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8:04 p.m. - October 01, 2001 Either way. My mother has been yelling at me for upwards of three hours now, and she continues to do so even as I type. Don't berate me for not listening to her, phantom reader, it's an old story that has gone on forever. I've given her her share of listening time. We've sat on the couch for endless hours, exchanging views, exchanging everything; it's always her screaming, me with a growing headache and fighting to stay calm. I never raise my voice with her anymore. The quieter I am, the louder she is. She says I'm insensitive and selfish, just like my father. She says I got all my bad points from him. She says he's not raising me in a family household.. that we're more like roommates. It's true that he's living the life of a bachelor and I'm a busy 17 year old girl. Our paths rarely cross. But it's not like he's someone the Institute Of Child Negligency of whatfuckinever would go after. I have to be home by ten thirty on school nights, one on weekends. He usually knows where I am. But I tell him because he's reasonable about it. When I discuss such things with my mom, she wants me home by seven and needs a point-by-point description of where I'm going. She counts the gas mileage in the car. She still checks my homework before she allows me out of the house. I'm a senior. I can't live like that anymore. What am I going to have when I go to college, my mother following me around checking my homework and making sure I don't leave town? It's such a moot point. I just spent three hours discussing it with my mom and I don't need to discuss it here. I'm not going to sit here and listen to her plead with me to tell her why I'm rejecting her by staying at my dad's, when I've made it clear thousands of times why. She treats me like I'm four. She needles me about silly things. She spends more time yelling at me than talking to me. She wants me to be home at ridiculous hours. She asks me stupid questions about my dad's love life. She lays guilt trips on me. She constantly assumes I'm exactly like her in the exact same life stage as she was in the sixties and wants me to come out better than she did. I'm not saying she's abusive or neglectful or vicious. It's so obvious she loves me way too much and wants the best. But I can't be my best with so much guidance, so much needling, so much breathing down my neck. I just can't be. I don't want to be HER best. I'm not her second chance at life. And I don't want her to ruin her own by living it through me. Damn, I really hate to do the typical teenage 'complaining about the parents' thing in such a typical way. It makes me feel so mundane. I hate feeling mundane. Why does complaining about feeling mundane make me seem so pretentious? WHY AM I LABELING? STOPPIT. I can't wait until I can find out who I am left more or less to my own devices, out of my parents' homes. I might be shocked at how immature I still really am. Oh, everyone thinks that where they are is the best they get, everyone thinks that right now they're brilliant and moral and correct, but we've got to admit that a year from now it's all moot. I haven't even had this diary for a year, hardly even five months, and I look back at the beginning and wonder what exactly was going through my head. I don't even know what's going through my head now, but at least I can relate. Five months from now, I'll be busy thinking I'm perfect again, and wonder what I was thinking five months ago. Sometimes it makes me wonder about the meaning of embarrassment. It just seems like a cruel joke time likes to play.
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