We are still trying to sell our apartment. Sometimes when we have to leave because they're showing the apartment, I go to the library and do homework. Today we had an open house, and I went to the library, but instead of doing homework I read No Exit. I liked it. It was one of those things that was just very, very, very true. Hell is other people.
No Exit reminded me of living in my apartment with my parents.
I don't think I've talked about my parents much. I don't think you know exactly who they are. I'll start with my mother. My mother's worst trait, and the one that I can't help but notice and be bothered by all the time, is that she always talks, but she very rarely has anything to say. My mother spends a whole lot of time talking about the weather, and the changing of seasons, and what the trees look like, and how light it's going to be until how late, and how glad she is that it's Friday, and how tired she is, and how many weeks there are until something is going to happen, like vacation or the first day of spring. She also tells stories. Very long stories. She talks about work. These stories invariably make her look important, intelligent, caring and very good at what she does (teaching French). They make everyone else look stupid and hopelessly dependant upon her. She talks about our family - about people who I've never met, people who I've only met once, and people who I know but don't know very well and don't care about. She tells stories from her childhood. She tells them ten times in the exact same way. She talks about being a band parent as if it is more important than being a band member. Sometimes she doesn't talk about anything at all - it's just words. And sometimes, if she really cannot think of any more words to say, she makes little sing-songy noises, like "brrrr" when it is not cold out, and "do do do do" when she is not singing anything. She is petrified of silence. So she monologues. And most of the time, there is no meaning. Just noise.
In everything she does, she gives off an air of complete confidence. No, she's not confident - "self absorbed" is better. My mother is completely absorbed in her own little created world, where certain things are "right" and certain things are "wrong" and she is a good person and things are the way she thinks they are and people go to "a better place" after they "pass away". My mother is incredibly silly. She acts silly intentionally. But she takes herself and her good-naturedness and everything in her universe deathly seriously. She is silly and loud and self righteous. I think that she is fairly intelligent, but she chose not to use her intelligence. She chose to lock herself into comfortable boundaries and live a life that she thought would be easy. She doesn't remember much about the French philosophy she read in college. When I showed her The Matrix, she said that it was too violent and that she didn't get it. She is firmly against George Bush (which, of course, is the right way to be) but does not know a whole lot about any of his policies. She does not read the newspaper because there is too much bad news.
My father is not nearly as bad as my mother. He is not silly. He does not say anything unless he has something to say. He is more intelligent than she is, I think, and I think he does allow himself to think things that might not be convenient. But he is still locked into his own little world. The world of this apartment and my mother and his not-so-well-paying, not-so-mentally-challenging job (also teaching French). His world is filled with cigarettes and wine and... God, you don't even understand how much television. My father comes home from work and watches television and drinks a glass of wine. Then he goes downstairs and smokes a cigarette, and then comes back up and watches more television and drinks another glass of wine. He might have a third glass of wine before he goes downstairs and smokes a cigarette and comes back up and takes a two hour nap. Then he goes downstairs and smokes a cigarette. Then we eat dinner. After dinner, he watches more television, drinks more wine, and goes down for more cigarettes. He stays up until about midnight every night. Sometimes after my mother goes to bed he sneaks out his cigarettes and smokes them inside next to the window. Then he goes to bed. Sometimes in the middle of the night he will choke and cough for half an hour like he's dying. He gets up at five in the morning, drinks two cups of coffee, eats no breakfast, puts on a full suit (always) and leaves for work. I think he is a very good teacher. I think he is intelligent enough to be excellent at it without working too hard. (My father is one of the laziest people I know. It runs in the family.) But I don't know.
The thing about my father is that he knows almost nothing about me. I tell him things sometimes, but he doesn't remember. When we are alone in the house without my mother, there is a whole lot of silence. I find myself trying to find things to say. But I hate it when I find myself doing that. I think he probably loves me. I think he is probably just really introverted and bitter. I don't know whether he loves my mother. Ann Whatsherface seems to have this theory that my parents don't love each other - or that they don't like each other, I guess. Well, I know that they get along extrodinarily well. At dinner, we all talk and we all get along extrordinarily well. Both of my parents can be funny. They always seem to agree with each other and they always talk to each other like best friends. When we have "family discussions" there is no point even distinguishing them from one another, because they have worked out every little detail beforehand so that they agree on everything.
The thing about my parents is that I need for them to pay attention to me, and I am desperate for their approval. But they make me uncomfortable, I don't like being around them most of the time, I hate it when they touch me, and I don't want them to love me. They grate on my nerves constantly, but I am deeply and irreversably connected to them. Every time they move, I feel a little tug. (I loved that line.)
It seems to me like no matter what people tell you, some people are just better than others. Some people have beautiful personalities, and some people's personalities are ugly. Sure, it's subjective, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I find my mother's personality so ugly that if she weren't my mother, I don't think I would even want to be associated with her. My father too, to some extent - there's none of that beauty that I see in other people. Some people just have a certain something... something fundamentally real and good and interesting inside of them. I think this something is the something that people with self esteem think they have and people without self esteem think they don't have. None of the characters in No Exit had much of it. I see a lot of it in Molly. Julian seems to be made up of it in his entirety.
I honstly don't know how much of it I have, but I work on getting more of it constantly. I think I would have more of it if I were less gossipy.
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