march 5, 2000.

My head is full of nitroglycerine.

Had a(nother) monstrous fight with my parents tonight as dinner was wrapping up. My dad was calling out incoherencies from the next room by way of conversation; when I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about, my mom yelled at me for being difficult and my dad told me to shut up. So I picked up my milk glass and headed for my bedroom.

Because I CAN'T ever be mad when my parents are. If I give voice to the increasingly powerful rage I carry inside, all it will do is increase their anger. I can't win. So I don't try. I leave while they make parting shots at my back. Tonight I deliberately spilt milk on the carpeted stairs, hoping they'd be annoyed by the eventual stink. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but when you don't have any outlets and you want to scream and destroy furniture...petty sabotage starts to seem like a reasonable idea.

That is, until my mother comes screaming into my bedroom, angrily demanding to know why they have to be so careful around me, why every little thing will set me off (!!) Then she told me how bad my communication skills must be, if all I can do is "flounce off." When she left, she continued to shout insults.

My control abruptly snapped. I threw my glass against the door, sending chunks and shards everywhere. It didn't make me feel any better.

I'm 23 years old. Does this sound right? Doesn't it sound like the diary of an adolescent? What makes me sick is that my adolescence was easier, because I lacked self-confidence. In the last 7 months, I've been so consistently miserable & depressed that I'm thinking about undergoing psychiatric evaluation. I have no control over my negative emotions: with very little reason, I go from happy to boiling furious in 2 seconds flat. I cry almost every day, usually more than once. I make the Boy miserable.

And why? Because I was afraid of running out of money during teacher's college. It hardly seems worth it at this point. By the time September rolls around, I'll be in an asylum. Maybe I can do the B.Ed. by correspondence. I don't know what to about the wedding. At least most straightjackets are white.

But, other than the fact that the thought of my parents makes me queasy and fills me full of hate...it's been a nice weekend.

On Friday the Boy & I went to the first session of our marriage preparation courses at the pretty downtown United Church. We were late, of course, mostly because I thought it'd be a good idea to remove and replace my purple nailpolish five minutes before we had to leave. This meant that I was largely unable to put on my own boots on the way out. The Boy had to help, which was about as goofy as it sounds. Sigh...after so many months of doing the respectable working girl thing, I've become a slave to purple polish with sparkly green undertones. I'm sure we all understand.

When we sailed in, we were rather alarmed by the demographic sample in the room. They all seemed older than us. Not only that, but as it became abundantly clear, they were all living together. Not that I'm mounting any sort of high horse; it just means that when we're doing an exercise about division of household labour and I'm surrounded by couples who've already worked it out...well...it makes me feel even more young, naïve & unprepared than usual, that's for sure.

I hadn't anticipated having difficulties with the course - after all, at camp we did this kind of stuff all the time. We positively wallowed in self-articulation & realization. Besides all that, I'm generally pretty comfortable thinking about my own personality (I write a diary!). Before we showed up it was the Boy who was nervous about the whole thing...but all of that changed when the anxiety attacks started.

It was utterly simple. We were instructed to think about household chores when I became convinced that we were making a terrible mistake. "He never washes his towels," I thought. "There's kitty litter all over the bathroom floor. It's never going to change. Why am I doing this?" Shortness of breath. Panic. Not to mention an enormous wave of guilt for thinking the slightest negative thing about the boy who was earnestly attempting to communicate positive things to me.

I suffered through the rest of the hour while mapping out my diatribe. I would remind him how young we are. I would tell him how trapped I felt: like my youth was coming to halt, like I was signing on to be his mother. And that would make the horrible constricted feeling in my chest go away for good. Never mind that life with my parents is making me into a psychotic...that had obviously had nothing to do with my overwhelming fear and constant whiplash anxiety. Those feelings were obviously due to my legitimate fear of living with a person who respects me and loves me with no strings attached. How could I commit to such a monster??

As you can see, I worked it out. I did have a brief crying spell the next morning during the parental influence exercise, but I see now that it was just triggered by the mention of my parents. It's impossible to calmly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of my parents' while I feel so strongly about their influence on my life. (And don't forget all the additional guilt I feel because I dislike them.)

But by afternoon, I was considerably calmer (lunch helped). I learned a few things, like the idea that the worst thing I can do is assume that the things I dislike must always continue in that form (another outlook formed by this year's power imbalance!) The other thing I took away from the weekend was the idea that anger is an emotion as important as love, and that like love, it must be expressed in healthy ways if the relationship is to stand firm.

I was also fascinated by the gender expectations on display. Many of the people there seemed completely uncritical of the idea that different sexes are naturally better at some things. For instance: we divided into single-sex groups to discuss as potential husbands or wives what we considered primary responsibilities of the other partner. My group was fairly good: we discussed everything at length before committing any one expectation to the list. The other female group came up with some pretty fucking disturbing duties, let me tell you. Among them was an expectation that the husband handle all the outdoor chores, all matters of safety & security, all repairs, all car problems and "heavy child discipline."

Excuse me?!? I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea that even before these people are married, they're already formulating a "good cop-bad cop" approach to parenting based on stereotypical ideas of gender talents.

I was somewhat less bothered by the men's idea that women were responsible for maintaining social contacts and "home aesthetics." That seems pretty typical. I know very few long term boyfriends who function socially without the extensive support of their girls. And I suppose I can stand to be the guardian of good taste. As Carrie Fisher so memorably said, "everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour, and they can't all be right." In this case, good taste seems to have been conferred upon me by virtue of a double X chromosome - and that's as good a reason as any, I suppose.

Immediately after Saturday's class, we headed downtown to see the hockey game. (Just another facet in the day of gender relations, from men & women acting pretty typical of society's expectations all the way to 12 men battling over a puck.) Last night was the Montreal-Toronto game - my Christmas present to the Boy. I got the tickets through my dad's company, which meant that they were superb: 5 rows from the ice, in the corner. We were looking straight through the protective glass, into the expressions on the players' faces. As we sat down, a waiter handed us a menu including wine, salad and sushi. It was, in short, the reason behind the 1917 Russian Revolt. We were disgusting capitalists for the night, and boy, was it ever sweet.