Home

I'm living in the same old house, still living with my parents and my brother, but it doesn't feel like home when the other people want you gone. You know the feeling of standing in a place just as you're about to move out: at once so familiar, and yet empty of all it held before. This is the feeling I have now, not just in this house, but in my own mind.

It's taken me longer than most to reach this mark in life. I don't want to ask for things. My family is a mental burden. I don't enjoy being a disappointment, but it's not going to stop anytime soon, so I must leave. I'm sure they still love me, though I know I don't really understand the relationship between parents and children, but living with them is fettering.

It's mostly my Mom. Maybe she doesn't realize it, but she almost never speaks to me without mentioning something I should be doing, something I should have done, or something I did wrong. What I thought was a nice sunday morning, today, turned into a bothersome one when she began quizzing me on the jobs I've failed to secure. Why? I don't know. Did she think that anything good would come of it? Every day she asks me what I did and the answer is always the same, and she always knows it before she asks. "Not much," I say. I can only interpret her inquiries as criticism.

Perhaps I'm over-thinking, maybe. That is a habit of mine. But in any case it seems my days of unconditional acceptance at home are over. And it's not just you, even to me it feels like a case of dragging feet. If I had a job and lived in my own place none of this would be an issue. At the same time, though, I can't help but ask myself, "why? why did this all happen?" again, and again, and again. Life is an imposition, but I suppose I should concentrate less on how I got into this situation, and more on how I'm going to get out of it.

Well, I know how I'm getting out of it. I'm going to China. That's a about a month and a half away, with Christmas in between. I hope we can have some good times together before I go, because I won't be back for a long time. In the back of my head I feel I may never come back, maybe for a visit, but not truly. There's something appealing about life in a land where nobody knows you.