Currently Depressingly Unfunny

Now, I am no genius of the comedic variety. I would like to think I make people laugh, but just as often I do the crabbish thing of hiding away and refusing to interact with anyone. I have been somewhat lacking in humour recently. This is because:
a) my mutti has gone psycho with her usual weathervane-like regularity (i.e., completely erratic and unpredictable).
b) she and my father egg each other on with beautifully predictable regularity.
c) my brother is a lazy, obsessive eejat.

Starting from the top: I have been talking ON MY MOBILE PHONE to people a few times in the past 2-3 weeks quite late, around 11 p.m. and absolute latest, until 1.00 a.m. (although I doubt any recent calls have been THAT late). I talked in a whisper, or as quietly as I could - a few times I was probably a bit louder than I meant to be. However, I was on MY phone, in my bedroom - not patrolling the passage and talking as if I want to blow the person on the other end away, like Father Dearest does. Probably about a week or two ago, someone knocked on my door a couple of times while I was talking to my beloved. I cried out (with alarm) that they should not come in (I wasn't wearing any trousers).

I got a third knock around 11.30 (methinks), followed by Mutti bursting in in her nightie and beginning to rant and rave like a mad werewolf / possessed bedsheet / red-faced loon. While I looked at her and fought alternating urges to shriek, burst out laughing and cry with the rage that was slowly filling me, she put forth her full, hypocritical glory. And I quote: "GET OFF THE PHONE! (x several) TELL ME WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO!" (Why Mother, how would that be possible if I'd hung up on them?)

She did variations of those two several times while I sassed her (she was asking for it, really). I was all "I've hung up," very nonchalantly. She started shrieking madly about taking my phone away from me. I reminded her that it was MY phone and she couldn't take it. She squawked that fine, I could take my phone and get out of the house. I was feeling utterly condescending, and embarrassed by her pathetically desperate display of emotion. I was in no mood to play the contrite kiddy, oh not at all. I don't think she liked that.

I had managed to pull my arm back by my side and cut the call discreetly, so she couldn't see who I was talking to. Unfortunately, he called me back repeatedly, and then texted as well. This, she liked. She stood before me in her heaving nightdress, psychotic gleam in eye. "Are they calling you back? Sending you messages? They want to see if you're alright, don't they? They know you're getting beats, that's why. They know you're in trouble, and they're calling back because they want to know - Is she getting slaps? Is she alright?" Psycho grin, waiting to lead into accompanying laughter. I was actually quite unsettled by this.

"I KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO!" (Now, this was the crowner. This was the absolute pinnacle; I thought I might have to swallow a knuckle to avoid laughing at her fucking hypocritical idiocy. It couldn't get any worse...)
"You're trying to befool me! (Oh hell yes, it did!) You tell lies! You tell so many lies! You try to befool us! (She was making it really hard for me to keep a straight face). But you watch, I'll take your phone when you're not expecting it, and I'll get Dad involved next time! Talking after 11 o'clock! GO TO SLEEP!" She stomped out, turning off the light as she did so, and leaving the door wide open. I got up - "TURN THE LIGHT OFF!"

"It's ALREADY off!" I yelled back. My previous emotional mélange was giving way, now filtering and distilling, into a pure snowy-white-hot anger. I waited for her to fuck right off, then I got out my Donald Duck pad and wrote my best poem in ages, called Thoughts Of Murder.
A few days later, I went to the Hard Rock Café for lunch, because they were doing their original menu at '70s prices, and I thought "Why not?" I was going out anyway. Obviously, I wasn't going to give my parents a blow-by-blow of what I did, so I mentioned that as the main point of my day. I was also late home by 20 minutes - ironically enough, we'd left London at 4.15 so that I could be home by 5.30, but the Piccadilly line had delays. I really should have known better. I should have known those psychos had an ace up their sleeves.

