Not so funny

Today, I am filled with deep hope and deep despair about this book.  It makes me feel like I’ve taken some heavy-duty decongestant.  I feel like it is both on the cusp of completion and so distant I’ll never do it.  Do you all know the feeling I describe?

I have been reading G*t Out of My Lif*, But First T@ke Me and Al*x Into Town, which is the UK version of an American book of a similar title.  It is about adolescence.  I have realized that I did not just miss out on childhood, but also on adolescence.  There was no one who loved me — unconditionally or otherwise — so there was no one I could reject fearlessly.  There was no breaking away from childhood because there were no parents and no childhood.  Was all my anger at my aunt simply because I wanted her to love me and she didn’t?

And can she really be blamed?  You cannot force yourself to love someone.  Yes, she was hypocritical in claiming she treated me as her daughter, but that may have been her worst crime.   Maybe she was so deeply unhappy herself she couldn’t even see the ways she was unfair to me, but I think my real anger is that I knew she did not love me.  And, I wanted her to, even though I don’t know that I ever loved her.  I just wanted so badly for someone to care about me.

Did everyone feel that way as teenagers?  What does it feel like to be a normal teenager?  Is there such a thing as a normal teenager? 

Oh — I seem to be not so funny today.  I’d say it’s because it is a gloomy day here, but Oscar Wilde pulled it off in precisely the same climate.