Sunday, September 30, 2012

i feel no different

i was going to vent out my frustrations about how pissed-off my parents make me feel, and then i realised i've already mentioned it in my last post.

i feel the exact same way i did below because tonight, there were more arguments opposing my creative undertakings (i have a senior project to do in school, and naturally, i thought of something artsy to do) on top of the usual B.S. about them trying to control my life, right down to where my things should be kept (i found quite a number of now-dusty items of mine tucked away by them during my absence earlier this year) and what time the grille within our house compound should be opened (i had to take the dusty things outside of the house, obviously, and my dad took offence even though it's only 1am and it's not going out of the house compound).

it recently occurred to me that the reason my inner self is pessimistic by default (i.e. whenever i feel dead tired, my mind automatically starts to form the words, i want to kill myself or i don't want to live anymore without even thinking or meaning it) is because my outer self has been fed bucketfuls of pessimism 24/7 by my own parents, all my life.

my mother's favourite phrases in her daily vocabulary are
no, 
it's never going to work, 
it can't be done and 
don't even bother because it's a waste of your time and effort.

sometimes she'll even throw in a little whining when she says the above words, plus add a scrunched-up face for maximum contempt (worse than nails on a chalkboard), and the last time she did that, which was in our family's moving car, i felt like rolling out the window or just opening the car door so i could jump out and escape the sound of that horrible wail.

my dad used to say all of the above in a sarcastic way, but he's cut down on a lot of it, ever since The Great Family Confrontation more than half a decade ago.

on top of it i just feel a sense of despair when i think of what could've been. i could've been earning a creative living by now, had my parents just supported me or believed in the value of my art. i get angry every time i clean up my room and find remnants of my art and what could have been (i once set up a meeting, aged 12, with the local magazine publisher, because my mother kept saying no one would believe me to ever help me self-publish a zine i was running at the time, and on the day itself, she refused to drive me there nor call to cancel).

jamie cullum's AVO session was on the telly tonight (amidst my mother making a big fuss about needing help with the computer -- it always baffles me how she always picks a time the rare time that i'm occupied with the telly to require assistance, when i'd be free all day reading a book or the papers or something you can press 'pause' to) and i was getting quite depressed watching him enjoy and excel at what he obviously loves and lives for (when he closed his eyes and just listened to what he was playing, before coming in, singing softly in time), because i was thinking, that is exactly what i should be doing, but i'm not and i don't know how that's going to happen. i practically teared up at the last song even though i've heard it (gran torino) so many times over on my signed CD.

and this is when i start to think of snowy (always at this point), of the fact that he's now gone and things are a lot more stressful (just imagine the stereo volume turned up high with no one to turn it down) now that he's no longer around for me to pet/stroke/look out the window or through the sliding door in the night for his white furry body.

and then sometimes it rains when i'm at home and i think of him more, and how unfair it is that i haven't even been able to dream a realistic (ironic, i know, but the only dream i had of him was a lucid one) dream of him so i can finally say goodbye and close that chapter of my life instead of remain haunted by the sight of him motionless on the ground, with my firetrucking mother asking, when can we bag him up? can we bag him up now? (which she did, after barely 5 minutes, and got my dad to bury him within the hour.)

what if i had performed cpr on snowy? what if i'd had the guts to not give a shit about the repercussions of acting emotional in front of my parents (they have always given me a hard time every time i've cried in front of them, even when tubby died, and that is something i will never be able to get over) and just vocally yelled out with the authority of christ for him to just wake up? what if i'd called out his name?

i still don't know if he exists in the afterlife or not, but when i'm at the lowest of my low (of wallowing in the fact that i never got to see his final moments alive) i always declare to god that i'll be the only one in heaven crying my eyes out because my dog isn't around (if he has no soul like most of the conservative christians would like to believe, including my mother). true, i've owned six other dogs before me and watched countless strays murdered by the authorities or heartless acid throwers, but (call me sadistic), at least i was around during their final moments -- it's not like our last meeting involved one of us being dead.