Death on two legs, you’re tearing me apart…

…
Death on two legs
You’ve never had a heart of your own
Kill joy bad guy big talking small fry

-Queen, “Death on Two Legs”.

If you know me at all, and on the off chance you’ve read this blog, ever, you know two things about me: I like to rant, and I never finish anything (judging by my last post anyway).

This would be a tiny bit of a rant, I guess. I don’t know if that’s what I should call it, but that’s what it will be known as.

Tomorrow is the big day. We’re moving my brother in at his dorm room at UNI (if my parents want me there; I don’t know if this means anything, but I keep seeing in my head my mother telling me “We don’t want you there”), so naturally, things have been pretty bonkers around here.  My mother is stressed about it, so she’s even bitchier than normal (which trust me, she’s plenty bitchy enough for one person).

First order of business, she keeps telling my brother to make decisions about what he wants to bring, but once he chooses something, she’ll be like “I don’t know if you’ll want that much stuff, can you fit that in there, how will we transport a loft with just a car, you might want this, you might want to take that, you should take this, you should do this, etc”.

Now, some of you are going to say “She’s just stressed/worried/blahblahblah” and that may be part of it, but it pisses me off just a little. Don’t tell my brother to make his own choices, and then “correct” them or “suggest something else”.

Now, my mother has personally told me the problem with me was they didn’t let me find out enough on my own. If this is the case, she should know she’s exhibiting the same behavior with my brother. He’s a lot smarter than me,  so it hasn’t really fucked up him in his life, but she just needs to stop. Let him find out himself. Let him figure it out. Let him see. Do with him what didn’t happen when I was in that position.

That theme carries itself throughout most of this. My brother is everything I wanted to be. What I should have been. Popular. He honestly has friends from just about every so called clique.  Just, everyone. People have nothing but good things to say about him. He’s smart. He can actually write worth a shit. He has work ethic. He has an attention span longer than five minutes.

I’m 23. He’s 18, and going to a real college. Not a crappy community college. A real university. He got over 9000 dollars in scholarships. He’ll probably graduate college before I can even apply to finish my shitty community college Graphic Arts degree.

Also, do you know what it feels like to be one of the oldest people in the class of 2005, yet probably one of the dumbest in the grade? People my age are getting married. Getting real jobs. Have their own fucking houses.

But I see I’ve gotten off topic. Back to my brother.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. He saw me fuck up constantly through my life, and he learned from it, like I should have done. Like I would have done, if I weren’t such a retard.

I don’t hate him for succeeding. I don’t hate him for being smart. I just wish I could be too. I wish I had the energy to do all the things he does. I wish I had the charisma to have as many friends as he does. I wish I was as scholastically dedicated as he is.

I don’t hate him for this either, but it seems he got off scot free in the mental illness category. Seriously, there never seems to be anything wrong with him, while I’m fairly certain I have everything in the book. Maybe not everything, but a lot. Manic depression. Social anxiety. ADD, or ADHD…. the list could go on.

And the worst part is, nobody really understands. I know that sounds cliche to say, but they really don’t.

I can’t explain to my mother why I so constantly forget to do things, like forget a load of laundry in the basement, or forget a load of dishes, or forgetting she wrote me a list of things I could do to help out, yet I can remember every single word to a song I haven’t heard in ten years. I can’t explain that. My parents say it’s because I don’t give a shit, or that I’m addicted to the internet, or that I’m a lazy bitch (actual words) or that I’m a burden on everyone’s life (also actual words)… I am lazy, but it’s because I never have any energy. The times when I ride my bike twice in one day? I honestly don’t know where the energy comes from.

And I suppose you’re all thinking “What a bunch of BS, if you have energy to ride a bike you have energy to do shit around the house, lazy bitch” and I suppose you’re right.

What good am I to anyone? I don’t know. I bitch about having to do things around the house even though I don’t care that much, I eat food I didn’t pay for, I use up electricity I don’t pay for, I use water I don’t pay for, I use a cell phone I don’t pay for, I can ride 5 miles in a day but can’t even find the energy to do chores around the house without being extremely exhausted…

And then I hear about people who have REAL problems. Like a girl who gets her nose and ears cut off. Or somebody who lost their grandfather. Or someone who actually has their own house and pays their own bills.

I swear. If I had to deal with any real problems, I would explode.

What good am I? I don’t want this to sound like a bunch of emo bullshit (and I’m definitely not suicidal), but I really don’t see what good I am.

My art is never as good as I picture it before I start… my singing voice can’t do all the things I picture myself doing… My work ethic is always better in my head than I am able to convey physically… I just can’t do it.

I don’t know how people deal with real problems without shooting themselves in the head.

Anyway, I see I’ve gotten off track again, so back to the point at hand.

This time, the petty comment that sets off the anger is my mother bitching about the phone chargers. My mom, bro, and I all have the same kind of phone, and there are three chargers. One is in my room, but my mother was all “Why is it we have three chargers and we can only ever find one, where is the other one blahblahblahhhhh”.

It was by the computer… Okay? Not that big of a deal. Just because it’s over here doesn’t mean I’ve claimed it…

I’m beginning to think I’m just an excuse for my mother to blame her unhappiness with life on. It’s like she finds a way to link every problem she has back to me.

And I don’t want this to sound like I’m obsessed with myself, because I’m really not. It just feels like everything she says is wrong is somehow my fault even if it isn’t. Do I ever hear anything bad about my brother? Maybe it’s that he hangs out with his friends a lot, but other than that, nothing, yet I’ve been laying awake in bed in the morning overhearing them say all sorts of shit about me.

