(no subject)
Something compelled me the other day to read over some of my back-entries on here and I noticed two things:
One) I only come on here when I have something to bitch about, which I believe is due to the fact that I don't really want to subject people in real life to having to listen to the volume of it I'm capable of producing, but in this way, I still get to feel like I've told someone even though the fact is that it never gets read, and if it did, a person could easily draw the conclusion that I am a whiny ungrateful little brat, since during all the times when I'm not pissed or sad, I'm typically out doing something besides writing in LJ about how happy or satisfied I am. Sorry. Analyzing things into submission is what I do.
Two) My life is in almost the exact same condition now that it was in four years ago. Hence the bitching to follow.
So seriously, I am once again trapped living at my father's house, impatient with the development of my career, and pining over a man who may dig me pretty hard when it's convenient for him, but can not and will likely never choose nor be able to commit to me.
I hate to relapse into the teen angst/mad at your parents/blaming them for your own decisions junk, but let's elaborate on my bitch with the dad first.
Backstory: During the first years of my parents' marriage, my dad was travelling the country remodeling KFC's with some of his closest buddies, making great money to support his wife and her young daughter (my sister) from a previous sperm-donation, and making great strides toward eventually buying the home I am now sitting in. He was a good man, an extremely intelligent man, a problem-solver, and a provider, his way of displaying affection and committment, while simultaneously clinging adamantly to the freedom of his youth, after having made the impulsive decision to marry before he was really equipped.
My mother, dissatisfied as ever, did not like this arrangement. She wanted him home to pay attention to her with the sappy kind of affection she craves, so alien to my father's nature. (It occurs to me that this was not the best match to begin with.) I can understand her crushing lonliness, and I can understand her position of feeling like she couldn't talk to my father about it, for he is a man who is unreasonably stubborn and thinks he is never wrong. The more you nag him, the less likely he is to change his mind, and any display of emotion during conflict is an obvious excuse to him that you are just being an irrational woman and he should treat your entire point as completely invalid. I still do not condone her method for getting him to see things her way.
They had discussed having another child. At some unspecific point in the foggy and comfortably distant future, since a child's arrival is ultimately a pretty mysterious thing to a man, having to contribute so very little thought, effort, or mass to the process. Something they keep on their list of stuff to do, but like, not until they're getting too old to do anything else. They just wake up on their 37th birthday with their failing blood-pressure and troublesome cholesterol and begin to panic about this accomplishment that is threatening to elude them permanently if they don't get on it. Fatherhood may not even be anything that ever particularly interested them, but at the prospect of no longer being able, they suddenly have to prove that they can, and then take a great deal of pride in it when they're able to impregnate their wife. Like it's such an exertion for them.
I feel that the ideal age gap between partners is for the man to be seven years older, because it seems to take them this long to catch up with us maturity-wise. Sexually speaking, I think it is ideal for the woman to be thirteen years older, because it seems to take the woman's libido this long to catch up. Unfortunately, we are usually already married to an older man by this point. So Ha!, motherfuckers; now you get to see what it's like to have someone constantly chasing you around with their dick hard, so to speak, hounding you for sex that you can't provide.
Anyway, my parents had discussed having another child. Because he wanted to have one that was biologically his. Just not now. So what does my mother do? She goes off the birth control without telling him. She gets her way and my dad seeks work in town, and he holds it against her ever after. He resents my mother for trapping him by getting pregnant with me. He resents me for coming before he was ready to be tied down and castrated. He resents me for not being a boy. And if I had to be a girl, why couldn't I at least grow up to be a more femenine one?
I am coming to view him increasingly as a closet chauvanist. He wishes he still lived in his parents' day, when women were content (or at least gave the impression of being content, because displaying dissatisfaction with your man is the quickest way to cause him to seek and extramarital affair with someone who is easier to satisfy, since he's married and therefore she can't expect anything of him anyway) to stay home and tend the house and the children and possibly the strawberry patch, or, if they did work, they were teachers, or nurses, or florists, traditionally feminine roles at which they made just enough money to feel like they were contributing and thus placating their silly frivolous desires about equality and such. A man did his wife a favor by letting her work, but he brought home the bacon, and so long as he filled this role, the woman basically had to deal with him doing whatever he wanted because she couldn't get by without him.
