bittersweet

Packing up the house is bittersweet. My room at home was already pretty much empty, but I was still able to fill 3 hefty bags of junk, a big box to go to the resale shop, and another big box for goodwill. What's left to pack? Just my trophies, yearbooks, and pictures. It feels like everything before the summer of 04 when I left for college no longer exists. It's a good thing, the years in this house were the hardest of my life and there are a lot of sad and hard memories attached that it's time to move on from. But it's still hard.

And packing with the family is hard. Put a highly emotional and controlling mom, and defiant and non-communicative brother, an easily angered dad, and me who just stays quiet and out of the way and listens to mom and dad complain about brother and brother complain about mom and dad. Add in some really hot and humid storage spaces, sister and dad who seemed to come down with hay fever overnight, and construction tasks. Serious tension. Lots of yelling, the kind of stress that makes you want to cry even though you have no part in what's going on. It's like a family of 3 who fight a lot, and then me who doesn't really fit and tries to be perfect so that everyone will be happy. I did try really hard to talk with my mom last night. I talked to her about church stuff that I'm excited about, what kind of job I want to get, friends getting married, and I even talked with her about the guy I have a crush on. Let's just say nothing was very supportive and I must have been rather boring because the tv show rerun was more important. But big progress was made, I didn't cry or get angry and disappear to my room. I stayed and waited patiently for commercials when I could talk and tried to be friends. I don't want to spend the rest of my life being wary of my family. So I'm trying, just feeling discouraged.