straw and independence

i am staring at the last and final straw. there is no space to breathe in this house. how i wish i had refined the technique of drawing things inward, of going to that place inside where you can somehow breathe. i suppose some people call it going to your happy place. sounds corny. right now, it just sounds a lot more peaceful than the claustrophobia of family.

i am sharing a room again, my sisters are jumping rope with my every last nerve, and even my mom lost it. (it’s times like these that make me feel like it’s better for the family that i not be home, because then it’s one less logistical variable. i hate being a logistical variable.) meanwhile dad and i foolishly believed we could solve my transportation-to-school problems while we were both so tired that we were muttering zombies.

here’s an update: i have no car. i have no plane ticket. i do have a GRE ticket and plans to help freshmen and international students move in…plans which start on monday. God help me, please!

dad and i looked at some prospective cars today. one was a crown victoria ex-police car. i was unsure of whether i really wanted to drive that, but later in the day, i remembered why i want a car… and i never said it had to be a certain color or model. i drove a much uglier version of a crown vic in high school, and people thought it was endearing. they called it the hannahmobile, even. so what’s the problem? oh, i don’t know. one problem was that it creaked a bit, though the owner said it only does that when it rains. mostly it was that my mom pooh-poohed it when i got home. i knew she would, yet i’m not even sure why. sure, this family has had transportation and financial problems, but how many times have we thanked God for that stupid crown vic which has now become the newest modern art fixture in my lawn?

(we hippie-rednecks call such cars modern art, not lawn ornaments. we fervently believe that an ancient rusting car can be reborn into a beautiful trellis for a garden of wildflowers. and by wildflowers we mean weeds.)

i value my independence a lot now. i have goals i never thought i would have, like financial stability and independence. i never thought i was motivated by money… i thought people who were motivated by money were bad, or something. now i realize i am. i do not want to be in this state of living beyond one’s means. perhaps i just hate dependence and interdependence. God above is probably chuckling at how i believe i might truly be self-sufficient some day. God, help me to chuckle, too…

one good thing that has come out of the last days’ search for a transportation solution is that i have gotten to spend some time with my dad. it has been good. he tries, for my sake, to avoid certain subjects like Austrian economics, Georgia, and paper money. (fyi, i do think about those things, and i do care, at least about Georgia, but my dad tends to take the extreme downhill view of those things.) he still gives me detailed explanations of car parts, which i understand for about .2 seconds before they flee my brain. he did, accidentally, refer to me as his “son” when he was telling me about his insurance agent. As in, “just tell her you’re Bill’s son.” and we did go to J&S, where he made faces at babies.

i think i am coming around to a more tempered (balanced?) view of my parents, too, which proves interesting. it’s weird to think how like my dad i am in some ways. how there are things which are true about my dad, such as his sentimentalism/romanticism, which i value in myself and other people.

anyways. so back to the “last and final straw” thing. i am sitting in the laundry room to type this, sandwiched between the deep freeze and the washer/dryer, because there is nowhere else to be. i am in over my head. i think i can do so much…. see this person or that, arrange this or that, study quickly for the GRE (what a joke), drive this or that car 1,000 miles or so. i am anxious about this transition ahead of me. i must remember the good and deal with the bad sternly.

goodnight, dears. i’m off to find an empty couch and sleep.