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> April 2005 > May 2005 > June 2005 > July 2005 > August 2005 > September 2005 > October 2005 > November 2005 > December 2005 > January 2006 > March 2006 Previous Posts> Reprieve 081205> Blank 041205 > I am so happy right now, you don't even know! 301105 > My Completeness 261105 > Kids Alive, Do The Five 251105 > The Return of Kojak 211105 > My lumps, my lovely ladylumps 181105 > OMG!!!1 What a porblem, it's a tarp! 181105 > Stolen from Shez 171105 > Are you that deprived?? 141105
AdageAll that rot
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Get me through December 101205What a glorious Saturday. The sky was a perfect baby blue smattered with white, fluffy clouds, the communal (ew) pool was packed with neighbours, and I was greeted (much to my surprise, as my clothing for the summer season revealed the initially-menacing banner on my back) several times whilst throwing out my garbage and doing my washing. For the first time in a very very long time, I've been completely alone with nothing to do and nobody to see. So, wanna guess what I did all day? I slept in, opened the windows, cranked the iTunes, and for the most part, stayed in my jocks. Admittedly, a personal bliss...
...if it weren't for my being struck down with whatever bird-flu Charli had before she was chauffered by Jerkface to the Jerkface clan's annual camping trip down in Durras. I am the walking wounded, leaking from every orifice in my face, my nose rubbed raw from what I was misled to believe was 'velvetty soft' tissue paper, my throat feeling like it had been run over by a semi-trailer, dragged through a mincer, then kicked around in the sand. I am surely a sight to behold right now. I can't help but chuckle though, (and get ready for the Oprah moment here, folks) as it's probably the closest I'll get to feeling outside as I do on the inside for the greater part of this month. December has always been my Achilles' Heel emotionally, but it's been a very sore time for me in the last six or seven years, so really, I should just suck it up and get on with the getting on... BUT! This is my blog and I'll whinge if I want to, so nyeh. My family. For the greater part of the year, I am at peace with how I choose to remember them. I'll write about my parents some other time, since I remember fewer good memories about them and with them. I miss my sister so much it hurts to think too hard about it. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, she turned 16 on the 4th, and I haven't seen her since 2000. I have no idea what she looks like, and I only have an obligatory rundown of what she likes thanks to a very short-lived blog she owned in 2004. We only got really close in the last few months of my being at home. There was a shift in my world with my alopecia and vitiligo making me resemble an angry and tufty giraffe with some genetic deformity with my height, she really came through not only as an intelligent, fun, beautiful and doting sister, but as a mate at I time when I sorely needed one. As much as I miss her, things were so physically explosive between myself and my mother that it was best for everyon concerned if I left. Unfortunately, as with any twisted fire-and-brimstone, God-fearing, status-seeking, unbending Filipino Catholic tradition my family lived, my errant behaviour led me to leave home because I became exactly the opposite of what they wanted, which ended up being a massive shame to the family, therefore forbidden from ever contacting my sister again. Don't even bother thinking about wills, I can bet you my life that my name will be officially stricken from the record, if it even made it there. Of course, it's ridiculous to expect anybody to live that way in this country, so I'm going to have to just wait it out until A is of age and has lived her own life and had her own experiences away from the rest of the family. Then, and only then, do I think I have a chance of open and honest communication with her, and if that results in her making a fully-independent decision to tell me to bugger off, then I will be satisfied and I will most definitely respect her wishes. My grandparents were two of the most amazing human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. They are my biological grandparents, so on my messed-up family tree, they were a beacon of normality for me. My grandmother barely spoke a word of English, although she's lived here for roughly thirty some-odd years, and she was NEVER sick beyond the common cold. She never really had a passion that I saw, until my grandfather had a heart attack in 1997, which required quadruple bypass surgery. She cried for days and refused to leave his bedside, except for this one RIDICULOUS idea my parents thought would cheer her up, which was to take her to the cinema to watch Die Hard: With A Vengeance. While A and I were sent to watch another movie, we finished ours a little earlier, so we were able to meet them straight after. Good Lord, my grandma looked like she had been thrown in the freezer, had her ears cut off, and was made to watch someone eat them. I had never seen anyone as white as a ghost as that night, though I don't blame her since I don't remember her ever having mentioned ever going to a cinema before that. I doubt she'd ever give it another go, lollerz. Anyway, once my grandfather was allowed back home, she demanded that he sleep by her side -- they were one of those weird old couples who stopped sleeping in the same bed years ago. So after a lot of yelling on my gran's part and an admirable but totally stupid and half-arsed effort from my grandfather, they slept together. The way she stroked his hair, doted on him, clung to him when they slept... it was reminiscent of those animals that mate for life and die of grief a day or two