Why am I such a terrible person? I've realized that I like my sister in theory, but not in practice. I want to have a better relationship with her, but spending time with her is painful. There is just no level on which we connect, and she tries so hard. I just maintain a critical distance as I watch her finally begin to grow up. I wish that I could give her the validation she's seeking as she starts to get her act together. I just don't seem to have much perspective where my family's concerned. Somehow, the fact that she's been promoted to assistant manager of an ice cream shop seems almost more sad than anything else. I think I need to try a bit harder to suspend my cynicism and just be happy for her. If she thinks it's exciting that she's living with her boyfriend, playing with his kid, and getting a $1.25 raise, that should be enough for me. It's better than living off of our family, dropping out of school, and not working. I think it would just be easier if she had some understanding of the fact that these are baby steps, and not huge mile stones on her way to being a responsible adult.

Then there are my parents, but perhaps they're not worth getting into. At least they have each other. If nothing else, there's that.

It's funny. I used to feel like I didn't belong outside of my family, like they were a handicap which caused me to be out of place in the wider world. Now I feel like I have no place within my family. There is no level upon which we identify, and we have drastically different perspectives and expectations of life. Aunt Mary has been a God-send, acting as the intermediary, and as a second mother. It's still just hard looking back and seeing how out of place I've always been within my family. Is it bad of me to feel like I've been set free, and to dread returning home? They are after all, good, well meaning people, and I am the one who's changed and moved on. It's not their fault that I don't identify with them. But it's not my fault that they've never understood me.

I get so jealous looking at my friends who have actual relationships with their parents and siblings. I've just never found the key to having that, and I doubt that I ever will. I guess the big question for me is how much can my enormous Catholic guilt make up for in the coming years? Will it be enough to create a good and dutiful daughter out of me? And why is it that as the only sibling who's managed to make it on their own without having to be forced out of the house, I feel inherently like the bad egg?

I've made a lot of realizations lately regarding how my early experiences with my family have dictated what I have become, my affinity for impermanence, my need to understand greater patterns, my lack of attention to detail. I wonder if it will seem relevant in the coming years that I can now draw a comparison with my family's effects on my social persona and my preference for macroeconomics over micro...

Oh well, enough for this rant. It was good to get off my chest though.