Dad wishes mom had been like this. But once she returned to work after I arrived, she often earned more than he did, (which had never happened when he'd been able to work how and where he wanted, a situation he assumed would have stayed the same even though he continued earning the same amount here as he had on the road while her wages accelerated with the times). And managed to spend more than both of them together made, which I think may have been her outlet for relationship tension, the same as drinking or gambling. I still don't condone it, due to the fact that, even more than just being plain irresponsible, it was completely destructive to what was left of their relationship at that point. Rather than getting him to see her as an equal, he became even more controlling about fianances, but in a secretive way, squirrelling money away in every fund he could find, while she continued to spend the amount of money that would have been in the joint account had he not been hiding his share of it, always leaving him to clean up the messes of debt she left.
It was a power struggle. Mom feared ending up in a marriage like that of her own parents, where her mother had been forced into submission and eventually left. She says that although she will always love him, she sees too much of her own father in Dad.
Dad wanted to wear the pants, but knew he was living in a world where it was considered shameful for a man to dominate his wife, a situation which left him feeling so emasculated that, rather than being forthcoming about his own needs (something it is unmanly to speak of to begin with) he learned to simply shut up in order to avoid a fight, continue doing what he always did regardless of what mom thought or felt about it (since he is incapable of seeing anyone's way but his own, and mom had come to expect every conversation to turn into a fight and therefore put them off in the hope that her gripe would magically resolve itself, which they never do, until she was feeling a high level of anxiety about them when she finally did bring them up, a recipe for him to not take her seriously, inevitably leading to an altercation) and let his resentments fester, a potentially explosive habit were it not for his self-medication with alcohol. To him, the hurt of her leaving is not so much to do with love lost as it to do with wounded pride.
They were already living seperate lives. The drinking was the last straw and they divorced. End of backstory.
What has me freaked at the moment is the fact that I am essentially filling the role of wife to my father, and that he wants to keep it this way.
Every time I make an effort at striking out on my own and wind up flat-assed, I keep coming back here to recuperate and gather myself for another try. Each time I return, every dish in the house will be in a stack in the sink.
Let the record state that I do not have a problem with doing dishes. It is one of my least favorite activities, and I have been known to procrastinate it a day or two, but I do not have a problem with doing them. I do not even have a problem with doing them for a man. What I have a problem with is being expected to do them. Especially when it is for a man who will not do it for himself. I use this example because it is the most common point of friction between us, but it basically applies to every aspect of house-cleaning. He does do his own laundry, the one habit he must maintain in my absence.
Because I require sanitary conditions to live in, I come home and scour the entire house, and he comes home from work and says nothing about it. No "Thank you," no "Nice job," nothing. Like it's just expected. One of his God-given rights as a man that he shall be supplied with a woman to clean up after him. When I'm gone, he won't clean on his own behalf just on principle. But when I'm here, if I let dishes pile up, I hear about it. I have remedied this situation by using only my two plates and my two bowls I got for myself in Dodge, and washing them as I go, so that he no longer has the argument that it's my mess.
He'll trash the stovetop with splatters from the greasy shit he cooks and not wipe it up while it's warm.
He'll spill coffee and God-knows-what-else on the countertop and leave it there.
He pisses in the shower and all around his toilet and never cleans any of it, and blames the cats. Thank God we have seperate bathrooms.
I come home and the dogs are half-feral and the litter boxes look like they haven't been cleaned since I left. Meanwhile, he's been calling me the entire time I've been gone complaining that the cats are "going" outside the boxes. Sure can't leave em here again. Ever. He takes care of them just like he took care of me: bare-assed minimum. Throw food at em and let em fend for themselves otherwise. "They're not my responsibility." Apparently, neither was I. I apologize for the manner in which I was conceived. Now I know for next time.
He spills everything in the fridge and will actually let it fuzz on the bare shelf rather than wipe it up when it's fresh. Why would he? He knows I'll be home in a few months to do it for him.
And the thing is, he hates everything about me being here. He hates the hours I keep when I'm earning a living, whether at the track or at the club. He hates what I do for a living, whether it's riding, or shoeing, which are both far too masculine, or dancing, which is something no self-respecting man would ever tolerate from his wife. He hates the water and electricity I use. He REALLY hates the animals, yet he prefers the being here to not because at least then he has something to blame besides himself for his castle falling into ruin. He hates it that I buy my own food and bring it into his house and he feels, correctly, that he is not to eat it. His only standard for food-buying is that it's cheap. He doesn't give a shit about whether it's nutritious or not, but guess what? I do! That's why I buy my own food, and when he sees it placed before him, he considers it free, which guess what? It's not! Far from it. And he eats it and practically dares me to say anything about it, because his bottom line to every argument I could ever come up with is that I am staying in his house for free. I feel like I have no rights, because honestly, I don't.