Okay, fine. We all know it. My brother’s the golden boy, and I’m the fuck up. My brother’s the smart one, I’m the stupid one. My brother’s the success, I’m the failure. My brother is healthy, and I’ll probably have a heart attack at 35 despite making changes.
My brother’s the mentally perfect one, I’m the retard.

And honestly, my brother is more mature at 18 than I’ll probably be at 30. I hate it.

There has to be a balance. I don’t know how seriously you all believe in the zodiac, but I’m a libra. The scales. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I seem to be obsessed with balance. If people dis someone, I want to stand up for them. If people hate something, I like it. If they like it, I hate it. I’m even obsessed with balance in something as petty as fashion.

I just never know anything anymore. I seriously don’t know why anybody puts up with me.

Seriously? Throw me out. Make me find a shitty room at the homeless shelter. Then I’ll be able to get assistance I need now but can’t get because I’m stuck at my parents’ house.

And you can have this heart to break…

-“And so it goes”, by Billy Joel

Hello again, ladies, germs, and other various forms of intelligent life. It’s been a month and a day since I’ve bothered to think about this blog, and to tell you the truth, since I’ve started uploading things to my facebook photo albums, I probably won’t ever finish that photoblog entry. It’s just too much work to upload everything to photobucket, put a picture in an entry here, then select it again and resize the thing.

So, for our first order of business, I finally have internet on my computer at home. I don’t remember exactly when this computer crashed and I lost everything, but I’m almost positive there was snow on the ground. And it’s August now.

That wasn’t all bad for me. Quite the opposite. It made me ride my bike to the library damn near every day. I have lost a pants size, but I think it may be creeping back on slowly (this weekend didn’t help, but more on that later).

My knees, while they do hurt while I’m riding, feel better most of the time. My back hasn’t been hurting as much, and if nothing else, at least I’m outside to absorb my daily dose of Vitamin D.

Just getting out of the house is good for me, too, but generally, I just missed having internet at home. There were so many things I couldn’t do, not having internet. Although I did go to bed at a decent hour, so maybe that was good for me.

Generally, I’m glad I have the internet back, although I will need to be especially careful that I don’t make a habit out of being on the internet for 6+ hours a day, which I was at at one point. I’ve let myself get on a copious amount in the past few days to make up for not having it since the winter, but it won’t be a regular habit. Not while I still have the summer outdoors left to enjoy.

In other news, and this I won’t go in to super detail about, but I wanted to mention it, I may have an interest. In July, I saw an amazing classic rock tribute band, and met all but one of the band members. After an initial crush on one of them, I discovered he was spoken for, so it wasn’t until a different member showed interest in me that I noticed that particular member. We’ve been talking a lot online, and texting, but it’s just a whole lot of thoughts trying to be thought at one time. I won’t go into detail, but there are some things about it that are a little awkward. Initially, I was scared of the fact that this guy is only a few years younger than one of my parents, but to me, age is a number. I like older men, I’m just not used to them being interested in me, except the creepy ones. Still. I know I like this guy, I’m just dealing with a lot of uncertainty and fear of the unknown.

I’m really not going to be any more specific than that, because I know that sort of thing has gotten me in trouble in the past, and I want to try my best to keep that from happening again.

I’m still having considerable trouble finding a job. I do seek them out. I do look online and in the papers, but when the classifieds are literally only one column long, there isn’t a whole lot to go around.

I’m inching closer to getting my drivers license back. I know I have to get SR-22 insurance, but I have no idea how much it would cost. I just feel a little like I’m back on one of those cycles. “I need money to be able to get the insurance, I need a job to get the money,  I need a car to get to a job, but I need money to get the insurance to get the car to get to a job”. And really, I need to get my license back because this opens up a lot.

Right now, I’m pretty much limited to jobs in places I can get on my bike or on foot. Yeah, I could ask my parents to drive me, but they’re understandably fed up with having to cart me everywhere (Which I understand, 110%).

All I have left to do is get the SR-22 insurance, and take the written and driving tests, and pay the 200 dollar reinstatement fee. But there is always the fine looming over my head. I really don’t want them to think I’m being irresponsible, but I am flat out broke. I have less than 250 dollars to my name right now. I’d like to have the whole thing paid off, I really would. And as it is, I try to make payments when I can. You don’t have to have the fine paid off to get the license back, but if you are late or haven’t made any, that can affect things.

I really hope it doesn’t. I’m just a good person who did something stupid, and who is now trying to come out of the thing better than I was before. I want to better myself, I’m just finding it difficult at the moment. I know it won’t always be like this, but it’s hard to keep your chin up whilst in the middle of it.

Right now, I’m actually thinking of places I can apply to online, so I can at least feel like I’m doing something to better myself.

Part of it is my manic depression (and I’m almost certain that’s what it is). I have to remember this sort of thing when I’m in a depressed spell. All I can do is what I can do, I can’t keep worrying about the stuff I can’t control at the moment. I can’t keep worrying about the past, what I have to do is concentrate on not repeating my mistakes, and making the future better.

This will take making changes, which I know I can do. I have a feeling something good is on the horizon. I don’t know when or how, but I know there is something. They will be difficult. At times, it will suck, and I will wonder just why I wanted to get into it, but I can do it. I have friends to help me, and whoever the higher power might be, you know, maybe they’ll help me out too.

Anyway, before I went off on my inspirational tangent, I had something else to talk about. Today, we got back from the family reunion, which was yesterday. We stayed overnight in a hotel instead of driving back yesterday. All in all, the experience was fun. The reunion actually felt like the reunion this year. I will continue this in a minute, kids. My computer is needed.