Animosity on a School Night

Nothing, nothing beats what happened tonight at dinner as Mother set down her fork, looked me in the eye and said:

"I think I want to get a tattoo like where yours is."

Keith and I both choked.

That's where my more and more evident resentment slipped in. Right where Keith talked about how horrible an idea a tattoo is.

Look asshole. You fell off a cliff, got into a motorcycle accident, pierced your ears, did drugs, crashed your car drunkenly and sit every night listening to Steve miller or grateful dead or ccr or who knows what.

If my mother wants to take herself out of the box and mark herself like her daughter, something which would mean so much to me though I'll never tell her,

Then she can damn well do it.

It would be the closest thing my mother and I would have ever done. It would be our penance for the lack of physical appreciation towards each other.

It would be ours. Hers and mine. Don't ruin that Keith.

I have given you so much these past few years. I have opened up my home, and my heart, and my life to you. I didn't have to. I could have been exceedingly content remaining bitter at you for coming in one step parent too late.

I could have gladly stopped talking to you when you didn't come home that one night because you were stumbling around the city drunk.

Or when you wrecked your car stubbornly trying to come home.

Or maybe when you left the scene of the crime because you were too drunk to know better.

It took a lot of willpower to hear that you drink again now like it's no big deal. Or when you leave me notes when you go away with my mother for the weekend. No drugs, no sex, rock and roll is okay, Keith? Maybe you shouldn't brag to your work buddies about your crazy weekend. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so enraged.

Last week you and mom were talking about getting a small house in the country when I leave. I felt so suffocated knowing that all the aspirations that you two contain reside in a simple house in the country. That you two would be so content with such a thing.

I asked the same question to some at school the other day, in curiosity towards whether I was one of the few who wanted more than a cul de sac life. They looked at me like I was insane. Of course they wanted to live in a place just like this. Of course they wanted a quiet suburban lifestyle. Of course they wanted their children to follow this spiral.

It's just about time for me to leave all of this. Leave the hypocrites, leave the monotony, leave the assumptions towards opinions and the snares towards change.

Perhaps Keith's joke is right. Perhaps Mom should sum up her life on her neck.

"There it went."

There it went, indeed.