If You Could Save Yourself

Just following the theme of Ween titles. But I promise this is the last joke or pun in this post.

So I spent the past four or five days at my father's house. Everything has changed, for the worst. My stepbrother Roman has turned into someone I no longer know. I used to look up to him, ask him for advice sometimes not because he was older or smarter (which is isn't really) one, but because he was family. He once looked down upon drugs with disdain and while he wasn't always the nicest brother, he truly cared about everyone in his family. He used to skate and we met some really cool people through this. I remember staying up at his friend Donny's house and talking about Resident Evil in his creaky house and midnight. There was also some fat little poser kid who hung out with us, but we didn't mind because he needed someone to hang out with and we didn't mind the company. A guy who would laugh and make jokes or say something unexpectedly that made me laugh if no one else. Gone is that person. He stopped skating long ago. He's been kicked out of the house four times for doing drugs. He gets drunk regularly via my father's insistance. The only three words in his vocabulary are gay, fag, and fuck. I can't tell you how many "gay fucking fag"s I've heard in the past week. He talks on the phone to his partying friends, occasionally rapping for them. Usually about kicking their asses, with a mixed combo of the above triumvirate. I love him. I just don't like him anymore. My stepbrother Travis has gone down too, although his is less far of a fall. While he was sometimes a douche before, he was usually good-natured and had a sense of humor. Now he's taking after his brother. The problem here is that he doesn't have any sense of what he's doing. I can see Roman becoming a pothead loser for the rest of his life. I can see Travis killing himself with drugs. My stepsister Ronda has now taken to the ho lifestyle, dressing like one and talking like one. Rebecca is still married to the yes man. Or the yes ma'am, rather.

All this stems from my father. He's quick to blame his problems on everyone else, not taking responsibility for anything. He's a child. I told his wife to tell him it's time to start acting like a father and stop simply being a 'man'. He hits people. He screams at the top of his lungs. He gets drunk and wanders around. And he'll never change as long as he can grab people to slow his fall. He doesn't care about anyone. He makes everyone around him miserable, and no one wants to stand up. They'd all rather fall into a hole for his sake. I used to not care. His problems were his to fix, not mine. But now he's ruining everyone around me, everyone I hold dear, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Driving home on the freeway, Kathlene went on for an hour about their problems, wearing them like some sort of badge as if I were to respect her for letting this happen to her. Somewhere between "And they called CPS again!" and "I need to get them drug tested" I realized that my family is killing itself. If there was any love in it before it's gone now. I see a house full of angry Matts trying to get along and I just lose hope because I know they're all too blind to save themselves, and no matter how hard I try I can't save them. I've just spent the last week in a house full of dying love and I don't know how to feel anymore. The damnest thing is I don't feel anything right now - just emptiness. It's like I know I should feel something knowing my whole family is dying, but there are no emotions. I feel like a part of myself is dying with them. I hate them for doing this to themselves. To me. I don't even know how to describe how I feel other than this: imagine a void. I'm just so empty of everything right now. My family's dying and I'm along for the ride. For the first time in my life I've been confronted with a problem that is entirely unsolvable by me. I can try for hours and hours, have a million coversations, and cry my eyes and my body dry, and nothing will change.

I come home to find myself banned from two forums and Alyssa's blog. More hatred. Tell me, does love exist anywhere anymore, outside of Lucio's house? Because from where I'm sitting, everyone hates everyone. Is love just a word people use as a means to an end? Do people just say love so they can fuck people? Is love a word people say to generalize a feeling of base attraction? I'm so sick of hearing my father tell people he loves them. He is incapable of such a feeling.

I look at how I feel and have felt about love and realized how much of a childish naivity such thoughts were. People are more than capable of not being what they are, but they lack the desire. It's easier to take advantage of someone than to open up who you are. It's easier to stab someone in the back than to share a blow to the front. Walking to the store in Manteca, I found myself confronted with a car full of girls a few days ago. They flirted with me and asked if I wanted to get in and I knew where it was going. And I declined. And the real tragedy of this is I know at least three people who just read that last line think I'm a fool. And that should tell you the state of humanity. Life isn't about having sex, it's about being happy. And if sex makes you happy, that's great, more power to you, but you shouldn't live off of it. It shouldn't be your all-consuming desire. People are more interested in fucking each other than finding out who they are, it seems. The dance of eyes, the talk, all the foreplay. None of it has to do with being interested. It's all a means to an end. And as I sit here losing my train of thought and worrying internally that people will think me a fool or tell me "But what about ?", I know that humanity isn't all bad like this. But I feel as if I'm in an ocean of animalism, and the chances of me drifting to something worth holding onto seem very remote. I feel I'll never find that safe place. Sure, I may have a girlfriend or a wife or something in between, but I feel I won't find someone I'll be able to connect to on a deeper level. I feel there's no one I'll ever find that I can share my stories with, no one that will read my writing and tell me how she feels, no one who isn't afraid to be exposed. And I feel I'll never find a person who feels the same way about me. And just as I did with the girls in the car and later the girl at the store (who made those "come talk to me" eyes at me), all I can do is nod, wave, smile, and keep walking. And as soon as I'm done writing these last lines and wondering internally what people will comment with as I always do, I'll lean my head on the desk and hope things change, and later I'll go upstairs and dream of a better reality, like I always do. Because as much as I know that I can try my hardest to change my life, and as many times as I reread the doctrine I wrote with my own hands about change, I know that someone else has to change too, and all I've seen in this lifetime is rigidity. And I can change everything about myself, but I can't change the world.