Part two. Oh yes, there's a part two.

Here. I'll set the scene for you now. I'm at Albertville Caribou, realizing I've sat too close to the door because I can't feel my feet anymore. An Albertville version of Reedo just walked by me and gave me a double-take, and had he not been 6 inches taller than real Reedo, I'd have been certain it was him. A science teacher and a pastor are sitting next to me, talking about discipleship and how to convert non-believers into Christ-believers; earlier the science teacher showed the pastor a chart that marked the cycle of belief. You see here, says the science teacher, the guy who came up with this chart said that if you can convert someone to a believer in 9 months, that's pretty good. I mean, it takes 9 months to be born, so it could take about 9 months to be reborn. The pastor nods. I'm convinced that the science-teaching disciple is not a real human being but a character from the imagination of a former-creative-writing student who decided to invent a contradictory character for the sake of "interest" and "internal conflict" in her story.

I spent the day with the Good Doctor yesterday; it was the first time we'd talked in months, and he gave me a Christmas present even though he wasn't supposed to. It's an authentic Mayan calendar carved from stone, from Mexico. As we have lunch he tells me that he toured the Mayan ruins, which were built so acoustically sound that you can whisper and still hear everyone clearly. They were built so the king could speak from above on the rocks, down to his people, in a normal speaking voice and be heard throughout the formations. We're patching things. It will go slowly, but we will be successful, because I can learn to expect less of people. He let me talk about the medication, told me, kindly, that it might take 2 months for my brain to stop misfiring and adjusting to the non-SSRI, but that the anxiety is not me as much as it is just withdrawal. It will be over when the withdrawl is over. I trust him, and he told me I was crazy and I was happy that finally someone would just say it. I'm happy that he was the one who could say, instead of Jean, you're not crazy! That, yeah, I've known you for a long time. You're crazy, but that's okay. You know how to be crazy. I told him, thank you for saying so. I'm okay with being crazy. Life would be pretty dull if I wasn't, actually. He told me that my family is ridiculous, he told me that there is enough drama already that I should just go ahead and get a restraining order against Dingleberry. I consider this thought, seriously, and then the Good Doctor and I go shopping for shoes and to a movie, and I decide that he's worth fighting for even though it will be a rough battle. I say, at the shoe store earlier, Can I ask you something? How is it that you are okay with calling me crazy when you're the one who tells the Phoenix police that they should call me because it was my "friend" Pablo who was driving your car on a college visit to ASU in Tempe when it was really you, wearing sunglasses on that police traffic camera? How am I the one who is crazy?

He laughs, says, I have anxiety issues. I scowl.

I just had the most humorless conversation with my mother that I've ever had: I tell her I'll be leaving after Christmas day, and I won't be coming back here, ever, until that loser no longer lives in this house.

My mother doesn't bat an eye. She's sitting in the rocking chair, in her bedroom, staring at the TV. She won't look over at me. She says, okay.

I'm surprised that she really doesn't care, but I shouldn't be. I say, I just don't understand how you can let him stay here. She says, without looking over, I gave it to him yesterday, I yelled at him, you just don't see it.

I say, I don't feel comfortable, safe, or welcome in this house. I just don't understand. It blows my fucking mind that this jerk has raised his hands to both of your daughters and you give him a fucking bed to sleep in every night. [Side note: After I told my mom about the fight on Sunday, I'd thought she was on my side. She'd said, after I told her Edward came at me with his fist, that he's tried to hit your sister, too. I'd said, And you let him stay here. He needs to leave. He better be leaving in February like you said. She says, well they'll be leaving once your sister gets her disability money. I get pissed. You said they had to leave in February! You see why they take advantage of you guys? You don't stick to anything! How many times to I have to tell you that Amanda isn't getting any disability money. She can sit on that fucking couch as long as she wants, and she can claim that she hurt herself at work. But she is not getting any fucking money. People who deserve that money don't even get it. And they have to wait for two years, if they're lucky. Mom. I understand this law stuff. Nobody is sending her a check. This is NOT AN OPTION. I turn away, go back to wrapping presents. I am so fucking pissed. I feel as though I'm living on another fucking planet. I can't stand how fucking naive they are, and my heart rate raises.]

Anyway, back to her chair-rocking in the bedroom: I tell my mom I'm leaving, she doesn't react, so I keep talking while she keeps her eyes on the TV and keeps rocking. I say, I just feel like you and dad are brainwashed by this whole situation or something. Nobody defends me in this. You take this asshole's side. ...Travis...I just can't even believe this family.

