Somehow, he's done it again.

I'm in kind of a bizarre headspace tonight, and I'm not entirely sure why.  Well, I have a couple ideas, but nothing I feel like writing about just yet.  My brain feels like it is simultaneously working on overdrive and not working at all.  I'm on the verge of crying, which means my temples are pounding, my throat feels constricted, and my eyes are unintentionally squinting.  You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever experienced it.  And I hope you haven't.  It's pretty miserable.

It all started when I was reading, and if you know anything about me at all, you know that there's only one author who pretty consistently inspires me to think and, consequently, write.  If you don't know who I'm talking about, shame on you.  His name is probably in the last 10 posts over a dozen times.   Anyway, he was describing how he had a girl in his life who he had probably loved in the past, and woud inevitably love in the future, and how they both still knew they would never be together.  And somehow, this got me thinking about my childhood home.

About six months ago, I was eyelid-deep in the hunt for a place to live in Milwaukee.  I was spending the better part of my days looking at listings, for weeks.  I started dreaming about browsing Craigslist and Hotpads, and would wake up disappointed that the perfect apartment I'd found was only in my head.  In all this research, I happened across a random website where you could look up property values.  For fun, I searched the house my parents used to live in - the one I refer to as my childhood home.  I found it, and saw that it was currently on the market.  The site was even kind enough to link to the listing, complete with a plethora of pictures of my house.  But it was not my house.  I was angered.



Now, I've moved a lot.  By the time we moved into the house I'm referring to, I had lived in 5 other places.  Since I moved out of that house, I've lived in 4 more.  I was 8 when we moved in there.  So it wasn't the first house I lived in, nor was I ever particularly fond of it.  As a matter of fact, I hated a lot of things about that house.  It was too dark, most of the wood surfaces were unfinished, or "rustic" as my dad called it, the carpet was dingy even before 2 babies and several animals ruined it, and our internet moved at the speed of molasses even in 2006 when everyone else was completely wired in.    My room was right across from my parents, so the idea of staying up late or sneaking out for a snack was impossible.  The wallpaper border that went up when I was 8 stayed up until we sold the house.  I ended up covering it with movie posters in high school because I hated it so much, but they could only be hung with sticky tack, lest I damage my father's precious walls.  The walls were supposed to be  a jarring white, which didn't work at all because my parents could not keep a clean house, so they ended up seeming slightly dingy - I think part of this is all the animals that were constantly running into them.  Anyway, my point is that this house really didn't mean all that much to me.

And yet, seeing the pictures posted on the listing, I was infuriated.  My kitchen had the same cabinets and floor, but everything looked funny.  My bedroom (that became Joey's) was now a nursery.  My 2nd bedroom, once I technically moved out, was now a workout room.  It took  me a while to figure that out, because they had moved the door 4 feet to the left.  They moved my fucking door.  And the playroom was a guest room, the bathroom that I had tiled was a new color.  And the rec room.  The rec room that had been a garage - that I had literally stripped down to the frame and rebuilt with my dad, from insulation all the way to chair rails - was a 1/2 music room, 1/2 junk room.  I was indescribably perturbed by these pictures.

So that was all several months ago.  BACK TO TONIGHT.  That might be the longest flashback I've ever written.  Sorry.

Something in what I was reading made me flashback to looking at those pictures, and the feelings of anger and possessiveness returned.  So naturally, because I am me, I started analyzing them.  While I continued reading, because somehow I was capable of doing that…my brain impresses me sometimes.  ANYWAY.

I realized that what it came down to is pretty simple.  That might not have been my only house, or my favorite house, or even a house that I was particularly attached to. It wasn't ever really even mine.  It was my parent's, my dad's in particular (see above re: putting holes in the wall and the mandatory white paint).  But for a few years at least, I claimed it as part of who I was.  And there, right in front of me, were pictures of how someone has bastardized my house.  It wasn't mine anymore, and I had to face the fact that it never really was.

And that is what I realized tonight.  I felt so much anger in losing something that wasn't mine, solely because I finally had to accept that it never really was.  Other people had lived there before me, people clearly had lived there after me, and I couldn't claim it as mine.  The anger that had hit me so suddenly months ago (and assuaged until I remembered it tonight), finally made sense.  I was having to let go of something that I wasn't ready to let go of.

As I pondered this thought, I realized I do this in other aspects of my life too.  I get inexplicably angry when I find out that someone I dislike loves one of my favorite TV shows.  This doesn't really make sense…finding such a thing out should make the person slightly more bearable.  But instead, I feel an overwhelming urge to yell that they could not possibly appreciate something that I love.  Yes, this happens.  Thank God, it has always remained an internal scream.  This becomes even worse when a friend of mine introduces someone I dislike to a show/band/book I originally showed them.

That made no sense, so I will attempt to explain better.  Say I introduce a friend (Javier) to Firefly, and Javier loves it, marathons it, and cries when Wash dies.  It's a bonding thing between the two of us, because I introduced Javier to the Firefly world.  Then say that Javier introduces some random person (Martha) to Firefly, and Martha loves it as well.  I like that there is a new Firefly fan in the universe, but I dislike that the bond it created between Javier and I now exists between Javier and Martha too.  This is exponentially worse if I dislike said other friend already.  Damnit, Martha, back off.

I think it happens with friendships in general, too.  I have very few friends that I consider myself exceptionally close to, so when they find a new close friend - or even worse, a new significant other - I get worried that I'm going to become less important, or that the things we share are now just being shared willy nilly with someone else.  Suddenly knowing that something I thought was special between my friend and I is being shared amongst others makes if feel less special somehow, and I have to realize that I have no claim over what my friends do, or what they share.  I should be happy that I introduced Javier to something he loved so much, he just had to share it with Martha.  It's not like Javier is going to forget how he discovered it, so I shouldn't feel threatened.  And yet...

I hate that I feel this way, but I have yet to find a way to not have that initial reaction.  I always have to work through it.  Every single time.  It's frustrating, because I know it's stupid, but I don't know how to just stop doing it in the first place.

I have absolutely no idea how this relates to what Klosterman wrote, or why it popped into my head, but somehow he has inspired me to produce more than 5 pages of essentially mindless blather.  Good on you, Chuck.

In this 1500+ words of reflection, though, I actually did come to a conclusion as to why I probably become inexplicably angry about such stupid things as shared TV shows and pictures of an old house.  The anger is pretty explicable after all.

Apparently, when it comes to certain aspects of my life, I am not very good at sharing.

Who'd have thunk?

12.12.12  10:49 pm