[preface: just so you don't get the wrong idea here, this was an short-essay piece i wrote for an English composition class. i love to hate my family. i hate to love my family.... but most of all, i love my family.]

want to know how i really feel?

i'm surprised i come from the family i was born into. everyone drives me crazy, cranky, coo-coo, up-walls, insane, what have you. i'm surprised my dad works in marketing. i would literally shoot myself if i was as much of a perfectionist as he is working in the industry he does. i'm surprised he has any friends, he doesn't know how to talk to anyone normally. he stares icily at complete strangers, mouth ajar, judgements buildings. he makes racist remarks about people, even those who are white. it's as if he comes from the stone age. he types with his index fingers, still. he doesn't listen to me, ever. not only does he not listen, but he can't hear. or he pretends not to. turns out i'm right about things more and more these days, and i still can't prove to him that i have even half a brain. turns out, that's what happens when you go to college - you end up more and more right about about "things." he thinks he's invincible. he thinks his body is made of chrome. he's going on 59 and his back goes out every other month, but he refuses to give up shoveling snow as a hobby. he chews with his mouth open. he paces when he's on the phone. he doesn't talk about his family's past and he doesn't stay in contact with his three siblings.

my mother is narcisisstic. she's greedy. she inflicts self-pity on herself like it's her job. she makes me do her job, saying that it's the least i could do after she paid for me to go to college. she isn't in love with my dad anymore but refuses to leave him because she loves to make people miserable. she makes me feel bad for not going to church. she has no problem telling everyone else in this house what she thinks about any given thing at any given second, voice raised, mind made up. there's no telling who's right or wrong in this house.... except she's always right. she has a backwards way of raising my youngest brother, can't admit it and blames the god she prays to in church that he's not perfect like her children should have been. she expects too much out of life, therefore can't enjoy it or the people that make hers remotely worthwhile. she feels threatened by people who have more money than her, although money consumes her life in a way similar to how a best friend consumes one's life. she's overly critical, rashly judgmental and never thinks anyone is good enough for me.

chase is like my mother. he likes muscles, black-out drinking and regrets being the middle child, as if he had a choice. he rarely talks to me, let alone returns my calls, thinks that having an older sister is a curse. in fact, i don't even know him, and i'm near given up trying.

cameron models the devil. since my mother thought that removing him from the public school district would be a good idea, suddenly, he portrays everything i hated about Catholic, privately educated children (maybe mother thought that by sending her youngest to a private school, she could play herself off as rich and witty like all the other "private" people in the fox cities). he's been swearing for about 10 of his long, medically-pained 15 years. unlike most youngest children, he lacks the intelligence, sarcasm and responsibility it takes to keep parents of 3+ children out of psychiatric facilities. he's stubborn, tall, loud and unforgiving. redudanctly ungrateful. he thinks my first name is Bitch and calls me by it frequently. he thinks this house is his house. and much like the rest of the family, he probably wonders often why two mental people like my parents would have ever tried for a third child.

i'm stuck being the oldest, the only girl, pressured and pressed into the top-notch, cookie-cutter Midwestern mold. regularly praised, often self-proclaimed, i have recently found myself property of my Neenah home once again. it's the same home i so happily unhappily graduated from nearly five years ago. i have gone back in time. same grievances, same boyfriend, same comforter. same wall hangings, same bookcase. one less step from my bed to my bathroom. same echoes from the shoutings below, same rattles from the golden-rodded bed frame. same window facing the same lonely house with the same lady rocking the same recliner in the same dim light in her living room. i grew up in a nucleus group that somehow never mastered the art of talking, listening and reacting civil and with respect. i grew up wishing i could call my nucleus group a broken home because from the inside, that's really what it was. by the time i was a sophomore in college, i discovered the recipe to a bad relationship with my parents - living within their sight, smell and reach. a phone call away is the perfect distance. college was the perfect distraction. as time flies, college is over and i'm aching to rekindle. i've been scared to change or chance.

and now, i'm stuck.