Alternatives to Existence

Posted by Taizen Chisou on Oct. 23, 2011, 10:02 p.m.

Umbra, you get your fucking eyes off this page

Oh, my! Is it Taizen's turn to angst here?

POP QUIZ, PEOPLE

What happens if

• Your father is a relentlessly controlling, but well-meaning man with little to no indication as to whether or not he is raising his children correctly as per their thoughts, values, and personalities

• Your mother is egocentric, horribly tempered, as controlling as your father is, adamantly believes that she can know more about people than they know about themselves, and quite obviously loves and is more tolerant of the children she had with her ex-husband

• One of your only drives in life is happiness, brought on by human interaction, the persuit of hobbies, or the solitude from indulging oneself in video games and television

• You have been holding up a metaphorical dam to block a deluge of repressed feelings and negative thoughts stemming from a fractured psyche that you have been futilely trying to repair for 8 years

Do we have an answer?

Oh, wait, let's add one.

• Your father, whom you had been working for far too long to impress by any means possible, snaps his fuckin' mind and goes berserk because you didn't listen to what he said to do today, leading to

being grounded to your room

getting everything excised from said room

reassuring statements that "I have no qualms with you moving out right now if that is what you want if you can't fucking listen to me"

being prevented from doing things that are logically out of his jurisdiction (I.e. you can't use this laptop that belongs to someone else)

threats to erase all of your personal projects (Lunacy Star, Chaos Weapon, ~10 MBs of midis, Game Maker and FL Studio as programs in and of themselves) from seizure of -your- property

threats to send you to a military school, despite the fact that it would send him back 12,000 dollars he doesn't have

trying to pin some sort of emotional blame by claiming that you are thiiiiis close to causing him a stroke (Might I point out here that I am increasingly tolerant of this happening)

a constant reminder that in the incredibly long string of failures that existed in his life, that all of the time and effort he invested into you was no more than a waste and another failure to add to aforementioned string

That wraps up the list!

I'm not sure what they expect me to do.

But I know what I expect me to do.

I'm going to go and talk to my counselor at school tomorrow morning to discuss my options for legal emancipation.

You know, if I'm even eligible, being 15.

I'm such a colossal burden on their life, so I'm going to leave.

Almost every other effort I've made in their direction thus far in the past 10 years have been to make them happy, so I really do not see a reason why not.

You see, this way, I'm not running away.

I'm letting them sign my leave.

Everybody wins!

I don't quite understand the middleman here, though.

I've no chance of survival out there.

I don't have any money. How much good will 80 dollars do you in this day and age?

No car.

But suicide? Is there a point to it?

Must I revisit this question of "will I or won't I?" again?

I thought I dropped this two years ago.

It isn't acceptable, anyway. It's a form of running away.

So after I'm emancipated, I starve in three days. Brilliant.

I'm having trouble discerning which is the more dishonorable route.

Another thing I can't stop doing regarding my feelings about this whole rigmarole is the scenarios.

Jesus Christ, this needs to stop.

Tear-Jerkery goodbye scenes ripped straight from your most hated of teenage dramas.

Scenario 1

> I'm filing for emancipation.

> What?

> My love, you may not know all the big words I use, but I've loved you all the same.

*half-hearted kiss*

> I want you to figure out what it means for yourself, later. At least by the time you do, it'll be too late really for you to stop me. It'll just be more false hope.

*Turns around, and somberly walks away, pauses, looks over shoulder, continues*

> What… No! Please! Don't leave…!

* Dramatic wind kicks up *

Scenario 2

> Dude, did you hear… He's… he's dead.

> What? Uh-uh, no way, really? Wait, how?

> He stabbed himself in the chest with a kitchen knife. And he lied there for about five hours because his parents were late to close the restaurant.

> Oh, how is the restaurant doing?

> It's a failure. It'll be shut down eventually.

> Aww. Hey, let's go and get something to eat.

Scenario 3

*Taizen is lying in a playground tube at the local park, trying to sleep, but it's too cold*

Scenario 4

*Parents check the mail, and receive a recommendation letter for a college* (I just took the ACT, you see)

*They toss it into a small pile in his room, and then shut the door.*

See? What the hell?

Will someone please tell me that the theoretical haunts them, too, when faced with the bullshit life presents every so often?

What is that supposed to be, my subconscious telling me that there is going to be UNPARALLELLED UNPLEASANTNESS in leaving my at-the-moment godawful parents?

Ugh, I've had enough of this rant.

Props to your patience if you read half of that.

Comments

blackhole 13 years ago

Dropbox starts out free with 2 gigs of space, plus 250 MB if you use this to sign up. Usually you don't need to put your entire drive on there - that's usually reserved for yearly backups - but you can often store a lot of important stuff on there. For example, keep your code and FL studio project files along with your stories and other textual information, which all tend to be fairly small. You should be able to store all the really important stuff on dropbox, then reconstruct anything that's lost from it. If you have a lot of old stuff that's archived, instead of storing it on dropbox, make a giant backup of it on a DVD or something and store it somewhere safe.

If you have a windows live account, you can take advantage of Microsoft's SkyDrive service. It's more annoying to use than Dropbox, but it supposedly has up to 25 GB of space, making it a good place to store large zipped backup archives without resorting to physical media that could get lost. If you own a Mac, you can use its iCloud service (of which I know nothing about other than it exists).

I think waiting until your 17 is a good plan, but encourage you to speak to the advisers at the independent teenager program anyway, because they can give you good advice on how to deal with your situation, and outline any possible problems that might come up so you can deal with them now before you're sleeping on someone's floor. When in situations like this, you want as much information as possible as early as possible. The more time you give yourself, the more likely you will avoid serious problems and can make a smooth transition to living on your own.

Taizen Chisou 13 years ago

Hm, are you joking?

If I had the resources (…mmmmmainly the money), I would love living on my own. If not because my parents utterly hate me or vice versa, then because it would be an interesting experience.

My mom won't be there to tell me to put away my games, or to set my alarm clock 10 minutes earlier, or to say that I can't have a girl over.

I'm probably going to college out of state, and am going to have to get used to it anyway :V

That way, living arrangements don't conflict with the rest of college responsibilities.

And before I start, I'll request a dollar for every instance of

"You can't take care of yourself"

"You can't wake up in the morning"

"You can't clean a house"

"You can't consistently keep a job"

I prove them wrong in :D

I always insist, "but what if I prove you wrong?" to them, and their only reaction is as if that was impossible.

Taizen Chisou 13 years ago

Also, Cyrus, that's a terrible slogan.

Switch it back to "we should settle on a slogan."

blackhole 13 years ago

Asking for help and figuring out what he will need to do when he moves out on his own doesn't affect anything if he changes his mind before he's 17.