Messy by Choice

Mess 20 (Ally)

Aunt Gracie's Christmas favors this year are bingo cards that hold spaces only pertinent to our family. Space if Uncle Reedy falls. Space if John and Ryan have a chug off. Space if Ally makes some kind of sarcastic remark no one understands. I laugh at that. Some people get my sarcasm, some don't. My family loves me even though I was odd amongst their relative normalcy. Other people love me because I'm odd. Like Vee, Sharon, and Aur, and... I shake my head free of the rest of that nonsense.

I unlock my phone, but Lenox hasn't texted me since last night. And I can't stop checking my phone to see if he might.

"I told you to stop always being on your phone at these things. You're so unsociable." 

Critical insult is on my bingo card tonight. Check. "Hi. mom." 

I'm close to never being on my phone at these family parties. Not now anyways. But growing up I had receded into my phone to escape the emotion of my parents' messy marriage and prolonged divorce. The fights were always worst and most traumatic right before any family event where I would try to play mediator than get ripped apart by my mother using me as a frustration outlet. Like one of those stress relief balls people fisted in their grips over and over again. But those balls always bounced back to shape. Just like I did. Eventually at least. Back then it had caused me to have a very strained relationship with the rest of my family. Where I unconsciously associated them with the reason for my punishment. Something I had to actively work against once I was old enough to recognize what happened. Now my mom finds little ways to pick at me still. Either still needing an outlet for frustration or what I have just personally accepted to be the truth, she just doesn't like me. If we meet as strangers, she wouldn't like me. If Jesus Christ himself told her to save her soul she needed to like me, she still wouldn't like me.

"Where's Rick?" I ask to divert conversation away from one of her criticisms.

Mom's upper lip lifts high in a sneer. "With his family."

I can tell it's a lie by her anger. And she's warped her mind into believing I asked to embarrass or enrage her. I hadn't. But pleading my case wouldn't do anything to change how she was going to let loose her frustration on me.

"How's school?" She asks, looking down her nose and robusting the sneer. Which is the most common expression she ever shows me. It reflects as much in her deep frown lines.

"Good," I say, cutting the conversation short. It seems to make her angry, answering longer would've made her angry too.

"I hope you're not insane enough to expect you'll be getting anything from me to help pay back those loans."

"I know." I don't expect her help. I never asked her for it.

Her tongue flicks against her upper teeth. "And don't you dare try reaching out to your father."

Ok, that pisses me off. "You don't get to control everything he does anymore. Or what I choose to do with my relationship with him."

She instantly starts fuming. "You have always painted me as the bad guy when he was the one who left!" She starts and gets the attention of some of the family. "And someone has to pull you down to reality! You're never going to make any money off being an artist! You're being delusional and stupid to even try!"

I don't react. My superpower keeps my emotions in check. "I know." I shrug. Honestly no one has thought about how ridiculous my hopes of my future are more than myself. "I'm sorry choosing how to live my life disappoints you so much." But I wouldn't betray myself for her. Or anyone. Even as much as I love most of my family, I wasn't born to be a slave to their wishes.

She scuffs. I'm an utter disappointment and lost cause at 25 years old. A maiden with no prospects that's going to ruin myself and, by proximity, her in the eyes of the world when the world has never paid us much mind.

"What do you imagine you're going to be able to do in the future? You're going to go bankrupt for a master's degree of arts that means nothing. Why don't you just go back for your nursing degree for god's sake?"

"Because I don't want to pay an insane amount of money to do a job I hate," I tell her.

"Well, you'll be doing no job and living in my basement your whole life."

"Can't believe you would even offer it, mom."

She would've continued but Aunt Gracie, my mom's sister, ever so tactfully inserts herself and pries her away. I can feel how my entire family stares at me now; like I'm this broken fragile thing that's about to start crying. But one thing about mom, she's made me strong. Vee would say she's made me detached. What does she know?

Aunt Gracie eventually too pulls me away from the family's eyes for well-intentioned consoling that won't feel that way to me.

"She means for the best," she says vainly to make amends.

I nod, knowing not to believe her-- knowing that she doesn't even believe that herself. But nodding my head would get me out of this situation fastest.

"She's just worried like the rest of us," she goes on.

I nod again and know I'm about to get the talk they've already given me a hundred times over. "If you just gave us a time frame, we'd feel better. Maybe give this a shot for a year or two and if it goes nowhere then consider something else?"

I don't have a reply. I have too much to say that they'll never understand. So, I keep it inside, just as my mom once told me, I don't care what you do, I just don't want to hear about it. Why do they all want to hear about it now though? I thought I was the one brushed aside and out of their eyes. It's not like anyone cared to ask about me when I was showing obvious signs of emotional distress all through adolescence. But when I'm an adult making choices that are actually making me happy and excited for my future, then they have concern. I don't voice this to any of them.

They wouldn't understand if I said I used to think about my future and rather curl into a ball and die then face it because it was just an endless bleach stretch of exhaustion and no purpose. An abyss I couldn't escape of a 9-5 job that would drain my life right before my eyes and leave me at the end of my life regretting how I never even tried for a life I could love. And I knew for a fact I would hate it because I had lived it for twenty-two years. Maybe to please my mom, or just because I was such a people pleaser, I excelled at the educational route my teachers sent me on. Straight A's since elementary school. No behavior issues. Never even got pulled over. I went my whole life without ever doing anything wrong. And I was still going to be just as miserable as everyone else, because I was agreeable and obeying to what everyone else wanted me to do. 

No one would understand that so instead I say, "Can't I just be 25?"

Aunt Gracie shakes her head sadly. "Not for much longer."