I'll be home for Christmas...

*sigh* That implies that my parents' house is my "home", which it is most definitely NOT. They moved out of my childhood home last year, and I absolutely feel like an outsider now more than ever before. I haven't lived with them (for more than three days, as in summer '09) for over five years, but going back to their old house, it always felt familiar. Now nearly every trace of my existence as a part of their lives is gone. They have a few pictures of me around the house, but when it comes to "my" room (the guest room) and all my surroundings, nothing is the way it was when I was growing up. All my trophies and medals and damn near everything from my childhood is in the attic somewhere collecting dust. My sister, of course, still lives with them, so I suppose she doesn't have the same emotional crisis about the whole thing. But... I dunno. In some way them moving out of the old house was one of the final straws that made moving halfway across the country not seem like a half bad idea. I miss them, there's no doubt of that, but something just doesn't feel right about being here. Nebraska has become my home. I have my own life with Clayton and the cats, and it's nearly mutually exclusive from my family's life. I always felt like an outsider though. A lot of it has to do with my illness. I am most certainly not the only person in the family who has *ahem* emotional problems, but I'm the only one who acknowledges it. It makes things very tense to have to walk on eggshells around people to avoid hurting their feelings. Honestly, with all the medication I'm on and therapy I've had the past six years or so, aside from hearing voices I'm pretty well adjusted. I think the problem is since I moved away in 2005 I have lost my sense of what my role in the family is. When I finished high school and my first year of college, before my hospitalizations, they were so proud of me and had such high expectations for my future. Now... I don't know that they're not still proud of me in some way, but it's a completely different dynamic. I didn't finish college, I don't have a great career or a "career" at all really, my marriage was a disaster, I just... they won't come out and say I'm a failure or anything, but I know in the back of their minds there's that nagging thought about how all my intelligence and talent was just wasted. I feel like a complete waste of space around them. They don't get why I couldn't finish my degree. They don't get why I can't suck it up and work a real job. They keep saying, well, maybe down the road, when you're stable, blah blah blah blah blah. I'm the most stable I've been in the last seven years, but with my illness comes serious limitations. The way my brain functions has changed... I don't have the drive and the focus I once did. I'm horribly forgetful. I get stressed out really easily, and my ability to function is inversely proportional to my stress level. I don't have the luxury of being able to not work so I can go back to school, and I can't handle both. School... I just don't have the mind for it anymore. When you sit through an hour-long lecture and not one word sticks in your head, and then you read the textbook and that doesn't stick either no matter how much you outline and highlight and all that, what's the fucking point of going to school? It becomes a waste of time, money, and sanity. So basically the fact that I haven't at all lived up to their expectations and the lack of understanding they have for the limitations posed by my illness have seriously been bothering me. Gah. And in everything I do with them, it's as an outsider. The family is mom, dad, and my sister, and I'm just... company. I'm not an integral part of the family. I'm an accessory... nice to have around, but certainly not necessary. The worst part of this whole mess is that Clayton is still in Nebraska for the holidays, so I'm here alone. Skype helps, but I don't have the one person who understands me around, and it makes it so hard to not lose it. Merry Christmas.