Okay. I should have really documented when I was happy, but during August I was much too busy at work, and so the blog fell by the wayside. This little period of happiness, when I felt I could do anything and wasn’t hampered (much) by the past, appears to have lasted from roughly the 10th of August through… maybe the 6th of September. It started heading downhill then, I think, but it never seemed to for long.

But anyways, here I am, and I don’t feel so great anymore, and I don’t feel like I can do anything. I remember a lot more of what it’s like to be happy: I’m engaged at work and stand up for things, I help people at work, I make bentos, I go to work every day I can, I cook a lot at home (or try to).

Now that the happiness is evaporating I figure I’ll keep doing those things in the hope the happiness will come back. At times it seems to fleetingly skim by, and I think the long holiday might actually have done it a fatal wound, even though I don’t remember any times my father did something horrible to me purely because it was labor day. It was just the normal three-day-weekend of screaming and abuse for various offenses that I didn’t realize were not offenses (or at least, not to most people) years and years later.

Okay, maybe three-day weekends are just terrible to me.

Yesterday I kind of figured the walk in the park was over because I bought some reusable animal picks from Daiso for bento (not the ones I used recently, some longer picks) and realized that they were Chinese Zodiac animals, even if the ox looked like a cow (which is why I picked them up).

And I remembered suddenly my mother discussing the zodiac animals with me. By the point, my father had smashed her head through a wall some time ago, and she was no longer well in the head, but I didn’t know what to do about it except humor her. (Sometimes my life reads like a Brontë novel.) There was only one point in which she was saner: she hated my father. Every other point was fairly lost.

For instance, she believed that various men in “high” positions of power (i.e. management at the store where she worked as a clerk, and school principals, it’s not like we were middle class or even lower middle class) were in love with her and would take her away from all this. She thought I knew and was in contact with them. I think that’s when I learned how to tell stories, because I wanted to keep her happy when I was—what? Seven? Nine?

Stories are lies, really, just entertaining ones. She believed it all, and it disconcerted me, but I wanted her to be happy. She would talk about the zodiac animals and really did believe that the people she was in love with (or… something, it did get stalker scary at points) were tigers, or dragons, or snakes, or anything better than monkeys at least.

These are times when I feel like my attempts to be Lawful Good all my life were just a veneer over, at best, chaotic neutral. But I’m probably just Lawful Evil.

Gods, all that.

She never got better, and she always believed, and my gods. What a horrible thing I did to her for years. Can I even really blame her for becoming an enabler in her later years, when she thought that the only way to happiness was to stay with my father and force me to stay with them because I would feed her wonderful stories?

What a horrible, miserable, evil person I am. Sometimes I honestly think I’m only alive because only an evil person could survive this far, because they will have had to commit evil to live so long. And if they’re willing to commit evil to live—why should they live?

No justice in this world, really.

And yes, the thoughts that can spin out of a bunch of pastel cute animal picks for bento.

I’m working from home today partly because Seattle cares a little more for soccer than one would expect from an American city , and partly because I am a wreck this morning.

And this isn’t even the worst of the thoughts I’ve had the past week.

I’m actually not suicidal. If I were a good person, I would be. If I were a very good person, I would have shot myself in the head about five years back when I had the chance. But I’m not good.

You know why I have a passing fondness for Daigotsu, despite all the evil he has wrought in the fictional realm of Rokugan? Because he’s basically evil after being raised in a shadow land of evil, yet has just enough good in him to be Lawful Evil, but at the same time he can never be anything other than evil.

Characters like this break my heart. The idea of redemption is one that intrigues me, and I hate it when I see fictional villains fail this test repeatedly, because it makes me wonder if I’m just failing the test repeatedly and don’t know it—and perhaps one is simply destined to fail because when you’re evil, you’re evil forever and only dying will make you good.

… gods what a lot of emo whining and bullshit. But sometimes we believe in such bullshit because we are poorly designed creatures.

k, now I have to be a grownup.