the danielle

through all of this i am losing myself, and i cannot let the situation with my father consume so completely that there is no trace of my former self. at the end of all of this i need to stay myself. my father as a result of, basically, a variety of brain traumas has become mean. he is no longer meaner, he is mean. though it is not his fault, it does not change the fact that it hurts. i have give in completely to being there for my father 95% of the time. this is causing me to lose myself, and i am scared. i am so scared that his anger builds inside of me and this will effect my relationships with the people i care about. the meanness is not the only thing i see changing in myself. i am becoming self consumed. when i am outside of the home situation, when i am with people other then family members, i feel myself focusing conversation towards myself, and not pay as much attention to others. i am never allowed to think about my needs when i am at home, so i over compensate with friends. i am becoming all the things i hate about my father now, i am need to stop. i need to stay danielle, no matter what, i cannot lose myself.

the list

i have come across this list of 1001 books to read before you die. the list is actually really interesting and i agree with a huge portion of the books. so my new goal is to read every book on the list.

the easy speaker

this week i have given almost everyone in my family a piece of my mind. there were things that need to be said, and i held my tongue. but not anymore. it felt good to say the things that need, or want to say. i think once i started the flood gates opened and i let go. it feels good now, but i need to watch myself, because this could easily get out of hand.

the party to end all parties

today marks the day of my second cousins arranged marriage. i say arranged only because i fairly sure he has never dated anyone. he just happened to one day to be engaged. it is just far to bizarre. part of me really wants to go to the wedding. i don't know why, because there will not be a single moment that i could foresee as being anything close to resembling fun. dull, painful, tremendously boring, yes but definitely not fun. my cousin is going , and i can't wait to hear about it from her... this must really mark a low point in my social existence. i am entertaining myself with gossip on an orthodox jewish wedding. this is truly pathetic. but i must say, my cousin's perspective on the event will be more entertaining then the actual event. she is my cynical counterpart. i think that is part of the reason why i really want to go to this event, i want to experience it with her.

the bore

as always, i am at work with nothing to do. there is three and a half hours which separate me from the prison of boredom and freedom of the outside world. i have already exhausted all the typical forms of entertainment. email, facebook, myspace, mindsweeper and ebay. the sad fact is that once i get out of work there is nothing for me to do, and i am in a continuous cycle of boredom. home, work BORED. but it doesn't end there. no, no my friends, it reaches further. my social life here is mind dulling as well. can a person survive months of boredom, can i move to nyc in the fall and have fun and interact and be involved after months of brainlessness? i don't know.

the break

i am returning from one month break in posting. maybe i was suffering from low confidence in my ability to write well, or a desire to write only meaningful emtires. and as i was rightly informed this weekend, that is not the purpose of a blog. so i am back... the good, the bad and the ugly.

this weekend i was able to escape the mundane boredom of living in my parents home in the suburbs. i had both a happy and sad reunion with the poor city i had called home for two years. as i drove down the side streets of the city and found people walking down the center of the road with total disregard for the side walk only a few feet away, my heart fluttered, i was back in the city i adore.

i had a great weekend away, and i was almost able to completely forget everything going on at home. when i returned to my parents house no one was home and i was still riding off the euphoria of the weekend my happiness. this was instantly crushed the minute my parents walk through the door. there is a dark cloud of stress that follows them everywhere they go. thought i try to be positive, i could feel the my own mood change, i could feel the happiness from my weekend just slip away. my mom is mostly to blame the depression this house puts me into. i am her outlet. everything that she holds in all day, or in this case all weekend, she unleashes on to me. i can't blame her because i need to do the same. but she needs to do this with a third party, with someone whose emotions are not already involved, and invested. i am on the fringe and she just pulls me into the darkside. but i can't tell her i don't want to hear it, because i think that would crush her. i am trapped, but i so desperately want out, i need an out.

the worker bee

i am at work, and there is nothing (at all) for me to do. i have checked my email, myspace, and facebook a dozen times. not much changes when you check your email like every five minutes. i brought two books with me today, i must have known. though the hours drag on when there is nothing to do, it is nice to have a break from folding hundreds of sheet of paper. i believed i have developed a nice little callus in the middle of my palm from all the paper folding.
i have my own office in my new job, my own four walls, two windows, my own door and computer. my own butterfly dish which i have filled up with rubber bands and paper clips. but my absolute favorite thing in my office is the magazine rack filled with the summer 2005 edition of the American Educator. the title of this addition is: Building a Union, Toppling Communism. my eyes are now opened to the problem the american education system was having with communism. the russian and the chinese have nothing on the american teacher.
five hours 30 minutes and counting