Dear Journal,

October 22, 2001

I am lost in this sea of peculiarity. Life springs upon me today in the oddest way. I hear the current of the tv chatter. Underneath it is my mother pacing in the kitchen. Her intoxication, a reasonable escape from my step-dads endless banter. She pleads with him as she is trying to be authoritative. She says, he's a freeloader, he's not doing as much as he ought to be. That she feels she is working constantly in oder to keep our heads above water while he sits on a luxury toy raft and glides gently downstream. He says in a very monotone voice, "I'm leaving tomorrow " As the words reach my ears I smile slightly for my contempt for him has only grown for him while he has resided with us. It's likely to be another empty threat as it usually is…

Now you see me, and I am so static in my tone, and so you can't gain a full picture of the reality that is without objection. I felt so horrid the other night when he nocked on my door. He gave words without meaning. Saying that he cares, and that he loves me. He said it repeatedly as to give me more then one opportunity to reply with the same kind words. I said nothing, my apathetic attitude felt so cold and I at once understood what it means, when your mouth grows empty of words left to speak. I searched my heart for kind feelings for this man who stood in my doorway soaked in his vulnerability and yet my heart was barren as a desert for I could not take in his kindness all I could see was the pain and emptiness and the lack of flavor in my mind when his name was processed. How tasteless was his presence, how I did not desire this man in my life. How sad and cruel I felt at my own thoughts, but how vehemently I stood.

Now I must tell you how these feelings were placed. It's the way he walks in and out of the room that I sit in, he dumps the bathroom trash blood filled tampons spill onto the floor with a thump. "Is this the trash from your bathroom?" He says in his, I'm a big man voice. "Uh yeah, are you going to pick that up." Oh no, that's yours he says. Maybe that's not the best example it's the physical displays he makes, the urine in my toilet the droplets of piss on my toiletseat. It's the fist full of tangled hair from the drain that he regergetated from my sink and left for me. It's the cat throwup he left in my toilet. It's the tall glass of yellow stained piss that sat in my porcelyn bathroom cup. It's like he wants me to hate him, and yet I can't even give him that pleasure. I choose not to think of him and I think he understands that.