Late Night in Halifax

2004-06-07 - 1:28 a.m.

Can't sleep, and so I'm taking a risk and actually writing here from my dad's computer. I'm still in Halifax, and I'm doing well...the trip has been good, and the wedding was fun, and I'll have lots of stuff to say. My "things that went good and epiphanies about myself and the universe" entry will have to wait until I get home, which should be in a couple of days.

Right now, though, I've just given up on sleep, after lying in bed for a couple of hours. I wrote some stuff long-hand to see if that helped, but my hand started to hurt. I'll either curse or praise the typewriter for giving such lazy-wristed writers like myself a chance to spew out words whenever we like.

In general, I think I might be veering towards a depression. The fact that I can sense this is a good sign in itself...it means that with some care I might avoid it, or lessen its impact. Mainly, I've been feeling really, really insecure. This has been going on for weeks, really, and it's led to my not being my best self. But lately I've been catching myself saying mean things about who I am. That's easy enough to fix, I guess, but it's this swirling feeling of self-doubt, of not feeling "right", of impatience with...myself? The world? Everything.

That's just the mental environment, though. The specific thoughts that are keeping me awake tonight are about my family, my dad in particular.

I ran out of cash this trip, and still hadn't paid for my part of the hotel room a friend and I rented (for sanity), and I didn't have any money to guarantee food when I get back home before pay day.

It's mostly my fault for poor budgeting: the wedding clothes were twice as much as I thought they would be, but on top of that, there were a few pizzas and dinners out and books bought that I could have done without. I hate asking for money, especially when I'm destitute because of my own carelessness. I cannot describe how much I detest having to ask for things. It's something that I will put off as long as possible, which then makes the actual act of asking become rushed and desperate. Whether I'm right or wrong to ask for any particular thing, I can promise you that I never ask carelessly...I stress big-time before-hand (ugly hyphenation...sorry...I blame sleeplessness).

When I need money, I usually ask my mom. For one thing, she rarely says no. For another, it's simpler. My mom will give until it hurts...she will sacrifice her own well-being for her kids. If she says no, it's because she has no food in her cupboards. I don't like asking mom for money, mainly because I never know when she can spare it, and because I suspect that she usually can't.

I had borrowed money from mom a few months ago, and still haven't paid her back, so this time I went to my dad.

My dad is the head of a double-income household. I don't know how much he makes, but it is enough to give him a 3-4 bedroom house (the 4th bedroom is my step-mom's office, where she works as a freelance accountant for medium-sized companies), two vehicles, each purchased within the last three years (one truck, one S.U.V.), a motorboat, a cottage, new appliances every couple of years, the largest microwave I've ever seen, and the largest flat-screen television I've ever seen outside of a store (this is the newest addition to their household, I think. They don't even watch television.). They take vacations every year, and just recently returned from Florida.

It's petty and crass to list these sort of accomplishments, and I'm not sure exactly why they rankle. I hope it's more than plain old jealousy, and I hope that I'm really listing them to show that my dad, while not rich, lives pretty comfortably. He worked hard to get here, and it's taken him a couple of decades to build this wealth...I'm not always sure he understands how much he actually has, though.

So, I asked dad for money, explained the situation, and he said he didn't have any money on him. In that way that seems to say that he can find the money, but that he doesn't want to.

So, my mom's given me the money to tide me over until pay day, when I'll be able to pay her back. I know, this time, that she can't really afford it. My mom lives in a friend's basement and makes about as much as I do, and I suspect that she's been spending a lot on my brother, who was recently between-jobs (yay! euphemisms!).

I'm angry at my dad, but I can't shake that feeling that I'm wrong to be angry at him. I know that sometimes he might have been right to say no, and I'm not confident enough to believe that this is one of the times when he's wrong. It's the money, maybe, that's screwing me up on this...the fact that I can be greedy. I may not ask for very much, I may hate asking for things, but I sure as hell feel entitled a lot of the time, whether I am entitled or not.

I'm pretty sure that ending entries just after I've described the problem, but before any actual discussion around the issue, is a sign that I'm not growing. I've been doing this a lot lately, and it worries me. There's some hard work involved in figuring out some stuff, and I'm not really doing it...a lot of these entries have just been letting people know that I'm aware of things, but they haven't really been about thinking deeply about them. I want resolution in my entries, some sort of progression. I'm not delivering.

Everything's just so muddled in my head...I feel like all of my anxieties and issues and problems are all tangled up into a tight clog, and I'm having a hard time untangling everything. One entry turns into another, and everything seems connected, but with no locus, no central point.

I'm going to read some of you now, try to catch up, and then go to sleep.

Cheers,

The Magus

previous - next