"Insomnia/my dad" 2002-06-23 - 1:55 a.m.

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well fuck, I went to bed too early again, and now I can't sleep. Luckily I haven't been torturing myself tonight, lucky me. I read all of Evan's diary in one sitting, and was tired enough to go to sleep, so I went to bed, listened to Opiate and half of Undertow before I realized I'm not tired at all. So now here I am, last night writing in my diary worked, so maybe it will tonight. The first thing I might as well talk about is my dad, like I promised earlier. Where to begin? *sigh*, I guess my dad never really had an easy life, his parents got divorced, I'm not sure when, you'd think I would, but... His dad never really showed any interest in anything he did, never encouraged him in any way, there's quite a horrible story he told me once about how when he played football, his dad never went to any of his games, and when he finally did, my dad looked for him in the stands, and when he found him he was reading a newspaper, not interested in the game at all. That bothers me, but my dad overcompensated for it with his kids(ie-me + my sister), convincing himself that we wanted to try stuff we didn't, that we were just scared to admit it, and he would encourage us to do stuff to the point of actually getting mad and forcing us to do it. Sports, trying new foods, whatever, but I can't bring myself to blame him for that. He was also the 4th of 5 kids, and his whole family constantly teases eachother, my whole family still does, he's done it to me from a young age, far too young to realize the difference between teasing and meaning, so when he called me stupid or whatever just fooling around, I didn't know he was screwing around, but he said it so nicely I never took it as insulting, but rather a statement of how I actually was. Now I think everything I do is horrible and worthless, funny how something supposed to be fun and pointless had such a serious impact on my life. It also applied to stuff I was interested in, to this day whenever he sees something I like, or hears music I listen to, I feel like I'm on trial, my heart gets faster and I get really scared. It's quite traumatic. But I can't bring myself to blame him for that either, he didn't know, he thought I knew he was fooling around, it was how he was raised, how he is. His life in the career field wasn't much better, he didn't go to college, went to the Coast Guard instead, retired early, got a job in construction, tried to settle down in Ohio with my mom. But he got laid off, had to rejoin the Coast Guard, spend long periods of time away from his family, doing shitty work he hated, move a lot. Did it for 20 years before he retired and we moved here. He's given me many long lectures about doing work well and going to college, and how important college is; I guess I can't blame him for that, he has experience to back up what he's saying, and he just wants me not to go through what he did. Now adays most of the time he comes home and just plays video games, if there's house work to be done he makes me or my sister do it, it sucks but hey, I figure he's earned it. Rather un-surprisingly, this stuff has piled up to give him a short and rather violent temper. When he's mad at you, you know it, and if he's mad at something or someone else, stay away, he'll take it out on anyone around him. That's the only personality trait of his I can't forgive. I can understand the short temper, but I can't forgive his taking out his aggression on whatever/whoever's around him. That's one thing I try hard not to do, take out my anger on anything except what I'm actually angry at. I don't respect or like it at all, and that's the main grievance I have with him. I'm not gonna lie and say he never hit me, but he never did it enough to qualify as beating, or any form of abuse, he never used a closed fist and never did it more than once, and he only hit me on the face when I got too old to spank. He only ever did it when I did something really bad, or when he was really, really mad. And he would always apologize later, no matter what. But I've told my mom many a time that we should be glad that my dad never drank heavily. Because if he did then I know he would've beaten us, I know he'd probably feel horrible about it afterwords, but he still would've done it. But thankfully he never did. Overall I don't hate my dad. He has his traits I don't like, but he has a lot less of those than a lot of other people. But over all, wether I can blame him for stuff or not, he's still ended up no closer to me than any of my uncles, I just happen to live with him. And when the time comes, I'll move out, say goodbye, and not feel overly heart broken to leave him. Hey, he could've been a lot worse. A lot worse. But I must admit I've always looked up to him, for all the differences we have, the thing I've always admired most about my dad is that he doesn't take crap. He tells people what he thinks, and doesn't ever just go with the crowd or what he's supposed to do. If he doesn't like something, it becomes quite obvious, and if he doesn't like someone, they'll know, in colorful and humorous terms. Overall my dad tried his best on me, and has had a vast influence on the forming of my personality. And no matter what else I say, or however close I feel to him, I love him. Sorry to get all mushy like that, but hey, it's my fucking diary, if you don't like it, there's a lot of internet out there that's not this site, so why don't you spend your time there. Ha, funny, I'm still not tired.