parents.
12/20/2006 01:53 a.m.
the influence of parents is enough to make me not want kids. I look at my parents and I wonder how they ever lasted. they don't interact at all like people who are or were ever in love. I know how I've acted with people I love. I know how I've acted with boyfriends. we have inside jokes. we talk to each other with this certain voice. this tone. and I'm not saying we never argue. or want to be apart sometimes. or want to do stuff with other people. I'm not saying we're never in a room together for hours on end without touching. it's possible. and I'm not even saying we don't go some time without one of those serious, passionate, sexual kisses. we do. but one of the things I love about my relationships is that the person I'm with is my partner-in-crime. we might not spend every moment together, but when we get back together, we share. we lay close when we lay together. even in the middle of the night when we want our space, we might wake up for a few minutes and touch each other or move closer. my parents talk. they discuss. they laugh together at the TV. but they have no inside jokes. they so rarely make fun of each other. I don't remember the last time I saw them kiss on the lips. I haven't seen a kiss that would qualify as "passionate" for years. maybe a decade. they don't sit close together. they certainly don't touch when they sit together.

my parents make me amazingly paranoid about how my relationships might turn out.

besides that, I watch my mother when she's feeling down and it physically hurts me. I feel everything she's feeling because I've felt that way so many times myself. depression. when I told my therapist at Georgia Southern that my mother takes Zoloft, he nodded hugely. the fact that she has depression makes me so much more likely to. made that diagnosis so easy. made handing me those pills so easy. and today she was down and she was laying on the couch and you couldn't even talk to her. one word answers and her voice was shaky. and I told her she sounded down and to feel better and that she was the greatest (because, honestly, she is). and she cried. and it was that crying where your face is just leaking. you're not breathing hard or freaking out, you're just leaking. cause you're just sad. things aren't going your way.

it made me think about the article Micheaux sent me about becoming an optimist. and for the first time ever, I was angry at my mother because she was sad. I was angry at her because I know she can feel better, but she won't. or maybe she doesn't know how. either way, why isn't she trying? or is she? I don't want to assume she isn't. things aren't rosy and wonderful for her. things aren't perfect. but things are NEVER perfect for ANYONE. I know what she's doing and how she's thinking and it makes me angry because I know I think the same way she does. and why wouldn't I? she's my role model. my thoughts and feelings and behavior mirror hers. and I know that my friendship with Micheaux is teaching me how to change all the ways of thinking and feeling that I learned from her.

I have to take a moment to point out that, by all accounts, I'm a mama's girl. I've always been closer to my mother than my father. I could write a novel about the wonderful things my mother is and has taught me. she's an amazing person. she's the most generous person I know. which makes her and my father an intense combination, because he's also an extremely generous person. but there are things about my mother that make me angry. realizing that and now expressing it is odd to me. I'm not used to it. she and I have had arguments, but there's never been something about her personality that I look at and I just can't agree with. that happens with my dad constantly. but his outlook on life is so much more positive than my mother's. and what makes me so upset is that my mother's could be too if she would just make an effort to change her thinking.

I'm not saying it's just a simple thing. I'm not having an easy time doing it. I mess up almost every day trying to be better at this. I happen to have a great boyfriend who supports me in this process of trying to change my thinking. my dad would never understand this. my dad would never be able to teach my mother these things. and I don't think I could. I don't know. but I wish she would try. I wish she would make an effort to help herself.

I don't know. I might read this tomorrow and find it reads as terribly self-righteous and I might hate myself for it. but I'm just constantly struck by how deeply my parents affect my life and my outlook and how I handle things.

I just don't know.
I am currently Bothered