Changed.

This trip has changed my life in so many ways. To the outside eye, it's for the worse. But to me, it's for the best. I've learned who sticks by my side and who doesn't, and I'm incredibly shocked by some of the results.

Firstly, my grandparents, but mainly Gramps. It's now been three weeks since they've said a word to me, or even tried to speak to me. Apparently they are truly THAT butthurt about this trip. And frankly, I don't understand why. They say it's because they're worried about me. But that doesn't make sense to me. If they were so worried about anything happening to me, you'd think they would want to talk to me a whole bunch and make sure I knew they loved me in case I were to die. Maybe I do things backwards, but if I think a family member or a friend is going to be in a situation where they could potentially get hurt and or die, I would make sure I told them I loved them so many times they were yelling at me to shut up. I wouldn't by any means ignore them, make them feel like shit, or cut them out of my lives. But apparently, that's the way they do things.

Then there's my Mom. Not only is she making me feel like shit on her own accord, but also for my grandparents. Apparently she doesn't feel that I feel shitty enough thanks to them, but she's gonna go ahead and make everything worse. A  few days ago, she basically told me she was doing fine without me and is getting used to living alone. Hearing that kinda sucked, but after everything with my grandparents, I was kinda numb. And then there was last night. Last night, for some reason she brought up me wanting to move to Missoula a YEAR from now. She started to make a big deal out of it, and I was like "stop making such a big deal, this isn't even relevant right now." and yet she continued. Eventually she was back to blaming me for the divorce, because it's apparently MY fucking fault that Travis is an asshole. She pulled the whole "I've lost my husband and my sons, and now I'm losing my daughter too!" crap. Because apparently me going off to college and still planning to keep her in my life is equivalent to divorcing and disowning her. . . yeah, because that makes fucking sense. When we lived in Montana, I told her that if we went home, we'd be fine. We'd be okay without Travis, and we'd be happy. Every single time anything goes wrong, my mom throws that in my face. Including last night. She claims we're not okay, we're not better off, and we're not happy. Her logic is that it's harder to pay bills now. Yes, it's harder to pay the bills. But we're not being fucking emotionally abused and having to walk on eggshells every second. Like I said in a previous post, I'd rather struggle with money than live through all of that again. Mom apparently doesn't see it that way. She sees it that we're not okay, and we never will be again. We argued about that a bit, and I told her so many times that she needed to knock her shit off, because she was being really immature and it wasn't going to solve anything because I've already made up my mind to go to Missoula. She continued to lose her shit, and eventually told me that she wanted to just sell my car and send me the money so I didn't have to come home. I would go for this, except I would only get MAYBE 6 grand out of it, and I can't get an apartment and a new car and support myself until I could get a job up here off only 6k That's unfortunately not feesable. Not to mention I'd have to move my furniture across the country, and that's pretty fucking expensive. The conversation ended with her telling me that I better hope that shit doesn't fail while I'm in Missoula, because she'll be moving to a one bedroom and she won't have a place for me if I need to come back.

My mom says all this shit now when she's mad, but when she calms down, I know she's going to pretend that none of these conversations happened, or she's going to ridicule me for having my feelings hurt still. She's going to chalk it up to all of this being my fault, and I'm being an overdramatic, irresponsible teenager who knows nothing about the real world. That's how it always ends up. But there are some things that can't be forgotten. All of this is a perfect example. The things she said are irreversible. The things she said can't be fixed with a sorry and some ice cream. This has put a rather large wedge in our relationship, and it's beyond repair. I don't really know how I feel about it all, I haven't really been letting myself feel for very long. As soon as I get off the phone with her, I pull myself together and suppress it. I'll deal with it when I get back to California.

It's pretty bad when your friends are better to you than your own family, but it is what it is. I don't really know how I'm going to make this move work, but it's something I want to do. I want to be independent. I want to go off to college and experience college-y things. I don't want to stay in Fallbrook and waste away the rest of my life like everyone else in that town. I don't have a future there.

People in Fallbrook generally don't do much with their lives. It's a party town. That's all anyone does there. Over half the people I know won't ever leave, and won't ever get off drugs. I want a better life than anything I'll have there. Missoula is a chance for me to start fresh. And that's exactly what I need.

So, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to start fresh, in a new town surrounded by new people. I will make this work. Somehow, some way, I will. The more you tell me I can't, the more I want to prove you all wrong.