Spouts of Anger
   My parents leave tomorrow morning with the rest of my family to go skiing in Perisher or Thredbo or somewhere. I am staying at home, with my grandfather, who is coming up for 5 - 6 days to do odd jobs around the house and fix various things up, oh and mind me, the incurable middle child nobody loves.... who  cannot be trusted apparently. So indeed, I'm not going with my parents. They actually asked me this time whether I wanted to go or not, but I told them I had too much work to do, what with my 4 unit English Major Work and the various other assessment tasks due. What with my PIP that needs to get done and whatever else there is. I have a feeling I lied. I mean, I do have a lot of work to do, and I will spend at least some of the time I'm at home doing it, but the real reason is, I've grown to loathe my family. I don't want it to be this way, but I loathe them. I can't stand them. Regardless of all the kind things they have done, and continue to do, for me, they are simultaneously the economic and even sometimes intellectual foundations of my existence, even the fact that they drive me to church every week makes them spiritual pillars from that angle, whilst still, they tear me up inside emotionally, distract me from my faith, discourage me in every small piece of joy I have in my life and ... are mostly, the only reason I get angry anymore.

   I hate it how it seems as though they're never happy. As though they're always fighting and as though the whole 'family' idea was a mistake. I hate it how they make me feel as though I'm less than nothing, but pretend every day that I'm something. I hate their shallow games and how they don't even look at me without disappointment. I hate it that they sent me to Trinity Grammar School and made me go through four years of bitter torture. I hate it that they created me, and now I have to change all the things that are wrong with me. It's funny, because I hate myself for all the same reasons. I hate it that I'm expected to go out of my way to be their son, when sometimes it seems as though they don't even want me as their son. I hate it how every now and again, I don't want them as my parents, and then realise that they've done so much for me and I owe them so much. I hate it how I can't cancel out all the good things they've done for me with all the crap they've put me through. I hate their right-wing conservative attitudes, I hate their racial segregation, I hate their opposition towards 90% of everything I've ever loved, I hate their restrictions, their selfishness, their selflessness. I hate the way I don't know them at all, and they're my family. My family. My family. I don't understand how I can be so close to them and yet so far. I don't understand how I can live with these people every day almost and still not know who they are. I hate it how I can't get to know them because I'm afraid of knowing them.  I hate it how they pressure me into things and make me see the world from their perspective. I hate it how we don't get along. I hate it how I know that I'm the problem, and that I'm the one who has to change. I hate knowing that the reason for all the fighting is me and that my family would be happier if I packed up and left. I hate having to live knowing that sometimes, the image that they are good parents is their only motivation. I hate it how they never happy with me. Actually no I'm not. The fact that my family is never happy with me really doesn't bother me that much anymore. Wow, I only just realised that. I mean, of course it bothers me a little, but - unfortunately - no more than any other group of people's disappointment would . In fact, a lot less than some groups of people's disappointment would. ... wow..  It frightens me knowing that this is how I feel. Knowing that I can be so ungrateful. Knowing that I don't bother to take the time to listen to them, or talk to them, and that I live in a world that segregates them from me. It's actually quite disturbing. Stupid society. 

   Sometimes it seems like the only reason they care for me is social obligation. Which means social obligation also dictates how they care for me. Society says to them, love your son because you brought him into this world, and it's your fault he has to endure life. It doesn't say to them, realise how much ... wait.. what other reason do they have to love me? Love... it's such a crazy word. It's such a crazy world. Does love require a reason though? Should it? If it's the highest level of adoration you could possibly have for someone, isn't that calling out for a reason? Some sort of justification of your emotions. I liked this girl a while back, and another friend of mine, who I was talking to was trying to guess who she was. One of those stupid games we always play when we think we have a chance with the object of our affection. The really stupid game where we pretend we don't want them to know but really, we do. Anyway, she guessed this one girl and then I sheepishly admitted she was right. I remember she was really cut and she said some really harsh words. She said she couldn't understand what I liked about her, or how I had any connection with her at all (the girl I liked) and she said I that I couldn't justify why I liked the other girl. So I was stupid and childish and horrible and pathetic and shallow and ignorant and oblivious and sheltered.. and so many other different words, all of them aimed to bring me down and kill me. Anyway, since then, I forgot how unjustifiable love can be sometimes. And even if you think (like I thought) that you can justify your love for them, it's even harder for one to justify why they love you.

