I know, I don't write as often as I should, but between the teaching, the depression, and the screenplay, it's hard for me to find the juice to blog in my few off moments. Tomorrow I'll be heading to upstate-I'll be ferried there by my mother's boyfriend, the one who puts me into a fugue state whenever I am exposed to him for more than a few hours.

This, of course, is part of the root of the depression. My mother has always been one of those women who will abandon anything for the man that she loves, and by everything I mean me. Oh she'll SAY she'll do anything for me, but not so much. When I was 13 and recovering from surgery, both my parents ignored me because they were too pre-occupied with each other to help the girl in the wheelchair while my classmates made my life Hell. While I was being traumatized by flying to see specialists and being a living visual aid for residents honored to see so unusual a case, I spent my time trying to cheer up my father because he was stressed about my diagnosis. Do you see the problem there?

Later, when my mother could no longer face my father, she continued to send me to see him. Not because I should have a relationship with my father, by that time he was so unstable I used to carry a nice in my purse when I went to see him, but because she wanted to get back together with him. After his death, she admitted exactly that. She would send me to see a dangersouly unstable person SHE couldn't deal with, so she sent me. And these are just the best examples of sacrificing of her me for Who's Who in Batshit Insanity.

And this boyfriend is the same. Her relationship with him reminds of the worst parts of her relationship with my father. Under his influence she now claims she hates intellectuals, and furthermore claims SHE NEVER PUT ME UNDER ANY PRESSURE TO BE A SCHOLAR IT'S WHAT I WANTED. Right because buying me the New Yorker at 9 and Granta at 12 and encouraging me to read at the dinner table, right that wasn't encouraging. This other woman, I don't know who she is, and more, I don't like her. It seems to me the feeling is mutual.

She says she'll do anything for me, but I have no doubt. I've told her I can't spend time with him as I find it so toxic to my well being that on two occasions I've cut myself off from her for 6 months. So what does she do? She invites him to Thanksgiving, and now we are having two, yes two Thanksgiving dinners. The smaller one, the unimportant one, I get to cook for. The larger one in his formal dining room, he gets to cook for, because after all this time apparently I'm no longer any good in the kitchen either. Oh and for added extra fun, now I have to dress formally for Thanksgiving. Apparently far from a relaxing Thanksgiving, now I have to pretend I'm an Astor.

And if I had my own family, or even a boyfriend at this sad point, I would say fuck them and stay here and order chinese and watch my netflix with him on the couch. But I don't. I SHOULD, but I don't. Mainly because between the disability, my epic bad luck, the gauntlet of insanity that was my childhood (a paranoid alcoholic father and a mother who didn't realize he was crazy and was too worried about him to bother to pay attention to the daughter who was coping with disability and medical trauma all while maintaining good grades and lots of extracurriculars), I apparently can't give myself away with a free iPhone.

So feel free to leave some encouraging comments because I'll need them.