volcanic's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- evil Oh Christ. I have just had the most horrendous argument with my wonderful, gorgeous, funny, happy little boy. He’s ten years old, for god’s sake, and my words have reduced him to floods of tears- big, wet, messy tears, he’s sobbing and gasping in the next room, trying to eat his lunch because god knows he’s probably terrified that if he doesn’t, I’ll lose it big style. I feel like such an evil bully. No- I guess, right now I am an evil bully. I know I’m stressed, I know that I haven’t eaten yet today, so my blood sugar and subsequently my mood are both pretty low. I know I’m moving, and I’m trying to do an awful lot on my own, which is shit, right now. I have been stuck in this house for the past ten days, with only a few trips to sort out business in town for respite, and I feel bloody lonely and miserable. I’m sure other people have folks round to help them or at least chat to them while they do this. It really does feel like too much, today. Yes, I want to be in Wales, I want to be doing my course, I want to be happy living by the sea: I just can’t do this moving lark, and I know I have to. I have no choice; it has to be done, because otherwise none of the nice stuff happens. So yes, I feel like shite right now, and not without good reason. But to take it out on a ten year old, that’s disgusting, really. I love that little monkey more than anything else in the whole world. He is, quite literally, one of my main reasons for living. He’s been a rock to me through all the upheaval we’re going through, tugging on my sleeve, looking up at me and smiling, saying “Don’t worry- we’ll be at the seaside soon!”, and this is what he gets in return. It stinks, doesn’t it? I’ve had to shut the door between us, selfishly- so I can’t hear him crying. I’ve got the Corrs (don’t laugh- I finally found a track by them that doesn’t make me feel nauseous) playing quite loud, again to drown the sound out. Shit. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the awareness that I’m losing the plot a little, and that things need to change or get sorted. I would rather just blunder on in blind ignorance, rather than have to take responsibility for this big fuckup right now. Well, strictly speaking, that’s not true- of course I want to do something about it, after all, my little boy’s a snotty mess in the next room. I just haven’t got a clue what to do right now. If my mum wasn’t in Italy at a bloody Puccini festival, and my best friend wasn’t in Spain, I’d ring one of them and ask them to take him and give him some time out away from me right now. That’s possibly a little cowardly of me, I don’t know. I just know that if I don’t get my head together soon, that poor little boy’s going to end up traumatised even further. I never told you what we argued about, did I? This is how petty I am right now: my little boy, who, lest we forget, is autistic, likes making music on the PC. He uses all kinds of professional software, like ReBirth, and FruityLoops and Acid and god knows what else to do it with. As you know, we’ve just had our PC upgraded, and all his stuff is on the old drive. Now, it’s not inaccessible, because he could log onto Windows98 and it’d all be there, just as he left it. But we’ve got XP now, and he loves it- he loves the fact he’s got his own desktop, and his own icon and everything, and the fact that he’s got a Spiderman illustration as his wallpaper. He doesn’t want to log onto stinky old Windows 98 to retrieve his stuff, and I don’t blame him. We can’t transfer the files, because the registration codes need re-entering, and we- ahem- don’t have them. So what’s he doing instead? He’s playing on the one music programme that he can get to work. In the absence of any compatible samples, he’s deconstructing the awful MIDI demo files- y’know the ones that sound like incidental music from 70s afternoon drama shows- vapid lift muzak to the extreme- and playing the resulting bleeps and bloops at high volume. That’s all. After listening to them for a while, I lost it. I called him some really unpleasant things; I accused him of being dull and boring, and told him that normal children don’t get excited by bloody MIDI files. Fair play- he’s empowered enough to stand his own ground when he’s under attack, and I respect him and admire him enormously for that. It just breaks my heart that when the occasion arises when he has to defend himself, it’s against my verbal assault. He gave as good as he got, reminding me that I wouldn’t like it if my tastes and interests were being attacked. God. I feel crappy now. We’ve kind of hugged and made up, but I feel sick inside. I’ve behaved in a really low, shitty way. I’m not proud of myself one bit. How do you mend this kind of mess? 1:47 p.m. - 26.08.02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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