Mapping Out the Path

Tonight I am forced to reflect upon the course my life is taking, and the choices I have ahead of me... where I am in my life, where I desire to be, and how to get there.

For anyone who has been reading this journal, it should be obvious that I am quite dissatisfied with my life as it currently is. I feel trapped, bogged down by my family obligations and being forced to handle my family's problems when I feel that they are more my parents responsibility than my own.

My options are limited... I have very little money available to me, and no job at this time. Nor the time to seek one, even if I wished to. And yet my parents are able to go out to dinner, go to a rodeo, and otherwise enjoy themselves while I take care of my grandmother. I'd say it wasn't fair, but I don't really expect life to be. The question is, what am I going to do about it?

My goal is fairly simple... get money, pay off my debts, get a job in another state (preferably somewhere around Harrisonburg, VA, where my boyfriend is), find an apartment, and get my ass out of here as soon as possible. Now... how to do that?

Currently I have several options I'm exploring, and I'm being careful to look into ones that I can pursue at the same time, so that I'm not closing any doors on myself. One is making a website that would earn revenue through a combination of advertising and affiliate sales programs. That one I do not, realistically, expect to generate a high amount of income, but it might be something... at the very least a way to earn a little extra cash on the side. I haven't decided yet, but I'm exploring the notion. The other option is a bit higher paying, generally, but is also not a certainty of success... I can persue writing. Articles, short stories, books, whatever it takes. I've been doing a lot of work in that direction, and it might give me the boost I need to get out of here.

I still would like to persue a career in massage, or at least become licensed in it and possibly some other healing modalities at some point, but I'm willing to put that off for a while until I'm in a better position to persue it and I don't see being a writer or a webmaster (or both) as being counter to the idea of being a massage therapist.

Anybody else have any ideas for things I could do from home while taking care of my grandmother (especially that involve the internet or computers), feel free to comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Because honestly I don't think mine are concrete enough to definately get me out of here as quickly as I would like.

-Jarin

Shattered

Today I've been forced to make one of the hardest decisions that I can remember making in this life... whether or not to consider two people Family anymore.

It's a confusing story, and all I know is that I don't know the whole story, I only know my side of it, and I'm not even really sure what the original issue was. This is what I know:

Two weeks ago, my little brother loved me. (Brother in the soul-brother sense of the word, not biological or legal.) In the last conversation I had with him he talked about missing the sound of my voice, and wanting to call me over that weekend, while my little sister was down visiting him. (sister same as brother, only soul-sense of the word.) Up to that point both he and my sister were talking to me and, to the best of my knowledge, we had no problems between us.

They stopped speaking to me after she arrived at his house for the weekend. They wouldn't return my IMs, and of the few e-mails (totaling four in the past two weeks) that I sent them, they answered none of them. Needless to say this had me going pretty nuts, but I didn't even call them, let alone go see them when my brother came up to visit her for a week this week. I figured they'd respond in their own time. Today, I got that response.

I'm not going to reprint it here, but suffice it to say that my sister told me that she and my brother no longer wanted to speak with me, and that they would e-mail me when they were good and ready to confront me about whatever the issue they have with me is. Still no explanation of what it is. She also threatened that if I tried e-mailing her or my brother any more (even to reply to her e-mail to me), she'd consider it "stalking" and seek a restraining order. Gee, fun, I send four e-mails and I'm stalking her?

So... I've come to this conclusion: I'm not letting them confront me and treat me like I'm on trial. I'm not going to let them treat me like I'm dirt that they can walk over and act like I'm not even a person. I don't care what their issue is with me. With my relationship with my sister, this is the last straw, she's pulled this crap too many times and I'm through. I don't consider her family any more and I'm not going to be IMing her or e-mailing her at any point in the foreseeable future, or replying to hers. I just don't have the energy for that kind of bullshit.

As for me and my brother... well, he's removed my password to his diaryland journal and blocked me on AIM, which kind of indicates to me that he does not wish to be contacted by me, as my sister has said. This is the first fight we've ever had, so I can't justify in my heart just never speaking to him again. I did remove him from my friends list on LJ because this betrayal of trust has made me want, for a while at least, to be able to post private diary entries that he can't see. But I am open to reconciling with him, if he is ever open to the same with me. I really do love him very much.

I don't really know what else to do, in this situation. I can only hope that it works out for the best, for all concerned.

I only have one problem I need to work out now: if the part of her email that tells me not to email any of them refers only to her and my brother or if it means others on that side of my Family too... it was rather vague, and it looks like trying to find out who is included might be an easy way to do exactly what I was told not to. *sighs*

With Family like this, who needs enemies?

Well, now I know

Well, now I know a bit more... three people I formerly considered my family have decided that I've done a series of things, over a period of time stretching all the way back to the first time I met some of them, that they are holding against me.

Some of these are as simple as not believing someone's story about themselves, others that I have apparently manipulated minds and memories. I rather wish that last one was true, if I had that sort of power and was as unscrupulous as they make me out to be, they'd never have confronted me about any of it to begin with, as they'd never remember these things that they have apparently suffered in silence for so long.

I have the option of going back through old logs, old emails, and trying to disprove as much as I can. I'm not going to. When you have that many things that people don't like about you piled up in a long list that literally spans years, the issue isn't about the things you've done. It's something deeper than any of that.

So, regrettably, I tend to think that this is the end of my friendship with those three. I don't like that, I don't really want to lose my brother or Feral over this as well as my sister, but I don't see a reasonable alternative.

If they want to put me on some sort of trial of public opinion within my family, let them produce the damned evidence, because I do not accept the burden of proof.

Edit: This stuff was all mostly said in anger and pain and I don't think I was really thinking straight.