Three days since I've seen Boston. I realize now that I am in love with that city. If I step back from missing Pennsylvania for a minute, I see that my life there was made for me with great care and attention, and that it is the realization of all of my youthful dreams.
Perhaps my appreciation of Boston comes from being here. I love my family and I missed them very much, but being here is so hard for me. First of all, the chaos that my home has been thrown into upsets me so much. I didn't realize how much housekeeping I did back in Pennsylvania until I got down here. All of the boys together don't seem to get the housework done that I did. I mean, the house was a wreck, but not like this. I hate it, I can't stand it, but its too much for me to fix on my own. And I don't have a single friend here to help me. How depressing is that. Maybe if I start sleeping at night so that I can work while the boys are at school, and Tony stops having six million friends over every day, while we are in the midst of a horrific family crisis, then I'll be able to manage. Maybe. But I can't live in this house like this. I'm going crazy, and I smell like a labrador.
I don't know how I'm going to survive this summer, really. I think the reason I had such a hard time getting through final exams is that I knew there was nothing remotely pleasant to look forward to once they were done. A broken family, a house full of the shit left behind by my horrible deadbeat dad, a pudgy dying dog, a mother who can't see the mess around her or get things done in the proper order, brothers who are so focused on being pissed at my dad that they don't see how much of a problem they are in the house and how much of a mess they make. Okay, yeah, I'm obsessed with the mess. This is perhaps because I'm going completely stir-crazy. In Boston I go a million places every day. I'm always outside and walking around, even in horrible weather. I go places. I have the freedom to go wherever I want with only my feet. Here, I stay home all day. I could walk for a half an hour and still not manage to leave this housing development. I could walk for a half an hour and all of the houses would still look the same. I could walk for a half an hour and not even notice I had gone anywhere. I'm going nowhere. I fucking hate the suburbs. Its the only environment I'll never be comfortable with. I mean, I love visiting the suburbs for shorter periods of time. I could do a week in the suburbs with no problem. I could do a week in the suburbs better if I had a vehicle.
So I need to get a job if I'm going to manage this. If I'm going to get out of the house. Miss LouAnne across the street, one of mom's best friends, told me that if i get my license, she'll let me learn to ride a motorcycle on Sophie's (her daughter) bike and then let me take that to work once I get my bike license. Kind of awesome but no small feat. I can barely drive a car. Though I feel that a motorcycle would be more my style.
Then we have the irony of that situation. My family has been abandoned by a biker. There is a certain irony to handling the situation with my biker dad while riding around on a motorcycle. I like it. Rob says I should write about it and it would make a helluva story. He's right. I should. So to start, I'm blogging. The stuff about my dad I'll probably keep in a file on my laptop. Don't want to air too much dirty laundry in public, you know?
Speaking of Rob, boy do I miss him. I have of course been missing him since September. Okay thats not entirely true. I've been missing him since the day he went away to college. Much more since the day I did. Missing him is perhaps the one and only constant I've had all these years.
I also miss everyone else. And myself. I feel like I've been missing myself for a while now. maybe with nobody else around I'll be able to find me. That didn't work last summer but perhaps the second time, it'll take. Self-discovery isn't exactly what I was hoping to get out of this summer, but maybe it's better.
I'm going to try and find the good in the monotony. Budget my time. Sleep at night, work out in the morning, get things done during the day, write in the afternoon, and sleep again before two a.m. It could happen. I can do this. I can totally do this.
I worry that my "can-do" attitude is just my method of shutting down my emotions. Because it is. But alas, its all I can do to get out of bed into this horrible version of my life. When I lost touch with my emotions, I don't know, but I'm not certain that I'm going to find them until I get this house in order and my family back on track. Wish me luck, I'm going to need a boatload of it.
"Carrying bags and a navy taxi man said
"Take your time love
'Cause you don't have to rush
'Cause it's your life and it's no one else's, sweetheart
Don't let someone put you in a box."
So I take all that other stuff that I said before
And I'm gonna make it work
'Cause I'm losing my mind and it's driving me up the wall "
-Kate Nash, "Navy Taxi"
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