Journal

I found among my clothes a shirt my parents bought for me on their vacation in the Swiss Alps. It was uncomfortable and scratchy, but I kept it because they wanted me to wear it. 

 

I have zero use for it, but on Monday I geared up to go running and I put it on hoping it would be some use to me. It just made it difficult to layer clothes on top of it to stay warm, then on top of that it scratched my skin. So, I got mad and destroyed it. 

 

It represented to me how my parents want me to look and live in a way that makes them happy, expecting that it would help me, when it has a harmful effect. Below is the entry I wrote in my journal.

 

i was angry but I tore the shirt calmly. dispassionately, almost. It wasn't in the tearing of the shirt that gave me violent joy, but in rendering it useless, making it unable to cause me further harm that provided justice, relief.

the shirt was a physical embodiment of my parents pressing an image, their preference of who they want me to be, onto me. It could little be any more direct, putting on a shirt to change one's appearance, in an image that suits their preference.

giving it to someone else, donating it would be insufficient. This shirt was given to me. It wasn't simply a shirt, it was my shirt, for me, intended to change my person into another. It must be destroyed, first, before leaving my possession.

 

in the same vein, i considered i ought to destroy my vehicle as well. my dad bought the car for me, how is that any different? how can i say they have done nothing for me that wasn't in actuality harmful and intending me to be who they were instead of who i am? I really wanted to. I did. 

 

The thought of leaving my car and EVERYTHING behind has come up before, not the first time. The thought of leaving my LIFE behind is another welcome relief. 

 

But the car is different. He did not buy me the car and hand me the keys. I went to the dealership, I picked out the vehicle, I made the purchase myself. He put the money in my bank account and I spent it as appropriately as I knew how. Because I had a use for the vehicle, I managed without one for a year, and then I had sufficient reason to use a car to warrant buying one. 

 

I did not ask for a new car, I did not feel right deserving one handed to me, when I had not earned it, but there it was, given to me to allow me to do what I wanted. It was different, it was not they picked out a car in their image that they wanted me to drive. It was I could do more with a car than without, so I intended to get one, as affordable and practical as was suited to my situation, and they said then get one, we will pay for one and we want your car to be new.

My final year of high school, I stopped going to school. I resisted graduation with the rejection of what it meant, intended to say about us, what the next step to college was all a farce, wrapped up in fears, doubts, and pressure for safety. I wouldn't sleep at night. I played video games. I didn't wake up for classes. I stopped participating in the circus because I adamantly opposed its motives and its lack of values.

My parents tried stripping me of every sanctuary remaining to me, my video games, my night time freedom, my morning sleep. I was in a hole far down in depression, they weren't throwing a rope to me, they wanted to flood me out with a water hose. I preferred to drown.

Their attitude was everything about me was wrong. I was not normal, I needed to correct myself. Everything I enjoyed that was keeping me from 'normal' activities was to be eliminated, eradicated, then the thought was I would correct myself to their expectations. 

 

They were so fucking wrong and religiously deaf to my outrage, that NO the 'normal' is wrong, that's why I'm fucking living an upside down life. That's why the only things I do are the few remaining sanctuaries I turn to. And your role in my plight is not to deliver me from persecution, but to flush me out from my domestic safety, fling me back into the jaws of my tormentors. 

 

That's why you will never be my appreciated parents, because in the adversity of outside pressure, you would listen to them instead of your son. You would turn your home into an extended surveillance to work their agenda and to further oust me. You would look at me with resentment like I robbed you of the model son you deserved, and that I was truant by being myself not being someone who paid back the appreciations you deserved.

On my birthday I was shielding myself from your persecution. You put a cake on the dining room table. You wanted to bribe me to your way. I thought of throwing it in the trash. But I decided that was too much consideration than the soulless gesture deserved. So I left it alone, did not even touch it. 

 

Instead I pulled the mattress from your bed down to the first floor, and I considered it throwing it in the garbage. I left it in the living room instead. 

 

That was what your cake meant to me. The way you every day ousted me from my night time mental refuge from the insufferable despicable systematic greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, and moral destitution of school during the day. The way you accused and denounced me in the morning when I slept. That was your cake. What you wanted me to eat. 

 

Dragging your place of rest and comfort out into the street. That was what you did to me. That was where your cake belonged. But I didn't touch the cake. That would be too much consideration to give to that fucking spineless cake. I put your mattress where it belonged instead. Here's your fucking message. See what you are saying to me. See your actions in the mirror.