The big graduation weekend was wonderfully representative: on Saturday, Mom, Dad, David, and I had a lovely dinner back in Grand Blanc and then went to the movies; on Sunday, Dad told me that he loves me but that I'm never going to amount to anything. I don't think this is the way families are supposed to work, but I'm not really sure since this is the only one I've known. It's weird that for all the reasons my brother, sister, and I think our parents did a spectacular job raising us, my father thinks he failed abysmally. But I do know that this much was and is wrong with the household in which I was raised: I find it odd almost to the point of confusion when the parents of one of my friends visibly and honestly love each other. Growing up, I was too little to recognize Mom and Dad's misery; so, it's not like I've always believed marriage is synonymous was unhappiness. But, as I've grown older and matured, the marriage which necessarily functions as my model, or at least as the model with which I am most familiar, has been a loveless one. I think that's really sad. The only thing more sad is that Dad still believes he loves me; he only loves me in the way I love him: over twenty years of familiarity and the societal expectation that parents and children love one another.

When I was in high school, the speech I was given this weekend made me hate myself and everything around me. This time, while of course I'm upset, the primary effect has been to reinforce my desire to spare my children the ill-fortune of that man's presence. Even with all this, though, I'm still much more fond of my father than either my brother or sister... and my big plan for his funeral is to do a little jig on the bastard's grave.