   I don't want to be skiing with my parents anymore (it's Monday night now, wait no, Tuesday morning) because to be skiing with them I would have to have travelled 7 or 8 hours with them in the car, my sisters screaming, my parents making inane comments on their shallow existence, my brother playing a gameboy or making trivial conversation. ... I never realised until now how much I don't like talking to my family, and it scares me. It's not as though my comments are never inane, or my conversation never trivial, but for some reason.. .. .. oh screw it.. I read somewhere that in our families, we see horrible caricatures of ourselves. I think it's true. We spend so much time around them, that we do take in some of their habits and nuances, but ultimately, they do it 10 times worse than us. Well, according to us they do.

   I never understood the concept of family. I could never grasp the fundamental, well, intrinsic, sort of culturally, no, not culturally, um, natural .. I don't know. Why is it that just because I was conceived by my parents does it mean that they should raise me? Because quite honestly, that means that any person has the right to be a parent, and inevitably we get some shit ones. I think it'd be better if we designate certain people whose sole purpose in life was to rear children, men and women, young and old. I'm not a firm believer of this, and you might very well be able to pick apart all my thoughts but underneath it all, there's an amount of sanity to it, right? It's obviously impractical to stop people having children. I mean, we sort of need them to keep the species going, but, these children don't have to be raised by the same people who created them. We could have 'child farms'. Sort of like orphanages, only less.. uhh.. child-labour orientated. I've just always questioned why it was my parents who raised me, I don't really know whether or not they did a good job, or whether or not the enjoyed the experience, but I do know that there are people out there who hated being parents, but still raised their children only because society told them to. There are millions of families out there who are incapable of having children, so if you don't want your child, then put it up for adoption, at least these families won't treat your child as a horrible abomination of nature.

   That's another thing, abortion. My belief is, if you're willing to have sex, protected, or unprotected, you should be willing to have kids. In nature, sex's primary function is to make babies, right, not a fun past time. So I reckon if you're going to sleep with him, then be prepared to have child. And if you're going to sleep with her, be prepared to act like a father and hang around if she gets pregnant. I imagine that sometimes the reason someone would have an abortion is because there's no one there to support them. It's up to the father especially to stick around and help out as much as he can. What right do you have to terminate a life because it's going to inconvenience you. At least go through the nine months of having the baby, and give it a chance. Then, if you really, really don't want it, put it up for adoption. I mean, it's so selfish... it's so, human. It's probably really easy for me to say this because I'll never be pregnant, and I don't plan on getting a girl pregnant unless it's my wife, but hey, don't listen to me, I've never been through it, I'm just young and naive. What about rape? What about if an innocent girl doesn't choose to become pregnant and gets raped. Well, I still don't think it's fair to kill the baby, but it's also not fair for someone to have to go through pregnancy (unwilling) if they had no intention of having sex. The question you've got to ask is what is the bigger infringement, death, or the consequences of pregnancy, not the least of which is the child. I mean, even if you do give up the child for adoption, there's things like the 9 month waiting period, there might be hospital bills, and then there's the really really horrible things like stretch marks and having to wear maternity clothes. ... I think the worst part about it would be knowing that you were carrying the child of a man who raped you. That'd be devastating.  Someone once said to me that the sheer shock of rape and what not that a girl would go through usually prevents conception from occurring. I'm not sure whether that's true or not, but still, if a child is conceived, it'd be such a ask for you not to abort it. There would be so much going through your mind. It's such a tough question. On one hand, killing an unborn baby it sort of wrong, but on the other, possibly ruining the life of a perfectly innocent girl isn't exactly a saintly act either. I guess you can't make a blanket judgement. But then again, you rarely can. In a perfect world, you'd be able to transfer the baby to a test tube, but even then, it's almost the ultimate cruel irony that there's a child out there part you, and part the man who is possibly the reason you can't sleep at night. Do you have the right to kill that baby? .. ... It's not the baby's fault, is it? But.. will that baby be like it's father? The reasons behind why he raped that girl, are they nurture or nature? Wow, I've certainly opened a can of worms here that I can't close.  Then you've got to ask, would the child be better off dead? Imagine knowing you're the product of a rape. How would you feal? That would have horrible, horrible consequences on your psyche. Is death really all that worse than life? Is it ever worse than life? It must be at least some of the time.

   I really don't know the answer to the question, the child can't choose whether it wants to live or not, and is it really the choice of the mother, I mean, the trade off .. oh, I don't know. Sometimes though, the social institution, the cultural construct, the building block for all societies and cultures, the family, isn't the best thing to raise a child though ... but who are we to say what's good and what isn't? I mean, if I were raised as a proper, well adjusted person would I necessarily be any better than if I was raised by my parents? They've done well considering what they had to work with I reckon. Please, don't take any notice of me, I'm really no expert, and I don't pretend to be.

+Hing--->Out
France was a long depotism tempered by epigrams -- Thomas Carlyle (1759 - 1881)