my tumblr is about to become 1000 times more personal.

i don’t share all of this with my friends because I don’t want sympathy. From ANYONE. I like to think that I am content with myself and my life as a whole. 

But if I were to be honest with myself, this is only halfway true. I am only somewhat content with the person I am. The situations in my life that I have no control over are what I hate so much. 

This stems from my parents. 

My parents have always been a strange set to have. Their characteristics completely clash. 
Dad: outgoing, optimistic, friendly, funny, creative, childlike, imaginative, relaxed, a good listener, adventurous, and ALWAYS very loving and proud of his children.
Mom: quiet, tense, serious, unaffectionate, hot tempered, VERY active in her children’s lives.

From these characteristics, it seems like i am totally biased, but like I said, both parents were phenomenal parents, just opposites. 

They never really spoke much during my whole childhood. I don’t remember a single instant when I thought that my parents really loved each other. They always loved my brothers and I unconditionally; from the parenting aspect, both were and still are phenomenal. 

My mom was always just distant and quiet. She was the one I went to when I was sick and needed to be cradled and have my hair and back rubbed until I fell asleep in her lap. My dad has said that she is best with young children, like babies to toddlers. Once we started talking and making our own decisions, that’s when she stopped being so loving. Unfortunately, this is also the stage where I started making memories. I have little to no memories of my mother actually playing with me.  I never really felt like she was proud of me, because she never told me that. Everything was good or okay, but to my dad, it was great and deserved a spot on the refrigerator. She didn’t like clutter, so she would take it down before dinner. My room was never clean enough. She didn’t like the outfits I dressed myself in- she still doesn’t for that matter. All of this still applies actually. I just never really felt like she cared about me as much as she did my little brother because he was still a cute little baby. 

My dad created entire worlds for my best friend and I and would let us help him with whatever he was doing, build us tents out of blankets and the furniture in the basement, monsterous treehouses and dollhouses, and encouraged my creativity and never held back on telling me how much he loved me and how proud I made him. 

My parents finally divorced in 2002. I was 12 years old. I knew it was coming and so did my mom. My dad handed her the papers and she lost it completely. She kicked him out of the house and threw everything he needed out in the driveway and broke some vases and wine glasses and sat and the kitchen window crying all night. My little brother was 8. The next morning we didnt go to school because my mom couldnt stop crying long enough to drive us. After that I found rides from neighbors to get to school and back and they bought our groceries for a few weeks until my mom pulled herself together. She wouldnt let me see my dad. 

He came back the next week to see my little brother and me, and I remember that he held my hand all the way through the neighborhood and I cried my eyes out because I thought I would never see him. He hadnt found a house yet and had been living with his boss. 

I didn’t see him for a few weeks. 

When we did see him, we stayed at his boss’s house for 3 days at a time. They had two cats that ruled the house. The cats would be on the bar while we ate our breakfast of fiber cereal and the cats would drink our milk from our bowls. When we tried to push them away, dad’s boss would scowl at us for the rest of the day. AJ and I shared a bedroom that was the size of a handicap restroom stall. I’m positive that the room was a storage closet, but we were small and so was the air mattress. 

I’ve never wholeheartedly forgiven my mom. 

Because I never had to compete for either parent’s attention, now that my dad has remarried a woman he loves, I am not the center of his universe. She is. I hate her for that. She is a good woman, but I can’t handle it when he calls me just to see if she’s home yet. 

Now my parents have split custody and I spend a week at a time at each house. This means that every friday, the entire contents of my closet, art desk, and cd collection gets shoved back into suitcases and back into the trunk of my car. 

I think this is enough self pity for one night. If you read this, please don’t read it thinking that I just want your sympathy. I just need to get all of this out of my head.