tinea:any of a number of infectious diseases

�what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux

"i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes

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you guys need to figure this shit out ASAP.

2013-11-22 @ 9:17 a.m.

okay.

i started writing this wednesday, and had about a paragraph done before my brother called and interrupted me. i was talking about him anyway so it worked out.

so remember my brother just got engaged again? well, between then and now they're not speaking, and one of them is spending the night at their friends' house.

wtf, right? even more wtf that my brother called me last weekend, totally freaking out as he was racing home with several pregnancy tests. this was before i knew about all of the fighting stuff, since he had been working a lot and we hadn't spoken. as he's flying home, shitting his pants that this girl is pregnant, i'm like dude. if it turns out that she is, you really need to get that taken care of immediately. and he's all like, naw, if she is pregnant we already discussed it and we're keeping it. and i'm like, dude, maybe you don't really understand the enormity of this situation, because that's a horrible idea.

i know my brother is a really smart guy. i KNOW that he knows that having a kid is not easy. but he knows this only on an intellectual level. he's never been around kids, never babysat. never had any real responsibility yet. yeah, he works and has a car and everything, but he's never been on his own, just him vs. the world. he's been through a lot in his life, yes, and has had to grow up very quickly in a lot of ways. he has some wisdom. but still, no.

i can hear anyone who knows me thinking, oh [tinea], #1 you don't like kids so you try to discourage anyone from having them, and #2 you're not giving your brother enough credit ... and/or bonus #3 ... i knew [this person] who was a total fuckup and they had a kid and they settled down and it all worked out. okay. #1, my like or dislike of children has nothing to do with my encouragement or discouragement of others' procreative choices. anytime i have anything to say about anyone having a kid or not it's because in my little brain, i have flashed forward and imagined this child's life and feel that i can pretty accurately predict whether it'll be shitty or not. i don't really give a shit about the adults involved. i mean, i do, but you know what i mean. ultimately when it comes to mature, thinking adult's interests vs. helpless, innocent child, i'm going to side with the kid. because i know what it's like to have an absolutely miserable childhood through no fault of your own. to have been that child whose parents were like, oh, we'll figure it out, or oh, this will save our failing marriage. if i could have somehow made myself known before i existed, knowing what my life would be, and had a choice in the matter? you wouldn't even be reading this. so please. it absolutely infuriates me when people i know say this to me. there's so much more to it than me simply not wanting to deal with a little kid in my life. if it was just that reason, i'd continue doing what i already do now and stop taking their fucking calls.

#2, i'm giving my brother a lot of credit. but the facts remain, he is a recovering heroin addict who is currently a full-blown alcoholic with serious anger management issues. there is no way that you're going to tell me that a guy who is only 25 years old, who drinks upwards of a liter of fucking hard liquor or more a day, who drives a car and works at his job while inebriated on a daily basis, whose emotions are unpredictable just as often, is ready to have and care for a baby. no one will get me to agree with them on this. it is immature and irresponsible. the end.

#3. there are plenty of people who know that person who was a total fuckup who straightened up or settled down after they had kids. what does "straightened up" even mean? oh, you no longer snort coke recreationally on the weekends? or you still do, you just get a responsible baby sitter and come home by 11pm so no one questions you? instead of having wild one-night stands and orgies every night, you "settle down" and marry one girl while you have an affair under the guise of "going to the gym" after work. the point is, no one really knows what other people are doing. you don't know what goes on behind closed doors. you don't know how much time anyone spends with their child, you don't know how they speak to them or show them affection. no one knows that except the people in the household. by every outward appearance, we had the perfect family, too. speaking to my mother and stepfather, no one who met them, no one who was close to our family, even those within our family -- no one knew how horribly emotionally and sometimes physically abusive my parents were. the rest of the family had some ideas, you know - oh [tinea] and her brother are weird, [tinea's mom] is pretty strict but oh we all are. oh you know how divorce is on kids. but no one really knew how it was on us. i am a 30 year old woman who is still terrified of her mother. while everyone was busy patting my "perfect," "nice" mother on the back for being oh so generous and patient with such an ungrateful brat of a child, i am seeking some consolation, some sympathy after a high school breakup, instead being met by blows by mommy dearest for refusing to stop crying over someone who treated me poorly. the fucking irony. what i'm saying is, you don't know what those fuckups who "settle down" are bringing home with them.

so, back on track: my brother DOES NOT need to be having a baby right now. whatever he says, it's a horrible idea for all involved. so then, after the scare happened and most of the week passed, he called yesterday to tell me about them not speaking or staying together right now. and i'm like dude? i don't want to be that asshole who states the obvious, but it needs to be said: you guys need to reevaluate your feelings about having a fucking kid right now if this shit happens again, for serious.

