I keep getting these intense, terrifying bouts of extreme depression and i have no-one to talk to about it.
Ironically, realising that makes it twenty times worse.

An Honest Conversation

The usual happened on Friday when my mum, dad, sister and I were having afternoon tea; mum and dad talked about depressing things they have no control over.

They’d run into an acquaintance at the supermarket who had fallen on hard times a while back, only to find out he was now sleeping under a bridge. Mum of course swung into action and tried to find out about emergency accommodation etc, and then my sister and I listened to them talk about it for about 20 minutes. Then they moved on to a horrific car accident that had killed two people not far from where we live. My sister of course got up and left shortly after they started in on it (she keeps telling them that stuff upsets her and yet they keep doing it). Dad made some shitty comment to her about it a bit later and it all got a bit tense.

An important detail to note: my dad was a policeman for almost 30 years and so is pretty used to hearing about horrible things (not that it doesn’t bother him, but yeh he seems to deal with it a lot better).

So anyway after dinner my sister said that she wanted to explain why it was upsetting. Another important detail: we do not discuss or confront anything personal in our family. Well, mum and dad certainly don’t anyway. I mean when I was 14 they were told numerous times that I was suicidal and it still took the assistant principal at my school threatening to call child services to get them to take me to a doctor. I’ve been on anti-depressants ever since and it has never been talked about.

So my sister and I tried to explain that it’s really depressing and terrible the way whenever we all sit down together, all they do is talk about depressing stuff; Phoebe’s death, horrible things they see on the news, how much mum hates her job, how much dad hates his life etc etc. It’s hard to explain how it all went down, but it was pretty awkward. Once we had established that dad was no longer going to discuss the Phoebe stuff with us (he couldn’t understand why we found it distressing and when we couldn’t give him exact details about the stuff we didn’t want to hear about the case he just said he wouldn’t ever talk about it in front of us), he started saying stuff like “Oh so you never want to talk about anything bad that happens in case it upsets you”. I really wanted to punch him when he started with that bullshit. Then my sister moved on to how we’re their children, not their friends.

A little explanation of this: Mum and dad have told us from a young age (mostly my sister) about all their financial and personal problems. Before 2011 (my sister started to withdraw from my parents after Phoebe’s death) they would often call my sister and tell them all their problems and then make some small talk and say goodbye, feeling much better. My sister of course was then left to stress about all the problems she knew they were having. The thing about my parents is that they always tell us how mature and intelligent we are, but the moment we disagree with them on anything they tell us that we’re too young to understand or that they’ve experienced far more in their lifetime and we’re just kids etc. I think the whole thing has messed up my sister a lot more because, as she’s always had a better relationship with mum and dad that my brother and I have, they always wanted to confide in her. Mum told her all this stuff about us being completely broke and being in a lot of trouble when she was like 12, and then randomly gave her $50 like a week later. So suffice to say they tend to treat us like peers and lean on us way more than we have ever leaned on them, which sucks, but which got a whole lot worse when Phoebe died and their support system (us and the rest of the family) collapsed, but they didn’t stop unloading.

So when she said the thing about us being their kids and not their friends, dad immediately got really offended and no matter how we explained it, he still didn’t get it. I tried to explain that the friend relationship dynamic and the parent-child relationship dynamic are very different, but the message still didn’t get through.

I guess the whole experience was positive, in that it’s the first honest conversation we have had with our parents.

Then again, dad’s complete cluelessness about people and relationships and mum’s stubborn denial that she might ever have done anything wrong is epically depressing.

And they wonder why I’m crazy.

Not Again

So a girl a worked with in Warrnambool for a while last year died in a car accident with her sister and three of their friends. And I got to see it on the front of a newspaper, with no warning whatsoever. This suuuuuucks.

It would be super awesome if people stopped dying.

Results

Get my uni results in under 40 minutes.

Got a haircut today, can’t decide if it’s too short or not.

Fuuuuuuck I hope I get the marks I need to transfer.

Edgy

Best defined in the Daria episode The Lost Girls:

Jake: ‘Edgy’…I keep hearing that word from my clients. Everyone wants ‘edgy’. What is it?

Val: ‘Edgy’ is going right up to the edge of the cliff and being able to see all the way down, and dancing anyway

Jake: What the hell does that mean?!

I hate that I’m incapable of looking edgy; people with curly red hair, freckles, and huge boobs cannot look edgy.

Maybe I should get a crazy haircut?