after the other one passes away. It was amazing to see that, since in all the time I've known them, they were very much like Marie and Frank from Everybody Loves Raymond, and my grandmother would often come out of nowhere with a broom, smacking my grandfather in the back of the head if he made a disparaging joke about her cooking. I love my grandfather to bits. He spoke fluent English and adopted the slang with an almost scary fervour, and he loved teaching me new slang-words when nobody was around. I actually credit a lot of my gibberish to him, as he always told me that that's how non-English speaking people were able to communicate with English-speaking people... a pre-Engrish Engrish, I suppose. Although he married a Catholic bird, he left the Philippines in the early 70's a Mormon, then went to study in Utah and make some money along the way to send to his wife and kids. Somewhere between then and when he and my grandmother settled here in Australia in the late 70's, he converted and became a Catholic, and settled as a rail worker in Brisbane. I know his trip over to the US from three photographs, which could collectively be the reason why he never wanted to return to the US: 1) Him, standing in powdery white snow. He's wearing denim from head-to-toe, with a shock of black hair. He's standing alone, pointing and looking up with the face of mock-confusion (I totally learnt my mock-confusion Engrish face from him) at a sign that proudly states he is standing in Texarkana. Or something like that. 2) Him, again with the denim -- seriously, America, what the fuck did you do to him back then?! Standing in front of some building, totally surrounded by manky pigeons. You could not see the ground at all, though I assume there were stairs behind him. That, or the pigeons liked to be photographed mysteriously stacked one on top of another, completely unsupported. 3) A photo Christmas card from a blindingly Mormon family whose surname was Mortensen. Husband, check. Wife, check. Son, check. Daughter, check. St. Bernard, check. Matching hand-knitted red sweaters with gigantic single white snowflake motif, check. Snow-white and maybe one-too-many teeth, all straight, in an almost constipated and totally unbelievable grin bordering on psychosis, check. Matching sweater AND bow with bell for the St. Bernard, check. Before I go on, this is for the American readers of BourbonBird: If you have ever, or currently engage in such faggotry with your family at Christmas, please let me know, so that I may punch and/or kick you all in the cock/cunt. That last picture was so fucking terrifying, and having seen it only a few times my whole life with the latest viewing being about five years ago is testament to the horror I felt. Imagine what my grandfather went through having actually spent time with those freaks. America, for the denim and the Mormons, you're all cunts. He never pushed religion on me, and was more eager to tell me war stories (a huge regret of his was that he was too young for some war), teach me how to play solitaire, or show me how to load and clean a gun. My grandfather was an excellent target-shooter and got my adoptive father into it, too, until my grandfather started to go blind from glaucoma. I don't know how far along it is now. My grandparents were nutso - my grandmother slept with a machete behind her headboard, and my grandfather had a gun under a pillow on his bed next to the wall. When I had a tickle in my throat, my grandfather would sit me outside with a bag of hot peppers and a beer and try to sneak me a nibble and a sip. My grandmother smells like Nivea moisturiser. My grandfather? Brut 33, mate. What a fucking champ. I might just add here that both of them looked no older than 60, even though they were in their mid 70s when I left, which means I totally win genetically when I get to the latter half of my life, whoop! I ran into him last about a month after I ran away from home. He told me that my mother was upset, but that everybody missed me. He asked if I was happy. I said yes. He told me he loved me and told me to contact him if I were ever in trouble. I promised I would. I never have. I don't even know if they're still alive. Want to know what the real kick in the cunt is? Throughout my whole life, my grandparents stood by me. Unless my mother was actually there to spout some tirade about how I was a total bastard. Actually, I don't blame them, since she was scary as all fuck when she was angry, and she controlled pretty much everything by the time I left. The only quality my grandparents ever fostered and nurtured was the mindset that I could do anything I ever wanted, that my happiness was all that should ever matter, that drive and ambition comes easiest from want and passion. Of course they only ever whispered stuff like that on the sly, but it gave me so much strength in my last couple of years at home. My grandparents and my sister loved me unconditionally. I should make a point of thanking them one day. Leaving those three people would have to be one of my biggest regrets. December is when I feel so lonely that I can barely stand it, and despite the loneliness, I prefer being alone because it's easier than talking about it. December is the month where I decided to change the course of my own life when I burnt the one bridge I wasn't supposed to, and that in itself is enough to drive me damn near insane from all the bad memories. It's not enough that I deal with that, but try as I might, it's even harder to keep the good memories at bay. I really don't want to remember any of it, but I have to, since it is part of who I am today. December is when my heart breaks from the loneliness that very few people ever experience and really understand, and it's when I have no choice but to admit to myself that I really do miss my family. |