Just let me be myself for awhile.

I need to vent. I'm annoyed at my life; not life in general, but my own. Dad and I just got into a fight, not necessarily unlike us, because he's pissing me off. Never, in the last year and a half, have I wanted my own place so badly. He's storming around the house, military-style, cleaning things up. And granted, the house was a mess. My father doesn't live like that and I was surprised he let it go as long as he did. No biggie. Jules and I had pulled out the drawers in the dishwasher so the dishes could dry and then we were going to put them away. But it's no secret that when he's scrambling around the house like that, my stress level reacts by jumping from a 2 to a 10 in record time. So I made a comment to him about when he was leaving to go and get his haircut. And he whipped his head around and very nastily responded, "Yes. I'm leaving. And this is NOT my happy face." I assumed he was responding to my attitude, but I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, so we bickered back and forth and he eventually left. Here's the part that bugs me, though. He was yelling at me and asking me why I didn't get up and do something to help out around here. Normally, I would agree with that statement. I could stand to help out more around the house. However. Yesterday, he and Julia literally sat around and watched tv from 2 until 7:30 when Julia came to visit me at work. Just because you wasted your day yesterday and feel like you need to accomplish something today, you're going to bitch at me about wasting time? Give me a fucking break. This is the second day off I've had in over five weeks, and the first one I've had on a weekend. And another thing. I mean this in the best way possible, because I do love my sister very much, but it's always been that I'm the responsible one and she's the flighty one. Dad and I are having this argument, and she's sitting at her computer, very much not doing anything productive either, and yet nothing is said to her about how she could get off her ass and help.

I just feel very...I don't know. It feels awful to even think it, let alone say it out loud. But when did I become the pseudo-mother? I mean, I knew that when I came home it was to help out. And I chose that. They needed me at the time. They still do, I suppose. I just have these very clear moments when I think about how this is not how I pictured my life going. Maybe it's a sign that it really is time to think about me moving out of here. For both of our sakes. We, as a whole, the three of us, need to learn to function on our own so that we can do a better job when we're together. I need a bit of independence to find myself and figure out what the hell I'm doing; Dad needs to learn to function on his own again and be alone; and Julia needs to figure out where she stands in the middle of all of that.

Really, I just need a goddamn break. Saratoga cannot come soon enough.