Tragic Flaw

and I was walking alone in the dark, but I started to feel really upset. As if all this built up tension just melted into sadness.

I felt really lonely and unwanted. But I think it was just the rain, or the fact I had just spent the last hour in a cafe with my former room mate talking about love. How I didn’t even have anyone to be infatuated with.

But the summer is so long. Who knows what adventures it has in store.

I’m so excited. I set up the new cage for the bigger pigger and I’ll have the babe in the small one for quarantine.

At about 12 I head my sister screaming my name. I walk into her room and it’s empty, so I check my other sister’s room. There’s a odour that leaks into the air as I open the door, puke. She’s lying on the floor, her hair is covered in her vomit. The one whose room it is is in the bed, she turns her head over from the hanging over the edge and slurs “we’re so drunk”

And thus starts the assembling of the family members. My brother, his girlfriend, my mother and I fetch water, grab towels and try to hydrate and move the girls. We also look for the source, which was a 3/4 empty 2-6 of vodka. Split between the two under 90lbs teens.

The older one, lying in the bed, is sobering up after ‘puking everywhere’ while the young one is in hysterics screaming that no one loves her. We carry her to the washroom so we can shower her. Her 90s athletic skirt reveals she is in fact not wearing underwear, and my mother then takes over from my older brother. We wash the vomit out of her hair and wait half an hour while she calms down and falls asleep on the bathroom floor.

Since upstairs reeks of vomit and my sister is passed out in the washroom, I’ve decided to sleep on the couch downstairs and watch a marathon of Castle.

All I wanted to do after all this commotion was escape into tv, but they kept going on about the situation. About my sisters, and I just got so angry. They’ve been inconsiderate and manipulative. It’s as if everything they do is just to hold power over my parents and to maximize suffering. I’m just so tired of their bullshit, of their lack of understanding of the consequences of their actions. A month ago I was jealous, but now I see just how much pain they’re causing and I can’t stand it. There is a meeting with the lawyers tomorrow. Something like this event does not look good for my mother, not my father nor the fact my mother is a recovering alcoholic. They’re playing with fire. They can be taken away. My parents are spending so much money to ensure they’re not. And they don’t even think my parents care. It’s ridiculous.

All my better judgement says wait to get the pigs in halifax. The pigs will be less stressed out because you don’t have to take them on the train or drive with them (whichever I opt to do).

But I want them. I want them so bad. There are pros to getting them here. More time to quarantine and introduce them. Easy access to a vet. Multiple cages. The breeds I want. Breeder pigs over pet store pigs. More time to devote to them while they’re young. But that big ‘travel across canada’ one is the big slap in the face.

If I get them now because I want them so much does that mean that because I have my interest before the pigs that I shouldn’t even have them to begin with?

I’ve waited 9-10 years for this moment. I’m so close. I know so much. Isn’t it okay? Am I allowed to indulge myself when I have lives at stake? The well being of these lives and I’m sure the travel won’t be that traumatic.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve been out more or what, but I’ve been relatively stable. But it’s crumbling a bit. Went to dinner with my sisters and they were horrible. One of them hid in the bathroom the whole meal and the other didn’t say a word, didn’t eat and didn’t look up.

Today it was dinner with the dad and his girlfriend, it was okay. Honestly, it’s just sometimes when he starts going into ‘I hate my life’ mode it makes me sad. You can say all you want about my mom, disrespect her- I don’t care-but please don’t talk to me about money.

All my life, it’s never needed to be a concern. But for some reason I was always more conscious of it then my siblings. I never wanted as much, I felt bad when they bought me things-or so I remember. Maybe it was because I gravitated to less spoiled people at my private school, but I understood from a young age that this lifestyle was hard to replicate and I shouldn’t get used to it. It didn’t really sink in until I went to university and I was living far less lavishly then I was used to and yet in my group of friends I was carefree. Coming back home I’ve become even more aware. It’s reached a point where I’m torn because on one hand I have them offering to lavish me with things I want (and do you say no when people will buy you things?) and on the other I’m aware that their spending is so frivolous and it makes me uncomfortable. 

I know my dad has spent a lot of money dealing with the bullshit of my sisters, my brother, my mom, my ex step mom and I feel awful that I’m just another financial burden. And worse because I could have done so much better at school this year, and spent so much less money.

I just feel awkward about money. I don’t know how to feel. Sometimes I add up the cost of my outfits and get really embarrassed. It’s not like I’m wearing designer duds, but I’m not wearing $10 tees either.

I just have recently developed this overwhelming anxiety about money and that it’s going to run out and how it changes the world we live it. I’m not scared to be poor, and I don’t think it’ll be soon-well that my family will be soon-it’s just I’m scared that I won’t be able to have a comfortable lifestyle when I’m old and independent of them. I’m afraid no one will hire me and all these dreams I have for my future will be impossible. I think I’m most afraid of not being able to be financially dependent and thus never being able to separate from them.

I wanted along the small paths between these eccentric houses with boarded up boats, tonka trunks and curtains for front doors. The gnats may have nipped at my neck but the skyline of the city was breathtaking. We found a broken dock of cement that twisted into the waves. There was a gate that warned danger but we went on anyways. We walked along the slippery broken patches spiked with pools of lake water and arrived at the wonky platform at the end. It felt like hundreds of feet of open lake surrounded us to the front broken only but the irresistible skyline. The dips and rises of buildings perfectly reflected the blue sky littered with depth illuminating clouds.

I don’t really know why, or how, but I am.

It was weird to pretend I was normal at school. I’m not frugal, but I feel more conscious then my other siblings. And I cringe when we spend “too much.”

I have to. I won’t tolerate it being bland.

I want to learn how to fix cars.

 I want to shave my head.

I want to visit ha long bay.

I want to get a bartending license.

I want to work at hooters.

I want to corset train.

I want to take a train across canada.

I want to be an au pair.

I want to live out of the back of my car.

I want to get tattoos.

I want to learn how to drive a motorcycle.

I want guinea pigs, skinny pigs.

I want to learn hebrew and visit israel.

I want to learn serbian and visit my reletives there.

I want to go to the altay mountains.

I want to live in Georgia, USA.

I want to go to Mongolia.

I want to go to Beunos Aires.

I want to dress like I’m from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s.

I want to go to New Zealand.

I want to see prague.

I want to travel.

I want to write a book.

I want to have experiences that I can’t even think of, that only happen as opportunity arises.

I want to make something. I want to be something.