Dad–
Love and hate lie extremely close together. They are both very passionate, very emotional, and very, very intense. It is possible to love something and hate it at the same time, but it hurts like hell.
And guess where I'm living?
And guess who has, if not brought it, definitely made it worse?
You.
You wrench Mom and Dana and me around, seemingly without thinking. You love Mom one second, and the next you're throwing insults and she's throwing plates. You say you want to be a family, but when you leave, you meet with your secret girlfriend and re-watch the shows that you originally watched with us. I don't think you mean to hurt us, but that doesn't take away your responsibility. You act like just because you didn't mean to stab us, it's our fault for bleeding.
And it happens again and again. You don't learn. You keep on doing what you do, even when you've seen the way Mom and Dana react a million times before. And just because I don't throw temper tantrums doesn't mean I'm all gung-ho about your pseudo-polygamous relationship with that awful Dorothy woman, who, by the way, I hope is stabbed with a million knives repeatedly in non-fatal areas, then shot in each of those wounds, then burned alive but just before she is fried into a crispy corpse she is pulled out and then I can poke her eyes out with one of your pointier minerals. Then I will dissolve the body in acid so there is no evidence and I cannot be convicted.
I know the only person who has full control over our own emotions is ourselves, but I really don't think that Mom would be throwing stuff around if she wasn't really angry. And Dana wouldn't stop speaking to you for months without any reason. Their actions are not mature, no. But you act like you are just some poor, undeserving victim of their wrath, and that's not very mature, either.
I hate it when you say that you wish that Mom could just be happy. I wish a lot of things, too. I wish that time might slow down a little bit so I could catch my breath (I can hear you now: "but Lani, you've got to understand: time doesn't exist at all!" You know what I mean), I wish I was shorter. These are things I can't change. So I suck it up and get over it. I used to wish I could have friends, I used to wish I didn't slice up my arms and legs and stomach and anywhere that could be covered by clothing when I felt like s**t. And all I did was wish for someone to wave a magic wand and make it all better without me having to lift a finger. But I've learned that loneliness and depression are things I was able to change. So I stopped whining and did something about it.
You're going to fire back the "no one has control over how your mom feels but herself" argument. It's true, but not everyone hides in a marijuana-Buddha bubble. Not everyone has reached their f*****g Nirvana, not everyone is enlightened. Mom has been depressed for years, her brain chemistry is out-of-whack. I'll admit that she also has the issue of not being proactive, but at least she has the excuse of being jerked back and forth by her husband for years and years. If you want Mom to be happy, stop seeing your mid-life-crisis f**k-buddy until you've signed all the papers and are legally divorced. And until you stop cuddling with her while we watch Planet Earth like you want to get back together with her, stop going over to your w***e's place to give her clandestine foot massages.
If you want Mom to be happy, do something about it rather than just saying it. I'm sixteen, you're fifty, and you can't seem to figure out that you need work for relationships. I know you say you're trying, but somehow you refuse to see things from anyone's viewpoint but your drug-induced own.
I know you want to have you cake and f**k it too, but make up your mind. It's us or Dorothy (god, what an awful name), at least for now. I know you want to have a "healthy relationship" with Mom and me and Dana, but even when you're stoned you cannot possibly think that leading the lady you've had two kids with and been married to for two decades on is remotely healthy.
And who gets to clean up the pieces when things explode? Me. Dana is regressing to an infantile state every day while Mom lies in her bed playing Tetris on her phone. You've been depressed. I've been depressed, we've all been severely depressed at some point in our lives. You know what it's like to hate life so much that you wish it would just let you die already. You know that it physically hurts, but I feel like you go don't really try to help when Mom gets like that. You say you want to help, but you never do anything that would require an actual sacrifice on your part. You know how scared Mom is of being abandoned. You know how emotionally needy she is, and how I have to always be telling her how much I love her so she feels OK. She's fifty years old and even if you don't think so, she feels like you abandoned her. And I kind of feel that way, too.
For five years, I've put up with all your s**t. I realized a long time ago that you really don't see what you're doing as wrong, so I tolerated it. I put an effort in to not let all the stuff you've put us through effect our relationship. And you continue to disappoint me. I try to ignore everything. I tell myself that you don't mean anything by it, that you still love me even if you don't always show it in the best way, but it's getting really hard.
I'm breaking down. I'm breaking down during school because of stress from finals and anxiety and the fear that things at De Anza are going to fall apart like they did last year. I can't keep doing this. Everyone is treating me like I'm a perfectly stable person. I am most of the time, but I don't think that many mentally healthy people my age could deal with what out family is going though without becoming a bit insane.
Please leave us alone until you figure things out.
-Lani
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