At my parents' place. Drunk, listening to harpsichord music, and trying to keep perspective.

I got in a negative thought-loop today. My dad recognized the signs in my face. He asked me what's wrong. I (undiplomatically) complained that I was getting sick of being cooped up at home (which is rather small) and of there being nothing to do in the neighborhood (which is also rather small.)

He immediately said to me: "No, you know what the problem is, you don't care about family at all. You just hate being here in the proximity of your relative, and as soon as you're here three days, you want out."

So what the hell am I supposed to say to that? Because anything I say is going to come off as defensive.

I did a pretty good job of damage control this evening, and I think I even managed to convince my father that I love him, and that most of my anger resulted from having to share a room with my twin brother, who has HIGHLY unusual sleeping hours and ALSO expects me to fetch him things like Cokes or beers or napkins whenever he wants.

(I've gone to boarding school for four years and to college for another four, so I am highly unaccustomed both to sharing living quarters with a relative AND to having relatives expect me to be their butlers.)

I started to write a snarky blog post about it, realized that my friends are dealing with their own far worse holiday bullshit and that they don't have the time/energy/attention/patience for all that, and decided to vent about it here instead.

Long story short I'm drunk on Blue Moon, listening to Couperin the Elder, avoiding my twin brother after the massive explosion of pent-up emotional energy that took place today, and deeply ashamed of myself.

Goddammit, Reddit.

Like ... it's not enough that eight years of living apart from my very traditional, very Hispanic parents has caused me to feel totally alienated from the only people in the world who love me and care for me unconditionally. My dad also has to rub it in my fucking face, just because he's bitter from busting his ass and wrecking his knees to raise us - which knee-wreckage conveniently makes it hard for him to get around, thereby entitling him to yell at me for complaining about being cooped up when at least I can get up and get around, despite the fact that there's still nowhere for me to go to, etc. etc. et-fucking-c.

I GET IT, OK! HAHAHAH, I get it, I fucking get it, I'd have to be an FUCKING IMBECILE NOT TO GET IT, HE-LLOOOOOOO! (Excuse me for that. Again. Blue Moon.) It's just ... FUCK! My Spanish isn't even that good!

Oh yeah. That's the other thing. Did I mention that I'm completely incapable of expressing most of these emotional subtleties in the only language that my parents understand with any degree of competency?!

So, of course, I start to wonder whether my collegiate three-year-career of stonerdom hasn't got something to do with:

• my parents being convinced that I don't love them and that I'm a "cold American child";
• my adolescence having taken place in an environment that basically precluded any degree of emotional bonding with said parents;
• and, of course, having been raised for eight years of my life (actually ten, due to the prep-for-prep-school program I attended) to think think think think think constantly, and then discovering something that made me really good at not thinking when I wanted to

... and since I'm feeling particularly nihilistic and self-effacing today, this is my throwaway account that I use when I want to avoid getting called out for addict behavior which I ordinarily would disclose on my first account, exhibit_a_69.

That was the account that I started posting on reddit.com/r/leaves on.

You all should have a lot of fun exploring the compartmentalization facilitated by these two alter egos. These masks belonging to one and the same Janus.

Happy fucking holidays.