stalling...

Pardon my posting this morning as I whine a little…..

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I’m stalling…I don’t know what to write…but I know that if I don’t start coming up with something I will have to leave and return to my apartment…coming face to face with the fact that it’s Thursday afternoon, and my parents are coming Saturday, expecting my apartment to be totally packed up. And really, I want to be packed up when they get there – so they don’t have deal with my stuff and so tensions don’t run so high. Usually I’m too busy or too stressed (about the whole moving home process ) to actually pack up anything until they come to “help” me. Inevitably, the day or days they come are horrible for everyone involved…everyone gets cranky and fights with each other (I don’t blame them…packing someone else’s stuff (because they didn’t do it themselves – verses being helpful) is probably sucky. Anyways – I don’t want to be that person again…I want things to be different…prove that I can be an adult and take care of things by myself.

Really, I think that’s I’m always trying to do. I act like I have something to prove. It used to show its self in angry/hard hearted sort of ways. But I think back then I was just trying to prove that I was strong – unknowable and thus harshly consistent emotionally – the thought – “there’s no way you can get to me…I just won’t let you…nothing you can do can hurt me or affect me”…and now it’s this push…this anxiety – that I’m not doing enough, don’t know enough, am not enough. All this striving, it’s stupid, I’m pretty sure that it won’t get me anywhere…but I want to have control over what my parents think about me. I want to be able to figure them out – have some consistency in our relationship. Even though my head knows that there’s a real good chance things aren’t going to change any time soon (as far as how my parents and I interact )…I let myself have too high of expectations and then am upset when they can’t meet them.

It’s hard to change. It’s hard to just let things be as they are. I see other people and how they get along with their family and I get real jealous (which is wrong) and I get angry that we’re not “like that.” I get tired of looking for the ‘good moments’ and struggling to hang on to them as some hope that God could/would change us. I don’t know what to think today. I know home’s not going to be easy and I shouldn’t expect it to be. I know that other people have it a lot worse at home than I do and I should be thankful that my family is allowing me to live with them again. It’s gonna take some work. Don’t get me wrong…I love my family…but we’re not exactly ‘close’…I don’t know how to love them ‘right’ and don’t know how to accept the ways they try to show me love.

When I’m around them I become this person I hate. The one who’s cold and short with people, gets frustrated easily, shuts down in conflict…all that crappy stuff. I become this person who is pretty sure that everyone’s looking down on them, has expectations I’m either not or can’t meet, or that I owe them. I spend all this time and energy on worthless things…things that don’t matter…over possibilities and not facts. I don’t want to be that person again.

Ok – enough for now…more to come…just can’t think about it any more right now. Maybe things will look different later on…it’s time for a birthday party :) Ruthie Pierson turned 3 years old on Tuesday and I’ve been invited to her “Pink and Yellow” party (her two favorite colors) – I love her and her brother a ton!! - - she’s growing up way too fast….pictures to come I’m sure :)

jenn