the boy from the midwest
| <<-- : 08.19.03 : -->> |
8:47 a.m.i cannot stress enough about how good it is to be home. this weekend was a strange and exhausting, and a bit traumatic, experience for me.
i've learned lots about my dad, my family, my roots. i've learned a bit about my family history. some chapters on that end are now closed. some have opened floodgates.
i've never really hated my dad before. i've never really blamed him for anything. i've always held him in this sort of light and accepted that things just didn't work out between him and my mom. and i had accepted that it just happened the way it did because of fucked up circumstances. i remember when i was a kid that i blamed my mom a little bit for kicking him out. thinking that she didn't give him a chance and she was being selfish. but i got over that quick and it was just a matter of circumstance.
i was wrong.
my dad is an idiot. he is a hick. he thinks with his dick. and yes, that was meant to rhyme. i tried to rewrite that, but i wanted it to say that in that order.
now, don't get me wrong. i'm not a total hater of hicks. i love my cowboys sometimes. the midwest farm boy thing just makes me all hot and bothered. and there were a ton of hot boys in illinois and oklahoma this past weekend. yeowzers.
but i've discovered there to be two kinds of hicks in my family. the first consists of my dad and his sister, my aunt. they can be loving and emotional. they'll show that they care for you, but not so much about you. this weekend, my dad has been totally self-involved. we hardly ever get to see him and he's spent the entire two days that we were in illinois with his ex-wife. i think i've explained a little bit in my last entry. but all he could talk about was everything that was going on with her. all the crap that she's done and how he might want to get back with her if she can prove that she can "behave" this year.
first of all, what the FUCK? my dad is a total hick loser who believes that women should "behave" and do things his way or no way. my mom would NEVER submit to that. she did things HER way cuz she HAD to cuz the SONOFABITCH was never around. (and calling my dad a son of a "bitch" is no attack at my grandmother. i loved her with all my heart and i miss her so much. she was a great woman.)
the minute we arrive, my dad goes on and on and on about ellen, his ex-wife. it's ellen this and ellen that and "ellen sold that priceless guitar i was gonna send you and fucked up the mustang that i was gonna let you use." and "ellen sold grandpa's tools that he left me." "but you know, i still kinda like her. i don't LOVE her, but i like her. seeing her again kind of makes me want to make her a better person. and al-john (her son) needs a father. he never really had anyone around and i feel responsible for bringing him here to the states. and i think he should have a father figure."
MOTHERFUCKING IDIOT!! who the hell do you think you're talking to? you're talking to the ONLY TWO KIDS that you ARE responsible for bringing into this god-forsaken FUCKED UP WORLD! FEEL RESPONSIBLE FOR US! not that little punk shit. FOR US!
i'm sorry to sound a little jealous and selfish. but what this fucking idiot doesn't realize is that he was never around for us. we struggled and we had a mother who loved him and never sold any of his stuff. she never lied to him the way ellen has. she has more of a mind than that brainless twit has. and i'm not just being mean. this woman is nothing like my mom. she can barely speak for herself. she can barely speak any english. she's quiet and keeps to herself even in the company of my dad. she doesn't eat with us. and she's just basically his servant. even AFTER they were divorced. and now she's marrying someone else and has nothing to say about that. i can't believe my dad put us through that! he made her cook breakfast and dinner for us and made us eat in her house while he confronted her about this other guy and his stuff and her lies. here we are, eating her food in her home (which is my dad's actually) while my dad confronts her.
okay, so i shouldn't call her a brainless twit. that is harsh. too harsh. and i take it back. i just feel like that is a prerequisite for my dad to marry someone. and once my mom showed some strength, he went off to the next woman who he'd think could become his servant. and now she's fucking up his life and he divorced her cuz he's discovering that he can't control her.
i can't believe that this is where we come from. i can't believe that this is my blood. he makes up for 50% of my genes. and it sickens me. is this what i'm capable of? is this kind of behaviour inside me? will it surface one day?
it is not.
and i know this to be true for both me and my brother. we were raised differently. we weren't brought up in his environment, with his influences. he can do what he wants. we have our lives and we will continue to set examples that who you become is not about who gives birth to you. it's about who brings you up.
