Mood: pissed off
Listening to: death cab for cutie - transatlanticism

My mother found a statistic today that said 30% of the kids at Hotchkiss, Connecticut's oldest private boarding school, come from broken families. A conversation ensued.

Mother: Maybe it's a bad thing to send you to Exeter after all.
Me: Why?
Mother: It's not good to associate yourself with people from broken families.

That really pissed me off. What's she being so self-righteous and hypocritical about? Does she think that because my father and her are living together right now, that we're a real family? My father doesn't give a flying fuck if he lives with us or not, he treats this apartment like a hotel, and half of the time he's on a business trip anyway. I told her to shut up, because I lived in a 'broken home' when I was younger and she knows it. My father and mother were seperated then - not divorced, just not living together - as he worked in Tokyo, New York, Minneapolis, etc. I'm not a dumbass, I know that there was cheating on both sides. I've found love letters (on both sides) that they've written to their other lovers and their lovers have written back to them. I know what it's like to not be able to attend father and daughter events at school, I know what it's like to be embarassed because "uh, no, I can't, my parents are seperated".

And I think I'm doing just fine. I'm not mentally impaired, I'm fiercely independent, and I'd like to think I have a bright future. What she says is total bullshit: I know people from 'broken' homes that are some of the best and most brilliant people that I've ever met, I know people from picture perfect homes that are the most depressed people with no ambition or real life that I've ever seen. There's also people like me - they seem to come from a stable home, with both parents living together, but it's still broken (and breaking still) on the inside.

If I could go to the past and change it, I would not change a thing. I would not have it any other way. I'm glad, in a grim way, that it was like this. Otherwise, I would be a spoiled whiny brat and not independent at all - or at least, it seems to be that way. I would go through the teasing and rock throwing and being fat again, because it taught me a lot about being shallow and treating your fellow human beings. Likewise, I'm glad for living the expatriate life; it's taught me a lot of things. I'm rarely accompanied by my parents while flying, and I find that I like it best when I'm not. I can find my way around a city I've never been to before, book and live in hotels alone, etc. (I mean, what's the worst that could happen - get lost? It's called hailing a cab back to somewhere familiar.)

From what I've seen, what will not kill you will only make you ultimately stronger.