Getting Here from There #3: Parents
I moved out here to get far away from my parents. Apparently (haha) the distance did some good. My relationship with them stopped being cold and became cordial. They couldn't touch me anymore and nothing they said could bother me anymore and I just laughed along when they said something that previously would make me see red. Instead of giving biting sarcastic responses, I would make a joke about it or respond inconclusively and ambiguously. Anything but say something to create a tense situation.

My final analysis is that it was a coping mechanism. I was tired of fighting, but in no way would I concede. I lost the war without signing a treaty stating that I had lost. I just pulled out like the U.S. did from Vietnam. Too proud to admit defeat. But the U.S. didn't have to admit defeat, the war wasn't fought on their land. In this scenario, my parents' landscape was the one that was left untouched. It wasn't their body or their psyche that was the battlefield. If I lost and signed a treaty, I'd be an attorney, living in New York, New Jersey, or Boston, somewhere close to them, I'd still be an alcoholic, I'd be decidedly miserable, not ironic or sarcastic at all, and I would own a gun.

current soundtrack: Bakufu Slump - "Hairanda" (Highlander)