All seemed fairly OK, until dinner time, when we were all eating and my mum suddenly started on to my dad: "She went out to EAT today, did you know that? Only to EAT!" My dad probably said something about coursework - he loves coursework. Randomly when I want to go out and spend a little of my OWN money having fun: "Why is it necessary? Is it COURSEWORK? Do you have to meet your friends to STUDY?!" Anyway, I tried to defend myself, saying that S----- and I were hanging out - everyone does, after all - and then they started on about how I should only leave the house to go to university, or to work. Then my mum went "Right, after today, you are not going anywhere. Either you come to the shop and help us, or you stay home and do the housework and make dinner, or you go to work. Tell me what days you're working - I know you're not working every day, so don't try and lie to me - write down your schedule and give it to me."

She and my dad just work on each other, and he took his cue here. He probably said something about my being bloody ungrateful, and also possibly useless. He DEFINITELY said something along the lines of "It's enough hassle trying to GET you to come to the shop... you don't want to help ever... we have to drag you there... it's a bloody waste of our time... bloody ungrateful, useless... no respect, don't want to help even once... DON'T YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!" And he waved his finger in front of my nose, millimetres from my face. "We know all about you, staring at me like that... we know what you're up to, and WHO YOU'RE WITH."

At times like that, I really really hate my parents. I fantasised about breaking his finger, or biting into it hard. They're the fucking ungrateful ones, always conveniently forgetting whenever we're good. And their novel approach to fairness! - being exercised at that very moment - insulting all of your children in one go, instead of just the one. Their idea of a compliment is to compare to you to someone - say my cousin, just to try and make trouble because we love each other so much - and tell you how you're lacking in comparison. So yes, I was banned from going anywhere to have fun. I suspected I knew what the psycho accusations of lying and 'befooling' were about: they'd seen S------- walking me home from an Ed Harcourt gig in London on June 9th.

This was confirmed when I had a shouting match with my mother the next morning. She dragged it out of me that he was there, although I would never be completely honest with her. I told her we were just 'good friends' - why the hell would you risk trusting a fucking psycho like her?! That gleam came back into her eye, when my brother came down for his breakfast at 11 (funny how "GET UP ....., IT'S 9 O'CLOCK!" doesn't apply to him), and she went "Oh you're not going to tell me in front of him, are you, huh? Huh?" Just like that, taunting me, like the fucking emotional eight-year-old she is. That little **** sat in the back room, and in keeping with her ringleader fun, she refused to get rid of him when I got angry about him being in the back room. She didn't refuse - just deliberately didn't respond to it. He heard our yelling, but I didn't care, because he's been waiting to stitch me up over S--- for years, literally. He made a point of cyber-stalking me at one point, so I could do absolutely nothing, say nothing, look at nothing, without him retrieving it and searching it for evidence. I had to go through my Deviantart journals and poems, and get rid of every last reference, no matter how subtle, AND beg all my friends to leave stupid nonsense comments to erase evidence. I couldn't even say anything on their FORUMS because he'd find it!

I ended up spewing out a whole lot of resentment - I have built up a lot of hate over the years. It made no difference of course, because a few days later my cousin invited me over, and I rang my mum to tell her a couple of hours beforehand (This after telling her thrice in the morning too). So I said, 1 or 1.30, I'll be going to P----'s house, and she was all fine, fine, whatever, just as long as you've done your chores and let us know. Which I had. So I went, had a great time, decided to stay till 4.30. I was just talking to P----, P----'s younger sister, my youngest girl cousin, when my phone went off. It was Withheld, and no-one spoke when I said hello. Then I got a text saying I had 4 new Voicemail messages. I dialled with confusion, and listened. What I heard almost made me break something.

Would you believe, it was my dad, with the following. "...., this is your dad speaking." Grand pause. "Where are you, and who are you with?" Mother muttering in background. "When are you reaching home? Immediately ring back." What fucking bullshit! My parents act like it's of utmost importance that they know where I am ALL THE TIME and make out like they were going to have a heart attack if I'm a bit late, or forgot to ring and say where I was - BUT WHEN I LET THEM KNOW, IT'S NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO WARRANT REMEMBERING. My mother actually fucking admitted it, and then tried to make the excuse of "Oh, we're old, we're senile, you always have to remind us" - then she got angry at me, for fuck's sake, and said that if it bothered me so much, I should write where I was going and stick it on the fridge! Thank God I am leaving tomorrow, until Saturday, for the Wireless Festival. Lord knows I need it.