She finally looks at me. She speaks and now she's yelling, and even if I couldn't hear her, I'd be able to tell that her voice was raising because her mouth was opening wider and her face was turning red. She said, brainwashed! What the fuck. How the fuck can you say that. You don't understand. FUCK YOU, JEAN.

She says, fuck you, Jean, and I say, please help me understand then. Tell me. Tell me, so I get it, so I understand why you let this guy stay in our house.

She says, I don't have to explain anything to you. I don't want to fucking talk to you.

Help me get it, I said. I just want to know so I can understand where you are coming from.

I don't want to fucking talk to you, Jean. She says. I leave to go take a shower. I'm in from a 4 mile run in 15 degree weather and a half-hour of snow shoveling. I'm sweaty and cold and I just want to warm up.

None of this is funny, but knowing what I'd done just minutes before makes it just a little funny. I've officially reached the point of funny revenge. For those of you who know anger, or even despair, funny revenge occurs at the point where you come to realize that reason, arguing, discussion--all get you nowhere.

Before I'd talked to my mom in the rocking chair, after shoveling, which was after the run, I'd come into the house and said, Travis. Come look at what a good job I did shoveling. He thought I was being an ass to tell him that he never shoveled and was lazy. But he came down, and I whispered, look at Amanda's car.

While on my run, while crying and screaming I hate him! loud enough that the people in downtown Albertville could hear me while shoveling their driveways, the thought occurred to me that all of this was my useless sister's fault. The thought occurred to me that I don't understand why family has to matter, why I don't have to like her but I have to love her. Isn't it just easier to be indifferent? Do I really have to love her? So, I'm crying, and I'm running and trying not to slip on the ice, and the thought jumps into my head in the middle of all this anger: throw her Christmas presents in the snow. You should go home, and take all of her Christmas presents and throw them in the front yard. Like, kick them out there with your foot so they spin in the air before landing in the snow. Mom and Dad aren't going to do anything. They don't punish anybody for anything. And they said it themselves: You don't live here, Jean. So I suppose they can kick me out, but I have somewhere to fucking go. I have a lot of friends and a lot of places to go, actually, so I can do whatever the fuck I want.

But this would be immature. Plus, my parents paid for all of those Christmas presents, and I don't want to punish them. Plus, the neighbors would see Christmas presents on the lawn. (And me, laughing, doing a silly dance among them.)

Of course, this seemed sane after the thought I'd had earlier in the day, during the argument that started this all: Push the Christmas tree over. Push it over. You want to start it on fire, but that's way too dangerous, so just push it over. But then my mom would've been the one to clean it up, and she'd spent all morning on her hands and knees cleaning the floors of the bathrooms that she doesn't even use while Amanda and Dingleberry laid on the couch and watched useless TV. She's dealt with enough cleaning today.

But I got home from the run, and I was sweaty already and there were four inches of soft snow on the driveway, so I figured I'd shovel it. I shoveled for awhile, and then I wiped off my car. Then I thought maybe I should be nice and wipe off Amanda's car. Then I laughed at myself, because I've tried the get her with kindness thing before, and she continued to steal from me. Then, instead of wiping the snow off her car, I took the scoop from my shovel and dumped it on the hood. And I proceeded to do this for the next 20 minutes. I even shoveled a little bit of snow from the cul-de-sac so I could have enough to dump on her car. I loaded the hood, the roof, the trunk. I even cackled. I jogged up and down that driveway with my shovel, "Freebird" playing on my ipod, shoveling every bit of snow I could, flinging shovelful after shovelful of snow onto her car. I was so happy. I was so calm. I thought of Ben and Havely and Highland. I thought of my mom yelling at me, my dad yelling at me, and then I thought of myself saying, I shovel the driveway for you, and this is the thanks I get? Nobody else in this house does anything, and I do, and you yell at me. Nice. I imagine myself laughing and walking away. I'm laughing. It feels good. This feels like the greatest prank that anyone has ever pranked. First of all, my sister's shitty car looks ridiculous in that driveway--that maroon '93 Taurus is covered in a foot of snow, and the cement driveway surrounding it is spotless. My sister probably hasn't shoveled an inch of snow in her fucking life. Now, she has to go outside and shovel off her car. Now, that bitch has to exercise. My parents, even if they wanted, couldn't be too mad at that. I don't see how they couldn't laugh. I am the greatest prankster who has ever lived.

How it started: I was getting ready to go for a run. Dingleberry, my fat sister, and Travis are downstairs, shaking presents. I go around and plug in the tree. Amanda starts yelling at me: What the fuck are you plugging in the tree for? And I can't even take that seriously. Because it looks nice, Amanda. Because it looks sad when it's not plugged in.

