Damn, where to begin...

My whole family is weird as hell. You know how people say you always think your family is normal because that is who you've grown up with, and so everything they've ever done MUST be what other families do as well? Well, according to that principle, other families never go on vacations, the mother and father are never home at the same time for more than two or three hours, and the family only speaks to each other when something is wrong or there is nothing else to do, because that is exactly what my family does.

I'm fairly certain my mother is bipolar. And on a semi-related note (I don't feel like writing a lot right now...), because my sister got a 94% in AP United States History, I'm expected to do even better than her because APPARENTLY I'm the brainchild of the family and my mother said that, when - not if, when - I go to college and get my Ph.D and become a nationally-ranked athlete, I'm expected to use all of my money to pamper her and buy her a new house because she hates the town we live in.

Oh, yeah, no matter that I'm fourth on the Varsity cross-country team and I went to fucking Nationals for the Junior Olympics - I'm a horrible athlete and I'm so lazy and I'll get fat because I forgot to run on a Saturday. And forget that I'm (almost) an Eagle Scout, four-year Varsity letterman, first-chair alto saxophone in both bands, a 4.0 student in all Advanced Placement classes, a champion 4-H swine showman, an ardent volunteer, AND have written many original sermons that I've then given in church (and, might I add, churchgoers came up to me after all of my sermons and asked if I was considering becoming a pastor)...never mind any of that. If I get a B in APUSH, I will, in my mother's own words, "Work at fuckin' McDonalds for the rest of [my] life."

Oh, do you think I WANT to do half of that stuff? Sure, it all sounds good, but all I really want to do is write. But never mind that either! I've showed her the compliments I've received on my writing thus far and her only comment was "Your sister will be pissed if you get published." Yup, everything is a competition to my mother. Same with running: she expects me to drop everything I'm doing (while still being a 4.0 student Boy Scout champion musical volunteer preacher) and train all day, every day so I can become number one in the school. Our shitty little school of barely one thousand in a piss-poor farm town in the middle of nowhere.

...I just realized I was only supposed to talk about my dad. Whoops.

My dad drinks. A lot. He likes working. A lot. He is never home. A lot.

When I was little, he would drag my sister and I along to his friend's junkyard and delude us into thinking we were going to explore or something stupid like that. Then he would drink himself into a stupor with his buddies - and that could have taken all day - and then drive his two little kids home while buzzed out the wazoo. His entire life is wake up, go to work, drink, work, drink, work, come home, drink, WORK, drink, go to bed, keep my mom up all night with his snoring, repeat. Day in and day out for sixteen-plus years, never really learning anything about me.

And all of a sudden, out of the blue, he is trying to connect with me. He acts interested in the stuff I do (and makes an ass of himself because he has NO idea what he is talking about) and tries to get me to come outside for "father-son bonding", which is code for work in the barn on someone's car. It took him seven years to finish our basement because he kept agreeing to fix other people's stupid shit FOR FREE.

So, long story short, I'm in that teenage phase where I believe my parents don't understand me. I believe I'm supposed to use this opportunity to explore alcohol, drugs, and sex, but if nothing else they raised me a moral kid. So I can't even go out and have ILLEGAL fun. I can just stay home and work and try to stay out of their way.

My mom gave me a pair of pajama pants today. It's sort of a tradition: every Christmas Eve, my parents get me a new pair of PJ pants. Well, she's working today, so she gave them to me early. My dad walked into my room and the pants were laying on my bed.

"Where did you get these?"

"Mom gave them to me."

"Yeah, they were supposed to be your present. Dammit, she's ruined Christmas."

And then he stormed out of my room and I can hear random banging from the other side of the house now. So, once again, Christmas will be a wonderful time.

To add to my mother rant: she expects me to work on the neighbor's farm for the morning and afternoon every weekday, then go workout for 2-3 hours in the closest major town (about 45 minutes away) in the evenings. So when I get home at 8PM, exhausted and sore, she berates me for nothing having anything done and only having an A- in what is quite possibly the hardest high school class offered (APUSH).

So...yeah. That's my rant. I'm gonna go curl up in a ball and cry now.

- Kolth