And my family is a wreck too. Alex is 17 today, hurray for her, but I work all day and didn't get a chance to see her, though she'll probably still be up tonight. I went into work late today- I was supposed to open the bakery at six thirty and didn't make it in until eight thirty when they called. I thought I was scheduled for ten and opening tomorrow, but apparently it was vice versa. *sigh* But it's okay there, it's the laid-back managers since the general manager is on vacation for several weeks. But things are getting to me. I'm being rude to my mom and snapping at Alex more than she deserves (though some of her comments are pretty inane) and it's so unfair to them because I know we're all trying but it's so incredibly frustrating! This summer should have been so much better than it is. I feel like we've earned it- this is just getting to be ridiculous. So I'm going to try to be more appropriate and understanding, but it also doesn't help that my father's in town.

And he's a story unto himself. He makes me SO unhappy, and yet, completely numb. We went out to get a burger the other night, Thursday night, I guess, when he was in town and I tried to catch him up on my life and he on his, but apparently he called my mother today and just completely chewed her out in lieu of me. He ranted about how I was too independent (possibly, but not likely. Isn't that the point of "raising" your kids?) He said I'm mean to Alex (he saw us all together for two hours, tops) and to her (I'll give him that, maybe, but he has no idea how adversely his presence affects the entire dynamic) and that I shouldn't be in Oregon and he's mad that I'm going to Baltimore for six days next week when I said I had to work this summer and that's why I'm not going to Mexico, but you know what? I love Gm with all that I am. Regardless of what anyone said, I'd drop everything for him in a heartbeat. If he asked, I'd marry him tomorrow and run away to live in a box. I'd hope that we moved out of our refrigerator box at some point and maybe finished our education and had enough money to provide for a family, but anything for this boy. And his family paid for my ticket, because really, I probably couldn't have done it otherwise. And really now, my father can't pay. He keeps mouthing off about how "at the end of the year things will be better, one way or another" either in Mexico or he'll come back to the States, but that's not true. He's throwing money out the window with a beer shop and a taxicab and some hare-brained idea about opening a swimming pool too, but he doesn't have the capital. And he's not coming back here- there's no way he can with his credit record; he'd never be able to pay for anything. He fled the country in bankruptcy and debt and loan collectors and defaults and lord knows what else. So we just keep playing at Happy Father-Daughter and couldn't be farther from the truth. And I can't hate him, but he disappoints me. His choices for the past few years have absolutely SUCKED, and there's only so much I can forgive. I still hold my anorexia too closely under my skin to let that summer in Mexico go- I cannot forget. Everything about it is all so wrong. We're just too far away. Please leave me be. Let me be alone in peace.

And I work tomorrow all day too, ten in the morning til nine at night and he has to leave by mid afternoon, so I won't have seen him during this visit and it's all I can do to not say, why the hell did you even make it? Why can't you give up on us the way Fate has? Leave it be! There is nothing left to lose.