He can do whatever he wants with me and my things and my animals, because he holds the leverage of being able to kick me out, which he will never do because he enjoys having me dependent upon him. It makes him feel like a man. The man is supposed to control EVERYONE's every move, is he not? He wants someone to clean up after him, and someone to talk at. I cannot watch the news without him drowning out whatever I'm trying to hear with his negative commentary. Seriously, he never has anything good to say about anything, and I see myself repeating this behavior, and the influence is driving me FUCKING NUTS. The only thing that has kept this tension between us from coming to a head is that he's been working out of town for the last few weeks, so it's almost like having my own place a few nights a week. I need OUT of this situation.
Herein lies the problem. I have this pile of animals, see. I've kept them around ever since I was a kid, replaced the emotional contact I should have had with my parents with them. Given them the nurturing I should have received. Kind of along the same psychological line as that of teen girls desperate to have babies. There have been more than a few occasions in my life where, had I not been so worried about what would happen to them without me, my ass would no longer be here. On that note, maybe I'm a little worried about what would happen to me without them, as well. Either way, I feel a tremendous sense of both gratitude and responsibility about them. Everyone tells me I should just give them away because they're weighing me down, holding me back from my goals at the track, but if I'd gone the route of some teens girls and had a baby, then raised it for seven years, would I be able to just give it away? Would people encourage such a thing? Would anyone ever love and take care of it like I would? That is how I feel about these animals. And it makes it impossible to find a cheap place to stay when I travel.
Maybe I can find an extended stay motel, and spend 800 bucks a month on it. Maybe I can find an apartment that'll do a short-term lease, and spend 700 bucks a month on it, plus a $400 deposit up front, for something that'll last all of three months. Maybe I can't find anything. Can't stay in a tack room with dogs. Which leaves me living in my truck. With animals. *cringes*
The simplest solution would be to buy a small travel trailer, which I am already equipped to pull except for wiring. I was ready to do it the other day, and guess who refused to cosign the loan? A little $5,000 NOTHING loan that I would have paid off in a year. Money that I was on track to have, outright, by the end of this season had I not been injured. I reasoned that I paid off my student loan a year early, making a lot less than I am now. I reasoned that, if it's money I have to spend anyway, since I have to have a place to stay, I might as well spend it one something that's going to be mine in the end, reasoning which he himself has often used to discourage me from renting. Seriously, 300 bucks a month on lot rent plus a $300 a month trailer payment, tops, which I'd pay $400 on anyway, for a total of $700, still less than I'd be paying for an apartment or crappy motel, and I end up owning the trailer so I never have to deal with the stress and expense of finding a place to stay again. And after it's paid off, I have the other $3-400 a month freed up to save or invest. Instead, having to get a place to stay is initially going to deplete what little savings I have now, and is also going to slow the rate at which I am able to save for owning a trailer in the future, and ensure that I am able to have no frivolous fun whatsoever in the meantime. Fuckin bullshit. It would take nothing from him whatsoever to remedy this situation. Nothing.
But he doesn't think women should have happiness; he thinks they should be slaves to and in their husbands' homes. And he definitely does not want to facilitate my independence. He does not want to do anything that would allow me to leave on a permanent basis because he is still working out his failure in his marriage to my mother by reinacting it with me, which he will continue to do, given his choice, until I submit to him and his way of thinking in every way. If I leave, too, guess what? He fails. Permanently. He is finally faced with the realization that everything that's gone wrong in his life is his own God-damned fault, not mine, and not mom's, and that's just too damned much for him. Not just a river in Egypt. He doesn't get to control me anymore. In that case, I might as well just cut his dick off. And then what does he have?
His reasoning, as it has always been, is that he does not want to risk his own money; I'll probably flake out because "you just have too much of your mother in you." Money is a smokescreen for his other phallic insecurities. Always has been.
And thank you, Mom, because now I'm stuck with it instead. Remember, my dad is the one I like.
He loved me for me when I was little. Loved me for who I was before I became who I am.
Loved me like you love a kitten.
Why couldn't I have just stayed little? *starve starve starve*
He likes the little fucking neighbor girl better than he likes me now.