The promised update is here. Just go to the homepage to see it.

Some things are still missing. Most of the larger stories. PoE is (still) being rewritten, though, so....

That's about it. Late, but done. More to do later, possibly this month.

It's hard being the strong one.

By which I mean, it's hard to not depend on other people. Perhaps even impossible.

Which, I suppose, is the whole point of friendship. Helping someone out, and them helping you out when you need it.

It's hard.

But it feels good to be there when a friend needs you.

Visited my mother again today.

I'm trying to be more regular about that, but I've got a history of just sinking into a pattern where I'm comfortably numb and ignore everything I don't have to. Usually to focus on self-improvement to the point of being so self-centered that I backslide more than I gain.

Anyway. Speaking of family, I've decided to go over the events concerning my father in my head again. I can't remember if I entered it into my journal, since the history I see at the bottom of this screen only goes back to Saturday, but I'm too lazy to expend the effort to look. And yet, motivated enough to talk about it.

I'm so complex. (Where a=A and b=[B], with a[B]!=Ab, and bb=[A])

So. I got a letter from my father last Sunday.

Indirectly. It was from my grandfather to my grandmother, as he is still paying her alimony. My step-mother, my father, and their child are all described as 'obscenely obese', and I'm told that my father's been out of work for a year. This distresses and dissapoints me, mostly because I was led to believe that my father may actually be dying. It's not something like cancer, or a wasting illness, it's just that he's in a position where his declining health is getting to him.

My grandfather has emphezema (sp?), and he decided it was more important to notify us about my father's health than even bother mentioning that he's ill himself? This bodes poorly. It's also suggested that my step-mother's decline in willpower and health is linked to mine and my older brother's leaving. For those of you not in the know, I ran away at the age of fifteen, and moved in with my mother. Important points: My father did not appear at the custody trial. My mother asked for only 100$ a month in child support, because when she was struggling, that was all she was able to pay my father, and she didn't feel it was fair to my father to ask for more.

My older brother ran away at the age of seventeen (about six or eight months before I did). We both did this because we weren't comfortable living under my step-mother's parentage. Now, I know I'm a damaged person, and I've got issues. I'm not perfect. But I'm not going to blame my issues on my upbringing, and the abuse I took. Let's face it; most children in abuse situations don't even know it's abuse until they're out of that situation. I didn't. It doesn't justify antisocial behavior, it's not an excuse to be unkind or perpetuate that kind of treatment to another generation.

It's just something that happens, that you have to accept, and put behind you.

Except, I didn't. I learned a lot about psychology and manipulating people from my step-mother. I picked it up from watching her. Of course, I didn't know it was wrong, so I treated my ex-girlfriend very poorly, and emotionally manipulated her, which resulted in a very destructive relationship, whereupon I was destroying her free will, and by allowing me to do so, she was destroying my drive to do anything whatsoever. She decided at some point that we had to break up, and I said it would be the smart thing for her to do.

There you see: I perpetuated the behavior that I learned by the abuse I took. Does that make it okay? Fuck no. I will own up to the fact that what I did was horrible. I hate what I've done, and I'm only now learning not to hate myself for doing it. I hold myself responsible for the abusive behaviors that my ex- girlfriend learned from me, and now in a small way often employs against her significant other.

But I also feel I'm not in a position where I should say anything about it. It would be the ultimate act of hypocricy, I think, for me to say, "Hey. You're treating him like I treated you. Not cool." So I wait, until that moment comes along when someone asks for my help, and I can do what I can.

I think that's about as responsible as I can be.

The closest thing I have to a role model is my mother, who I think is an awesome person, possibly the most awesome person ever, with the exception of Segata Sanshiro. But he's not real, and she is, so she wins. She has enough willpower to drop from 310 lbs to 120 in a single year, and keep that weight off. She's pulled herself and her life out from the worst possible places and situations, and has proven herself to be a remarkable person. I don't think I respected her nearly as much as I should have, growing up.

My father, on the other hand, I think I respected too much, given that he stole (I know the amount now) thirty thousand dollars from my grandmother.

Now, he didn't steal it, directly. He actually took it with the understanding that it would be used for the down-payment on a house that my father would buy, which would include accomodations for my grandmother when she came back from her stay in Costa Rica. Well, I won't say that my step- mother is not also responsible for that money dissapearing, but my father was the one who actually said, "We don't have that money."

Not, "It's gone. I'm going to need some time to pay you back." Not, "We spent that money, I'm sorry." Just, "We don't have that money."

What's worse, is that later, he ended up borrowing my grandmother's credit card, and gave it to my stepmother. After my step-mother used that credit card for things like trips, trinkets, junk, and so on, when it had been given in confidence that it would be used to pay for the moving service to help move into the home that they had (after the fact, and without my grandmother's money) chosen. I confronted him over the phone about this abuse of my grandmother's trust, and he said, "Well.... You know, your grandmother's old. She forgets things."

And she's my roomate now. In all honesty, she does forget things. Minor things. Little things. And that's now. Not five years ago, when this happened.

That was the last time I spoke with my father.

