>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: christmas eve eve
>>Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000

It's already Saturday. I finally got off my ass and got my stupid shopping done for everybody. I didn't try very hard, but I'm not really worried about it this year. I even bought something for myself while I was at the one place I went to shop for everyone else's gifts. Christmas is just another day this year

My medicine has been acting really weird lately. It's making me light-headed again like the Trazadone used to do. I don't think it was the Trazodone anymore, I think it was the Wellbutrin. I haven't liked that medicine ever since I first started it. Of course, drinking every night probably hasn't helped it very much, either. I got a lecture last night from my grandmother telling me I was too smart to be drinking by myself and getting into trouble with alcohol. Apparently, my family (beyond my parents) don't even know I was in the fucking hospital. My own brother didn't know until I told him. I mean, this happened six months ago, and my grandmother is just learning about it. I realize it's probably not something they’re proud of, but jesus christ. My family thinks I'm just absolutely in love with school because I'm doing so well; I must be having a blast and nothing at all is wrong with me. I don't guess I ever realized the extent to which my family has gone in covering me up. They'll gladly boast about my academic accomplishments to everyone to make them look good, but when something about me that can make them look bad surfaces, they just sit on it. God forbid they have a fucked up son. What will everyone think?

I'm so fucking pissed off at them right now. I'm the kid in the family that no one really talks about. It's a small wonder that whenever I'm at my grandparents' house and one of their friends walks in all they ask me is, "How do you like school?" But they can grill my little brother for ten minutes about every minute detail in his life. I'm the shady smart kid who thinks too much and scares us all a little bit. What right does he have to come around here acting all depressed when there's clearly so much to be thankful for? We're alive, aren't we? Isn't that good enough for him? Black sheep doesn't even begin to describe where I fit in on both sides of the family, and my mother's side is plenty fucked up. We have a kid on that side who totals a car every few months, one who's a little slow upstairs and is always in trouble, two uncles who've been married a combined total of six times, a great-grandmother who's suffering from alzheimer's and making everyone's life miserable, an uncle with multiple sclerosis (which I just learned about the other day...I'm not only kept out of everyone else's attention, but I'm not told about anything, either). All that, and I'm the one we're all embarrassed about. I don't even feel like I have a family. They go to such extremes to hide me and keep me either misinformed or uninformed about what's going on with everyone else. They've done everything except say, "We don't want to consider you a member of this family because there's just too much fucking wrong with you," and, of course, they can't and won't say something like that because it's just not fucking proper to do that. They'd rather suffer with me in their ranks than face what would happen if they disowned me. So where does that leave me? I leave the family and they feel totally justified because it was I who left them and that just goes to show how ungrateful and screwed up I really am, or I stick around and exist feeling like I don't really exist. I mean, shit, if you don't have a family, where the hell are you supposed to go? My parents only do what they think is obligated of them. I seriously can't see anyone in my family getting too shaken up if I died, which makes it that much easier for me, I guess. I'm more like the piece of crap, the runt black sheep buried in the grass last week before he moved to a different continent.

It's easier when I'm by myself at school because there I don't have to deal with people pretending like they give a shit one way or the other what happens to me. I'm by myself and I feel alone and it makes sense. Here, I'm surrounded by my family and I feel even more alone and it's harder to understand and make sense of. Too smart to get messed up with alcohol? Fuck that. I have to drink because I'm too fucking smart. I don't have the consolation of a group of people I can go to when I'm feeling a little down. All I have is an 80 proof bottle that whispers its little consolation speech to my head by making it not feel for a little while. And I have you.

It feels like we've been flung out of the ocean onto a reef of sharp, jutting rocks where all we can do is sit until we starve to death because there isn't any food. Planes are buzzing overhead and ships are passing by a few hundred feet in front of us, and we don't even bother waving anymore because we've already been destroyed by false hopes and beliefs that others really want us to get better. So we'll die on these barren rocks, and the buzzards won't even bother picking our bones clean because the smell of poison revolts even them.