so this guy proceeds to tell me that this all started over this thing that gf put on fb that was just ... really poorly thought out. it was really insensitive, and no matter how she explained why she picked this thing or her reasoning behind posting it in the first place, she was wrong. it was just a wrong thing to do. okay? so brother is annoyed by this and they're fighting over it for a couple of days. then, she accuses him of cheating on her (she actually said she "knows" that brother is talking to this girl from work), and upon asking where she got this definitive proof, he finds out that she's been keeping his old phone that he thought was deactivated, checking his fb and texts and stuff. ooooooooooookay.

see, when i first started writing this the other day, i only knew about the pregnancy scare and the cheating accusations. i found out about the phone thing after i talked to him, because he didn't know at first either. at first, when i started writing this, it was all about how you can't even comprehend how the introduction of a child into your life will change it. luckily, little A is only a step-child to me, so he can go away sometimes when needed. but when you have your own biological child, you are bound. you'll never be alone again. you will always have to account for this third person. you and your gf are fighting about some completely unrelated thing? well, too bad, because third person in your life demands that you spend that little bit of money that you managed to hang on to this month that you were probably fighting about in the first place, demands that you be THERE even when you desperately want to be left alone, demands that even though you just worked 12 hours, you're not done yet, demands, demands, demands. now, forever, you are always second place and your partner is back there in third whenever he or she can be squeezed in. your sex life suffers greatly. your mood suffers. your social life suffers. someone i stumbled over, here on diaryland infact, once wrote that you should not have kids until you cannot think of anything better or more exciting to do. i agree with that 100%.

my brother? he's not that guy, but i think in an effort to personally atone for all of his wrongdoings, he's been going super over the top to be responsible and to step up and do the right thing all the time. i know that if he were placed in the situation of expecting a baby, that he would valiantly take it on and be the best dad that he could be.

the problem here is gf. and again. i know i'm only getting one side of the story. both of them are the problem, really. but gf, i think, is the element that could cause the whole thing to collapse into shit. she's super cool, i love her as a person, and she fits in great with the family. but when boy heard all of this stuff that she was doing, he immediately got this panicked face and said "that's some [psycho] shit. tell him to bail out!!!!"

sorry. i don't want to be like that, but all of their fights are the same, and boil down to one of two things: she is wildly insecure, and she does not trust my brother. the insecurity, i get it. but the trust thing? why would you agree to marry a person whom you fundamentally do not trust? and not even on a physical, fidelity level. she doesn't even trust that when he gets home from work 20 minutes late that he's telling her the truth, that he'll be there for her when she needs him. i said to him, how do you think this would all be working out if you had a kid to deal with meanwhile? have you talked to her about this? and he says yeah, and her response was something along the lines of well, i figured i'd just end up taking care of the baby by myself all the time anyway when you go off to sulk and "be alone" for days.

guys, no. no no no. just no. you're really doing it all wrong. if this is what either of them thinks is a healthy environment, solid relationship, or in any way a good situation to bring a child into, they're crazy.

so after all of this, after i begged brother to please sit down with this girl and seriously re-evaluate their relationship, he says that they ended on the note that if this happens again, he's done. i said good, finally. it's not that i don't want him with her, it's not that i secretly don't like her. i just hate to see people languishing in bad relationships, and my brother is also also not the guy who needs that, again. he's dated a number of soul-sucking girls who were so insecure and neurotic that he spent more time apologizing and explaining himself than he ever did enjoying their company. i don't want to have to watch him go through all that again. i don't want to see him get to a month away from his wedding day again and find himself heartbroken because he so grossly misjudged his partner.

so moving on from that negativity. what is going to be awesome is that we're getting some mushrooms for thanksgiving weekend, since both brother and boy will be off, my dad and them will be there to babysit us, and of course we'll be child-free. i'm so excited about it. not just because i've never done shrooms before but have been told nothing but wonderful things (of course our environment will be really warm and safe and positive, activities planned ahead of time), but also because this is the first time we will have gone to my dad's and not had to deal with nonsense. at first, i was going to say something about the people specifically, but then i realized that it was more of an atmospheric thing that was the problem. like, when stepmom was there, there was always the vague feeling of being an outsider, an inconvenience. there was never enough room, always someone fussing about this or that, tension. now, with both of those people gone, it's this complete comfort and freedom that my brother and i always felt when we would go to visit my dad when we were little. we're in friendly company, as they say.

i don't have much else to add because my life has been consumed by kitten, brother, and bullshit housework. oh! there was one other thing. we got a chromecast! this thing is fucking awesome. beautiful, crisp, vibrant hd, and barely any lag on our network. if you haven't heard of it, it's this little dongle you plug into your hdmi port of your tv, and then you get on your browser, phone, or tablet and press a button to "cast" (you know, broadcast wirelessly) your netflix, hulu, or current browser tab to your television (there are some other apps i don't really care about that i didn't list). the setup simply sets the device up to work on your home network, so it can be moved from tv to tv as you please. dude!! it's been so great. we're big tv and movie watchers, and bedtime is always the worst because there's nothing you ever want to see on basic cable. especially during sexytime. this gives us so much more freedom of viewing. if you're an avid watcher, you'd do well to spend $35 on one of these babies.