah and therefore as a "learned person" I ought to be able to enjoy this sort of thing, but I did actually find it mildly engaging. I just know I'm not getting anything out of it. Well, other than social things. Plus I really did have to read about teddy bear Aloysius at some point. It was a requirement for me.

I constantly feel like I have the skills to achieve more than I have, but I don't know what to put them towards. I have the know-how and I don't know how to use it. Wasn't this supposed to be inherent in the learning? How'd I mess up and not pick up on it? Or did people really despair of anyone putting it to use in the first place?

I've taken the equivalent of seven years of music theory. I've never learned how to write music. I've just spent the semester learning html. We're never taught how to make real webpages in any way that counts. My page has no content. Almost all personal pages have no content. So it doesn't really matter how nice it looks.

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So damned angry. *sigh* So my mother yells up the stairs to me as she does almost daily and says, "come down here. I want to talk to you." Okay. So what does she say to me? "When you go down to Washington... I hope you aren't signing a lease." "Not until August." "Don't." "Why?" "It's legally binding. You'll be obliged to pay." "I've been working on your leases and crap since I was ten. I know what it means." "I can just see this disaster already." "Excuse me. You are building fantasies on things that haven't even happened." "Go away. Get out of my sight." This is slightly paraphrased, there were maybe two more interchanges in the middle where I tried to get her to tell me why she didn't want me to sign a lease before she got to the point.

*Anger* Gaah. I know what the hell a lease is. I'm not signing one immediately upon getting down there. I'm signing one towards the end of August, if I do sign. Because by then I should have had a job and a few paychecks so that I'll know if I can handle it or not. I am not a moron. I'm twenty one. I can enter into a legally binding contract and know exactly what it means and be able to handle it. I am so sick of her acting as though I'm six and I don't know what I'm doing. You want to think that? It doesn't go both ways. The six year old can't correct all your freakin' problems from not being able to use a computer, file all your bills, taxes, personal items, etc., and the six year old is not moving out of your house. Well, maybe that 's what you want.

It just makes me so sick. She doesn't know her own daughter. She's never understood me or my sister. We're just such totally different people. I told her this last week. She denied it. She tried to pull up all these things we have in common. The only one that made any sense was that we both respect/look for intelligence in people. That's very nice, dear, but you hardly have any. Meanwhile. She also said we value morality. Well let me tell you, yours is a far damned cry from mine. Mine involves not deceiving people, being respectful of all peoples of all backgrounds and respecting those you love. I can't stand the way you manipulate people. You are so controlling. It's like a fucked up version of selfishness. You can't see any other possible right options than the ones you find ideal. and DAMNIT, I have the RIGHT to make errors in my life and get the hell out. And I'm not asking you for help until I'm living on the streets.

She loves me. She wants the best for me. She says she'll do whatever she can for me. It's true. What she's leaving out is all the fucking conditions. GAH. I am so bitter. Angry. I can't even express it well enough.
posted by Unknown at 9:02 PM