I don't care whether he's joking or not
I know Friday was just the 22nd anniversary of my birth so I can't expect kingly treatmemt, but the least my stepdad could've done was given me the gift of not being insensitive and ungrateful for once in his superiority-driven life. He gave me 4 pieces of intolerance.
#1: It started when he finally came down from doing office work (big surprise for someone like him *rolls eyes*) and noticed the gifts I got: A book on drawing, a magic eye 3d stereogram book, a book on Ireland, a 50-cd organizer thing, City of Angels, The Matrix: Revolutions, and two games for the Nintendo DS. The only thing that caught his attention was the two games. He said to the rest of the family (and luckily they didn't notice or didn't respond) "You're still doing this for him? You still get things like this for him? You've gotta break him of this habit" He was acting like playing video games means being a kid.
I don't see what his problem is. He has fun building stuff with wood, landscaping, and other getting-his-hands-dirty things. That's his leisure. My leisure includes drawing, reading and writing stories and poetry, playing guitar, and playing video games. Why should one thing I do for fun be considered a sign that I have to grow up? He acts like I play video games because I don't want to grow up and enter the real world... even though I'm 22 and have entered the real world, or else I wouldn't have a car, job, and be in college, while trying to pay bills. My point is, what I do in my free time reflects what I enjoy doing.
#2: Then after I go upstairs he looks in my room that, before my brother arrived and before I started putting together the 50-cd case, was spotless because I had cleaned it the night before. But no, he comes in and judges my room when it's in a state of temporary mess. Key word: temporary. He said something along the lines of "Your room is always a mess, I'm tired of telling you. How do you live like this?"
I wanted to say "Oh, I just love sulking in mess because I'm such a pig" Fucking ungrateful... he always judges my room when it's at its messiest, no wonder he thinks I'm a fucking slob. I do clean my room or else it would be 10 times worse than it's ever been. He didn't fucking believe when I told him I cleaned it, either. What's the point of cleaning my room if when it gets messy again for any reason he'll just think I'm trying to kiss up to him?
#3: Then this morning we were talking about sharing birthdays with people, and my mom said I shared my birthday with Queen Elizabeth (which I already knew) and I said I shared my birthday with Rome. My stepdad said "What, do you share your birthday with some ancient druid king or something? Is that why you believe in all that druid crap?" He called my beliefs CRAP. Fucking asshole. I don't care if his word for "stuff" is "crap", you don't talk so apathetically and condescendingly about someone's beliefs like that, especially to their face.
#4: He goes into the living room and sits down. He's showing me this birdhouse he made, and talks about having the artistic liscence to do what he wanted to the original plans. He noticed I was standing there and got into a "thinker" position, and pretended to stare off into the distance, and said "Look, I'm an ar-TISTE". This one wasn't as offensive as the other ones, but he really needs to drop it. I'm against the typical subjective photographs where everyone looks at the camera and they're in the center of the photo. So whenever a picture was taken of me in Europe, I would admire the scenery or (genuinely) reflect on the awesomeness of being there. But being the subjective traditional people-photographer he is, he objected to all my requests to not be in the center of the photo. And then every time I took a photo, I tried to make a composition out of it... you know, artistic nature. But he just laughed it all off as wasting time when I could just take a photo and be done with it. The one thing I said to myself that he had left to mock (after he did #3) he ended up mocking not minutes later: my artistic background. Ugh.
So my point is that even if he's joking about my lifestyle, he jokes about it in a way that makes it feel like he's actually indifferent towards who I am. I take offense to his belittling of my personality.
#1: It started when he finally came down from doing office work (big surprise for someone like him *rolls eyes*) and noticed the gifts I got: A book on drawing, a magic eye 3d stereogram book, a book on Ireland, a 50-cd organizer thing, City of Angels, The Matrix: Revolutions, and two games for the Nintendo DS. The only thing that caught his attention was the two games. He said to the rest of the family (and luckily they didn't notice or didn't respond) "You're still doing this for him? You still get things like this for him? You've gotta break him of this habit" He was acting like playing video games means being a kid.
I don't see what his problem is. He has fun building stuff with wood, landscaping, and other getting-his-hands-dirty things. That's his leisure. My leisure includes drawing, reading and writing stories and poetry, playing guitar, and playing video games. Why should one thing I do for fun be considered a sign that I have to grow up? He acts like I play video games because I don't want to grow up and enter the real world... even though I'm 22 and have entered the real world, or else I wouldn't have a car, job, and be in college, while trying to pay bills. My point is, what I do in my free time reflects what I enjoy doing.
#2: Then after I go upstairs he looks in my room that, before my brother arrived and before I started putting together the 50-cd case, was spotless because I had cleaned it the night before. But no, he comes in and judges my room when it's in a state of temporary mess. Key word: temporary. He said something along the lines of "Your room is always a mess, I'm tired of telling you. How do you live like this?"
I wanted to say "Oh, I just love sulking in mess because I'm such a pig" Fucking ungrateful... he always judges my room when it's at its messiest, no wonder he thinks I'm a fucking slob. I do clean my room or else it would be 10 times worse than it's ever been. He didn't fucking believe when I told him I cleaned it, either. What's the point of cleaning my room if when it gets messy again for any reason he'll just think I'm trying to kiss up to him?
#3: Then this morning we were talking about sharing birthdays with people, and my mom said I shared my birthday with Queen Elizabeth (which I already knew) and I said I shared my birthday with Rome. My stepdad said "What, do you share your birthday with some ancient druid king or something? Is that why you believe in all that druid crap?" He called my beliefs CRAP. Fucking asshole. I don't care if his word for "stuff" is "crap", you don't talk so apathetically and condescendingly about someone's beliefs like that, especially to their face.
#4: He goes into the living room and sits down. He's showing me this birdhouse he made, and talks about having the artistic liscence to do what he wanted to the original plans. He noticed I was standing there and got into a "thinker" position, and pretended to stare off into the distance, and said "Look, I'm an ar-TISTE". This one wasn't as offensive as the other ones, but he really needs to drop it. I'm against the typical subjective photographs where everyone looks at the camera and they're in the center of the photo. So whenever a picture was taken of me in Europe, I would admire the scenery or (genuinely) reflect on the awesomeness of being there. But being the subjective traditional people-photographer he is, he objected to all my requests to not be in the center of the photo. And then every time I took a photo, I tried to make a composition out of it... you know, artistic nature. But he just laughed it all off as wasting time when I could just take a photo and be done with it. The one thing I said to myself that he had left to mock (after he did #3) he ended up mocking not minutes later: my artistic background. Ugh.
So my point is that even if he's joking about my lifestyle, he jokes about it in a way that makes it feel like he's actually indifferent towards who I am. I take offense to his belittling of my personality.
posted by Artifex at 12:52 PM
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