Lonely
October 23, 2006 at 1.37 pmYou know, it’s odd. I never really quite feel as…alone…as I do when I’m with my family.
Maybe it’s because I’m so different from the rest of them?
We’re a disparate bunch anyway, with three completely different accents. My parents both have a touch of "generic Asian" in their English, as expected really, while Little Sis is very much St. Albans / North London. I’m a bit more well-spoken, I know, but with increasing levels of Mancunian burr.
Personality-wise, there’s a huge clash. My mother and I are much more easy-going (although she’s becoming distressingly jumpy and nervous as the years roll on), while my sister and father are combustible to the extreme - both of them are liable to go off at any tiny thing. Amandhi’s also quite definitely of the generation after mine - the true Playstation generation, capable of sounding like extras from Clueless at any given moment, for whom the silliness of Animaniacs replaced the all-encompassing plotlines of those Mysterious Cities of Gold.
With any two of us together, things are somewhere between fine and bearable. However, make that three - any three - and the sparks fly. Four, and it just gets silly.
So, I tend to spend any time with my family desperately trying to get away from them. The fact that this is the case only serves to make me more depressed about it all.
Anyone I’ve ever lived with (or gone out with, the poor sods) will have seen me slump on to the sofa after the weekly phone call home, emotionally drained and often absolutely livid. This would inevitably be followed by a physical need for something wet and alcoholic.
They just bring out the worst in me, making me irritable and bad-tempered - a side of me that most of my friends rarely see, and that I don’t like at all.
Guess who I visited this weekend!
*hug*
Well its a bloody good job that you’ve got such ace friends to keep you sane/loved/not lonely then isn’t it!
I am also a totally different person when I’m with my mother, and she’s not that nice either. I keep trying to work out why life’s like this (as I see Andrew do it to his family too) but am yet to stumble upon the answer.
Comment by Liz — October 23, 2006 @ 5.22 pm
Family can get to you. It is true. My family have seen me cry A LOT, as when I’m with them I seem to pour at the smallest thing. But most of the rest of the people in my life haven’t seen me cry ever.
It is odd.
Comment by Alsion — October 23, 2006 @ 9.51 pm
It still amuses me that I’m Amndhi’s age and yet I remember the myterious cities of Gold WAAAY more than the animaniacs! Maybe my parents are lying about my age…?
Comment by Jen — October 24, 2006 @ 10.13 am
Jen - I was actually thinking of you when I wrote that! It’s strange, how I think of you, Sarah H and Leila (and Sarah M, of course) as “my friends” while my sister and her friends are completely different.
Comment by mahinda — October 24, 2006 @ 10.28 am
Yes, after living with you for two years I remember those phone calls very well. One which still makes me chuckle was the time you where asked how to re-wire a boiler (I think) which you had never seen. You laugh or you cry.
Comment by big hungry scotsman — October 27, 2006 @ 12.54 pm
Scotsman - yup, that was a particularly good one. There was a similar one when I was at work, about wiring two hallway lighting switches so that they worked together. I think I ended that one with “DAD, YOU ARE GOING TO ELECTROCUTE YOURSELF!”
The perils of working with a man whose grasp of electronics extends to “live wire” and “neutral wire”.
Comment by mahinda — October 27, 2006 @ 1.51 pm