I'm not having a very good day. It's 2:00 and I think I'm ready to start drinking. I'll probably wash back my afternoon meds with a little whiskey and keep the fun happening with beer for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I hope things are going better for you with your family. I really hope you don't feel like the shadow I feel like right now: barely perceptible and mostly ignored. And on top of everything, I'm out of cigarettes. Shit.

I hope to hear from you soon.
I love you, Perdita.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: christmas eve eve
>Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000

Belacqua,

Ugh. As if it wasn't enough for me to be away from the only place where I feel like I fit in a little, now I'm flung back into the fun and games of a family that makes me feel like I can't do ANYTHING. I'm not allowed to drink, smoke, swear, sleep, skip church,...they feed me too much, bug me too much, and leave me alone too little. It just never ends. As my boss would say, "It's ALWAYS something." This time, the somethings have names. You know, bless them all for even putting up with me, but I fucking mention that I'm tired, and I get a lecture about how I'm not doing enough to keep myself active. I mention that I want to stop at the liquor store to grab a six pack, and from my brother I get a simple, "No." What? Since when does he have a say whatso-fucking-ever in what I do? The only fucking reason I couldn't stop was because I wasn't driving, and of course, that wasn't gonna change, either.

I also think I'm going to DIE if I don't fill my eight hour a day quota of computer time. My dad's computer is so slow that I always forget they ever made them this slow. I'm suddenly reminded of why I never got into the internet at all until recently, and it's just because I was too goddamn impatient to wait for a modem that's any slower than a T1 or DSL, MAYBE a 56K if there's not too much on the hard drive. But godDAMN. This is nuts. I can't even really check my e-mail without a hassle because it takes like an hour just to delete a message.

I got the biggest fucking shock of my life not too long ago when someone mentioned that I was gonna be home for eleven days, ten nights. I had fully convinced myself it was going to be a short trip. And I majorly under-packed for that long a time. Please please PLEASE let time fast-forward about a week. That much I could probably tolerate. But I don't know about this eleven day shit.

That totally sucks that your family is driving you nuts. They don't sound smart enough to appreciate what they have in you. And I hate to say that when I don't know them or anything, but it's pretty obvious that they're just incapable of comprehending the big picture, you know? My family has definitely done their bit in trying to cover me up, but at least I can place a little bit of faith in knowing they'd be there for me no matter what. My problem is that I'm too fucking GOOD to do anything about that. I can't even convince myself that it's OKAY to be who I am if they're not prepared to accept it. They TELL me they're okay with everything, but they wouldn't be able to stand seeing me as who I really am. I honestly can't even imagine what would happen if I decided to light up a cigarette in front of them. They'd probably gasp in horror, yell at me, tell me how dumb I'm being, and then make me feel guilty as hell for the rest of my life. Guilt is such a horrible, horrible thing, most especially when you know it's such a big-ass pile of shit.

Today, I was out with my brother so we could finish our Christmas shopping, and he was waiting to finish a call on his cell phone before we left a store to go back to the car, so I dragged him into the pet store for a few minutes. I can't decide if this was a total mistake or if it was the highlight of my day, but they must've just gotten a whole bunch of little baby bunnies in for the holidays, and I found the cutest little bunny EVER. I could've stayed in the pet store playing with him all day. He was so small he could fit in the palm of my hand, and he actually sat there rather contentedly, and it was all I could do to sit him back in the cage with the rest of the little bunnies that are going to be given to some little kid two days from now 'cause the kids will like them for about a week, and then they'll sit in a goddamn cage neglected and alone for the rest of their lives. Stupid kids. Stupid holidays. Stupid fucking medication that makes my eyes all blurry....

I think the Remeron is finally starting to leave my system. Last night, I decided that the Paxil was probably doing me a lot more good than anything else, so I started taking twice my nightly dose again. I was up on that for awhile, and every time I started to feel a little better, my doctor would knock me back down a notch again until I felt like shit, and it kept going on and on like that, so fuck it. I'll just decide for myself. I felt much better today than I have the last week or so, but that's not to say I'm feeling GOOD.

Well, I think it's past my bedtime, so I'm gonna go try to make time go faster for a few hours before I'm awakened for church in the morning. Theoretically, I'm supposed to be going to church three times tomorrow. Sigh...will it ever end?

I love you so much.
Perdita