Things That Have Happened

The thing about me is that my relationship with my parents has, since my teen years, always been a little troubled. It's not so troubled that I've been kicked out of home or anything, though my father did consider doing that at one stage, but it's troubled enough that I have to think a little while before I trust them with anything that I consider to be emotionally significant about my existence.

You see, even though I'm bisexual, I've never really openly discussed it with either of my parents. Yeah, sure, there's been some talk of sexuality and the such, but there's never really been a point in time when I've really felt safe with giving them direct confirmation that I am as I am.

I think on some level they might very well know about it, and for a long time I've suspected that they do know, but there's never really been any real discussion of it. I think part of it stems from them being kinda uncomfortable with it, and part of it stems from me being kinda uncomfortable talking about it with them. People are quite often accepting of things on paper, but they're somewhat less accepting when it's right there on their doorsteps and in their homes.

The divide between my parents and I stems from more than a denial of whom I'm attracted to. The fact is that in a lot of ways, I'm the worst human being imaginable, and they're not quite angels with human bodies either.

I suppose people might say that at least I haven't killed anybody, or at least I haven't sexually assaulted anybody, but I've never understood why someone has to go to those extremes before it's commonly understood that the person in question is a horrible human being. Sure, I've done neither of these things, but the fact is I am a horrible human being in other ways: during my high school years, especially from Year 9 onward, I was a bully to a few people, and this is something I feel no remorse over, and for a long time I've had little regard for the emotions of people around me.

I think the mistake I made was that a lot of the time during my teen years, I didn't make a lot of effort to hide what kind of person I was becoming. While I wasn't the straight up delinquent who was breaking into people's houses or getting into fights at school or anything of that nature, I wasn't the angel who was always getting high marks in school or involving myself with a large circle of friends or anything of that nature, either.

What I was for the longest time, and in some ways have continued to be to the day I wrote this, was someone who keeps to himself and for the most part doesn't even pretend to care about the emotional wellbeing of the people around him. Yes, I understand this is a very large fault, and no, I'm not going to attempt to justify it or explain it, because there can be no justification for ending up like me and sometimes there are no explanations for things like this.

During my teen years, my attitude towards homework was always somewhat haphazard. This was a source of great tension between me and my father--he'd get very worked up over it, and I'd continually treat it with a great deal of apathy. When I was sixteen, it got to the point where he beat me a couple of times because of it, though he only ever did it twice.

However, I think a lot of the tension between him and I stems from a lack of any real communication between the two of us. Ever since I've lived with him, the case has been for the most part that when we're both at home on the same day, we spend most of the day on opposite sides of the house not talking to each other.

Every so often he might give some grand talk about how we've only got each other and how we need to be open, but I don't really think that we even have that at this stage. I mean, how can there be any effective method of emotional closeness when the only real simulation of such comes at the times we have dinner together, which comes maybe once a fortnight at best?

Long story short is that, emotionally speaking, I don't feel that I'm particularly close to my father, and I haven't felt this way in a long while now. While he may occasionally speak to me as if there is some great bond between us, I understand things a little differently. There is no real effective bond between us--he lets me live with him as a courtesy, because he understands that both economically and socially speaking, I can't afford to live elsewhere, and that should he kick me out, his reputation is bound to suffer as a consequence.

I don't write this to elicit any kind of sympathy from you, dear reader. I don't give a fuck about what you think of me at this point, and no matter what you think of me now; you're bound to think a lot worse of me by the time you've read all of this, should you so choose to stick around for that long.

Traditionally, I've always been closer to my mother than I have to my father. I'm not entirely sure why this has been the case, because for the longest time, I've also understood that on any real level, I don't really have her support either. Much like my father, she may occasionally speak about how she'll always be there for me and whatnot, but in any real practical sense, any real bond between her and I is vacant from my life.

When I was sixteen, she accused me of stealing from her. She's never admitted that she was wrong for accusing me of doing so, and since then I've only seen her face to face less than half a dozen times.

My greatest regret about the divide between my mother and I isn't that it inhibits my ability to see her or my stepfather. These are two people who I don't consider to be of any great interest to me, nor do I think I would particularly benefit from their presence. My greatest regret about this divide is that it inhibits me from seeing my half-sister, who as of this writing will be turning six in a couple of months.

The other thing which has only proven to strengthen the divide between her and I is another incident that also happened when I was sixteen.

See, when I was fifteen and sixteen, it was a bit of a rough patch for me: fifteen was the age I was when ran away from home, and sixteen was the age I was when I essentially tapped myself out of the school system and stopped paying any great amount of attention to what was happening. I suppose the entirety of high school was a rough patch for me, but Years 9 and 10 would be the years I'd describe as the roughest by far, especially given that I had not yet discovered self mutilation.

At one point during Year 10, my father decided he'd had enough of what he'd describe as my juvenile delinquency. So he tried to kick me out, telling me that I was to move to my mother's. I rang her up and told her that I was moving in with her, and I didn't bother to explain why I was doing so at the time, though she'd later find this out from my father.

Either way, it didn't really matter, because my stepfather wouldn't have me. I suppose every major male authority figure in my life thus far has regarded me as the rotten apple they'd rather not have in stock. It doesn't matter, because I regard myself in much the same way as they do.

So, my father was stuck with me indefinitely, and my mother and stepfather were indefinitely rid of my presence. I suppose in some way this may have been for the best, because I think if my father considered my continual refusal to so much as start school assignments as teenage delinquency, then he would have been shocked as to what I was considering doing if I were forced to move in with my mother and stepfather.

I guess ultimately most of the blame for the divide between my parents and I is on me, because as much as I think they have wronged me, I suppose in every conceivable way, I've deserved what's come to me. I don't like it, but I won't deny that I deserve it. After all, why deny the obvious, right?