Well, don't waste electricity. I choke on my own spit when she says this.

Really, Amanda. Because I am wondering exactly WHEN you started to GIVE A SHIT what the electric bill is in this house! Because you leave your fan on all night when it's fifteen below outside. Really, Amanda. And how much is the electric bill. How much of it do you pay, again? I'm plugging in the fucking Christmas tree.

And all would've been fine, I could've handled it all, had Dingleberry not turned his fucking greasy head around and said to me well, you don't pay it either.

I feel my fists ball up. Mind your own business, I tell him. This doesn't concern you.

It is then, after I say that, that Dingleberry throws a toy at me.

If I wasn't so heated I would've laughed. It was this little tiny thing, I didn't even see what it was--but he wound up, and he whipped it at my head, and it bounced off me and landed on the floor.

Grow up. I tell him. And then he fucking stares at me. He just stares, and stares and stares, and I'm so disturbed by this elfin piece of shit that all I can do is scream turn around. What the fuck is your problem? Turn around. And he doesn't. He apparently has come to realize that his beady little evil eyes push my buttons. I am certain that Dingleberry thinks he's putting a curse on me. He's asking his crystal dragon statues in the corner to come to life and grow green and scaley and to breathe fire all over me until I die and he can dance and piss on my body.

We're still fighting, and my mother comes downstairs. He's still staring, and I say You are such a fucking weirdo! And the first thing my mother says to me is knock it off.

Can I just say that this sounds like something that would happen at Daycare? Like a boy would stare at a girl and she would call him a weirdo? Again, it'd be funny it I wasn't so pissed off. It'd be funny if I didn't feel physically threatened by this guy, if again, a parent of mine chose to defend this jerkoff instead of siding with their daughter.

Of course, this is exactly what my father did on Sunday. I won't again tell you how insulting and sick it makes me that I am the first person who is "yelled at" when he is the one butting in to something that doesn't concern him and also throwing toys at me like a goddamned 4-year-old (meaning, just as hard). Even if I am fighting, acting a little immature--I get to be right in this situation. Unfair as it is to Dingleberry, I get to be right. Plus, I don't hit women.

This was where I wanted to pull down the Christmas tree. I was so angry at my mother. It just didn't (doesn't) seem that I can say anything to her that generates reason--so rash, odd reactions are all I can think of. I go into the laundry room to find my running clothes. Dingleberry starts having a conversation with Travis about how there's always fighting around Christmas and everyone's never getting along in this house. I scream from the laundry room: I'm sorry, Edward, but I missed the part WHERE YOU FUCKING BECAME A MEMBER OF THIS FAMILY!

I realize that I'm a little jealous of Edward. That he comes in and gets treated with respect as a stranger after 7 months, and I'm still having to scream and fight and cry my way into even a rash conversation with my parents. I don't feel as though this asshole is taking my spot, but I do feel some pinch of jealousy. Maybe because he influences Travis as much as I want too. I don't know. But I fucking loathe this motherfucker.

I change into my running clothes, slam the front door irresponsibly and run outside. I don't remember much of that run, other than a dog across the street tried to run over to me and was almost hit by a car. I openly weeped at this action, but kept moving forward. And I kept trying to get Edward out of my head, kept saying to myself stop crying, get over it, get over it. But then I kept having these images of his violence--these thoughts of him hurting me while I slept, the thought of coming home to find my family murdered by this asshole who could get a gun from Sam's Club whenever he wanted. I thought of him coming up to me with a gun, telling me to shut the fuck up, and aiming, I thought of myself ducking and the bullet hitting my mother standing behind me. It's just those eyes. Someone with those eyes has so much power, so much anger and hate inside of him. Those eyes are so dark--I swear there's no white in them--and I fear for my family, and for Travis and there's nothing I can do about it, because nobody will fucking listen to me. I know the thought of him hurting me is somewhat of an overreaction, but what if it's not? What if it's not.

*
So. I won't be home for Christmas, after I sing at mass. I'll plow myself through Christmas Eve at my house, our family tradition, and I will force myself not to speak, not to realize that this weasel is in our house, under our tree, having raised a fist to both me and my sister, and opening presents from my parents. I will feel safe, because Craig will be there, because although he is of the same naive persuasion as my parents, he has to hate this kid like I do--because I know he despises Amanda as I do. Then, friends, I'll be calling you. I won't have any money to do anything, because I was hoping my parents would help me out until the next loan comes in, but now I can't ask. I'll leave credit cards and rent unpaid and beg for forgiveness. I'll deal with this on my own this time.