"Your stupidity is just so stupid."

The Britney Spears television special I had been waiting all week for was interrupted by one of my mother's philosophical musings directed towards my father. When he came home tonight he brought up a cake one of his students had given him as a Christmas present. My mother and I each helped ourselves to a slice, our tongues met with a not-quite-right subtlety from the smooth buttercream topping. Turns out my father had left in the cake in his trunk for a week and only now had remembered to bring it upstairs, failing to mention this to my mother and me. This made my mother livid. How could he have forgotten he had a perishable gift? Who gave it to him? When did he get it? My father's way of dealing with my mother is to blatantly ignore her--she asks him questions, he retreats downstairs, she yells until she gets tired. Tonight was no different. After he had walked out the door to go grocery shopping she proceeded to ask me if I thought my father was an imbecile or not, as though I was alive merely to validate her psychotic speculations. "He just doesn't want us to get any enjoyment out of anything," she concluded.

My parents fall under the category of those couples who should be divorced but found it an economic and social inconvenience to do so. Like the fundamentals of any economic situation, the cost of being divorced was greater than the benefit so for the good of society they stayed together. I believe they wanted my sister and me to grow up in as normal of an atmosphere, but their familial sacrifice has only weakened whatever faith in marriage fourteen years of Sunday school has given to me. I'm old enough now to brush my mother's persistence and my father's ambivalence as an unfortunate situation which, if I could help it, would not ever happen to me but I fear that my fate is to become my mother and in turn alienate my husband, if I ever get around to finding one. Each of my parent's shortcomings highlights the other's flaws without compensation or comfort. Each has not learned how to deal with the other and has stopped trying long ago. Now, they merely coexist. I can never remember a time when they displayed affection towards one another. In my twenty years of being, I can only recall one time when they kissed in front of me and one time when they held hands and each incident was of my mother's doing. I thought it was normal for parents not to love each other. I just assumed that after a certain point passion and intimacy faded and the father took to sleeping downstairs like babies learn to walk. Only when I witnessed the cheery disposition of friend's parents did I realize that mine were the anomaly. Oh well.

There's not much I can do. Going to school hundreds of miles away has relieved some of my anxiety about their situation. I've learned, or at least I'm trying to learn, what it is to be affectionate, what it means to care about someone. I know I am a callous bitch. I feel stupid when I get close to someone, as though I'm inconveniencing them. I'm very scared if I get close that the person will leave or feel I'm too clingy and I'll be labeled as that psycho ex every guy loves to talk about on beer night with his friends. Marriage seems like a punishment, children are a kiss of death. I am convinced no man would stick around to see a woman get fat and hormonal while she incubates his child. I hope I am wrong.