Because the Beauty of Online Self-Publishing is That You Can Litter Your Swatch of Cyberspace with Bitter Vagueries
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
I am not taken very seriously at home, you see. I’ve been a cartoon to my family this entire time—a dark, stubborn, toxic cartoon, a dismissible caricature of the angry girl. And the thing is, I’m not really that angry, and it’s just unfortunate that they only get to see this surface-level stewing-in-her-juices aspect of me. And because of that, I feel even more frustrated in their company, leading me to look even more like the Daria they’ve made me out to be.
I am a decidedly happier person than that. But all this “let’s all be on our toes because Margie might do something disgraceful yet again” treatment has gone on for so long that it’s congealed into some impenetrable force now. I am such a different, more tangible person around others, but I can’t be the same way around my own family. Their skewed idea of me has become too concrete.
What makes this whole deal even stickier is that I really can’t become the relative they wish I could be. It isn’t just a matter of smiling more. To be the lovable daughter/granddaughter/cousin/niece to them, I would have to turn my back on a certain decision I made that I still deem a perfectly logical move. I made that decision because I knew and felt that it was the best thing to do. I would like to think that a real life is one run on our own personal decisions, not on those of others. I don’t want to die with the thought that I compromised my whole life in order to be tolerated better, that I put on some good girl show so I could be their idea of normal and nice.
He made me a miserable person too early on in my life. No child deserves exposure to such unfounded insensitivity, to such violence. I spent the first decade of my life in the purest fear, subject to vicious words and an even harsher fist. And I knew that I had to be free of that, that there were so many great experiences ahead of me if I just had control over myself.
I wouldn’t be living a genuine life if I didn’t make that decision. If I took it all back and cooperated in making my family a sham, I wouldn’t have encountered the world the way any self-respecting person should. All of us are here for only a handful of decades, and there’s no point in not milking our lives for all they’re worth. So I’m not sorry that I prevented myself from such artifice. It’s just too bad that I’m synthetic to them already.
posted by marguerite @ 10:05 PM
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