and the whole time we were in illinois, my dad and my aunt had both me and my brother doing chores. on our FUCKING VACATION. we did chores. we hung out a bit, but it was mostly all about my dad squaring things away with his ex-wife. he brought her to go shopping and bought her a car. he brought al-john to buy clothes and shit. while me and my brother were put to work by him and my aunt. it was total bullshit. i was pissed. i drank a whole bottle of wine to myself and chilled on my own, smoking two packs of cigarrettes watching MTV on the porch. that was the highlight of my trip to illinois.
we left on saturday to head down to oklahoma to visit my great grandmother and all of my extended family out there. the drive was suppose to be 7 hours. but the mustang kept breaking down and we stopped to fix it and it finally broke down outside of springfield. so the total drive was 12 hours. it was hot and humid and not as much fun. i did get a lot of reading done and i was able to finish Narcissus and Goldmund. (good book by the way. i started to re-read it. so much stuff. i was extremely happy with the way it ended.)
we finally arrive in oklahoma and we get to meet the coolest great-aunt in oklahoma. she lives with my great-grandmother (who is 99 and a half) and takes care of her in this old old old house. it was amazing. we were in the epitamy of country living. they've been working on this old house for awhile now. trying to renovate it and it make it nice. and everything was a little white trash. but the southern hospitality made up for it. i was very happy to be there. no matter how much shit my aunt had in illinois, it was just not comfortable there. we got to my great-aunt's house, and they have hardly anything. it was nice.
we had good food. i actually ate steak (even though i oppose red meat, i just couldn't refuse my aunt's cooking.) she made the traditional breakfast: home-baked biscuits and home-made gravy, bacon, sausage, eggs, and hash browns. everything was made from scratch. they had a BBQ on sunday and i got to try zuccinni cake! zuccinni cake! man, was that good.
my great-grandmother is amazing. she's 99 years old and she's still goin on strong. she's so small and fragile and it takes her a little bit to get around the house. but she gets out of bed on her own and she moves around on her own. she a HUGE fan of baseball and sports. she knows all about the games. she loves the cardinals and whenever there's a game on, she's right there watching or listening in. she'll tell you about anyone on the team and knows where their standings are. i was amazed. she's losing a little bit of her sight, and she's a little hard of hearing sometimes. but she's right there with you. you just have to speak up. she was and still and always will be an amazing woman.
i got to meet the rest of my family on that side of my dad's side of the family. the little kids running around were cute as all hell. one of my baby cousin (second cousin? third? hell if i know) was the cutest little thing. she's part cherokee and part korean amongst everything else and she's adorable. i guess i look like her dad, since i'm half filipino and white, and when she saw me she reached out for me. everyone else on the porch that day was whiter than white (expect for her older brother and sister). i guess i must've stood out. it was the warmest welcome i've felt all weekend.
it was most definitely hot and humid. i didn't mind the heat so much, but the humidity was horrible. i wouldn't call these past five days a vacation. my dad put us to work for most of the time we were there. we were lifting things and moving his tools around. we had to clean out the sheds and we worked on the roof. my brother did most of the work. apparently, he's seen as more of the outside worker than i was. but my great-aunt took us in and made up for all the bad that was in illinois. i learned a lot about my family. about my dad. and about who i definitely don't want to become. i learned that i must stand on my own now. i don't want anything to do with my dad. i don't think i'll be going out to visit him again. not for awhile anyway. i need time to recuperate. i almost went insane. his ignorance and negligence towards us was incredible. he had the nerve to start crying when he hugged us goodbye yesterday. how could i take that to heart? it only made me pissed off.
maybe one day i will be strong enough to tell him all of this. maybe one day it just wouldn't matter and i won't have to. maybe he's content with the way things are and i should continue to live my life without him. i don't know what the importance of family is anymore. i think i've lost all faith in the "traditional" family structure. i guess i was holding on for some reason. now i can truly let go.
rosie came to our rescue last night. our plane was delayed in tulsa. we didn't arrive til late in denver and missed both flights to los angeles and orange county. there wouldn't be any available flights until the morning. both my brother and i didn't have any money for a hotel room and we had work in the morning. so after much arguing with the customer service guy, we finally got ourselves to another airline and took the only available flight out to san diego. i called rosie and scott to see if they could bring us home. and rosie came by and drove us all the way up to cerritos. and now i'm back. i'm happy to be home. burning man is this week and i have much to do. i think i will be most truly happy once i'm out on the playa. once i have everything done and all that is left to do is to party.
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