Now I'm confronted with the idea that I might not be able to ever say goodbye to my father, or talk to him again, and all I can really think about it is that, given my lously track-record of keeping in the loop with my family, I'm not sure I want to talk to him again. There I am, confronting the idea that I may never. Ever. Get the chance to make my peace with him, or say goodbye. And I'm not sure I want to bother, even though I know that I've got a chance, and it may not happen again.

Part of it is because I don't trust that he's his own person. I think he's really mostly subject to his wife. He's still responsible for his own decisions. And it's not like he couldn't just call me; he has my number. He has my e-mail address. He knows I'm living with his mother, trying to patch the hole he made in her life.

But maybe he knows how much I resent that. Maybe he knows how dissapointed I am.

And maybe, maybe, maybe, he knows that after all is said and done, I don't even know if I love my father.

The father I remember loving as a child was the one who raised me as a single father when my mother was at what was probably one of the worst points of her life. When I was a tyke, not even four years old, and Dad's favorite vehicle was his old Honda motorcycle. He'd sit me on it in front of him, and then put on his jacket, and button me up inside it to be safe. He'd take me and my brother to visit our grandparents (before they divorced). He'd take us to the park. He worked his ass off to take care of us, and he showed us that he cared. He was the best father he could have been.

And I remember him dating, even as a father, not trusting most sitters, and bringing me and my brother along. I vaguely remember a handful of women he saw, most of which thought me and my brother were cute as buttons. I remember arguing with my brother over who got to sit in the front seat of the old Honda hatchback whenever we went shopping, or did anything else all together.

But then I remember how much he changed after he married his current wife. Did he think that she would be better for taking care of us and it was his job to take care of the family by working hard and bringing in all the money he could? Did she tell him that? Did he just never really care, and think that the obligation was safely passed off?

I don't know. But that caring father I know was abruptly replaced with a very distant always tired man who had no hobbies, and barely had time to listen to me when I asked him questions. A man who fished, I think, but cared less to spend time with me and more just to enjoy himself. A man with very little patience, who I think was always stressed even when we were on vacations, which was about the only time I ever really saw him.

I think the last time I actually saw my father in any light where he regarded me as an actual part of his family and his life was when I was summoned to the principal's office because they had found the detonator I was trying to build because I wanted to blow the school up (there's dysfunction for you). And after all of the accusations and explanations that it was all my mother's fault, all he really wanted to talk to me about was how the science of the stuff actually worked. I think I saw, in the depths of his eyes, a very sad and ashamed reflection of the old dad I had. One who had no idea how to talk to me again and say that he still loved me, and that he knew how hard it was to be awkward in school.

And I think whatever there is of the father I loved can't come back until my step-mother releases her control over him. Gods above; he lost two sons, and alienated his own brother and sister, to say nothing of how he mistreated his own mother. He's invested too much in the decision he made to come back now.

If I did talk to him, I wouldn't be talking to him. I'd be trying to talk to that part deep inside himself, that he's been trying to kill to make his wife happy for years.

And I don't even know if I want to reach out and say farewell to that last flickering spark of the man I think of as my father.

I think I should. But I just don't know.

Happy thoughts. Meeting Darth Morrison for lunch tomorrow. Haven't seen him in nearly a year, so it should be fun.

Today, is another day.

My first real day of being on the phones; they really threw me to the wolves, as it were. My duties rapidly outstripped my ability to do them, at first, but I managed to get to a point where, despite the fact that I was not making headway, I was not falling further behind.

I imagine that within a week or two, I should be able to stay ahead of them. Wow. What a rush of work. I'm finding that I actually enjoy this job more, just because of the relaxed environment, even when it's stressful. And what job can't be stressful, ocasionally? It's reasonable, at least. The call volume is higher than I had thought it would be (though, today, two of the people (of four) who answers calls were out), but not unmanagable.

Once everyone's on the same page, and we get the fifth person added to our cadre of phone-answerers, we should be ready to rock. I'm excited, and have happy premonitons about the future, which is rare for me given how easily I become depressed. Usually.

But things are looking up, and I'm happy; tomorrow morning, and from now on, I will be working from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM, which suits me just fine. I imagine much of the morning will be quite busy, as 6:00 AM here is 9:00 AM on the east coast, but I'm not too worried. I think it'll all work out.

Oh, there was also an altercation, if you're curious.

But that's pretty much the end of that, and I'm glad for it.

On to ... sleep, I suppose. I'm planning a major overhaul of the actual site on Saturday, so I can replace all of the missing content that was lost in the HD crash.

So today was the second day of work.

The training is light; the actual work came hard and fast, and I'm not, honestly, totally prepared to deal with it. That's okay, though. This seems like the kind of thing that should be really intuitive once you get a handle on it, which I should be able to do reasonably soon. I just need practice, and a bit more time to get there.

It's fun, there's a lot of comraderie between us there.... I think it's a good thing, all considered.

I'm also kind of tired, and since I worked ouy tonight, most of my entire day was consumed with working and bitching about the old job.

Watermelon elementals aside.

So ... I think I'm going to drool vacantly for a moment or three, then get me some shuteye.