(no subject)
Jan. 17th, 2009 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoOh my gods, you guys, it's -5! (-12 with the windchill). And it's supposed to get up to -2 (-8 with wind).
I.... I think I'm going to go outside for a while and frolic. After being stuck inside for a couple've weeks, and below -20 temperatures every day, this seems like something I really need. Gonna' soak up some sun, whoooo~!
And then I'll go to the Roastery to do some homework. Sigh. Need to finish parts 1 and 2 of Gulliver, as well as the entirety of Slash, for Tuesday. And lots of other work too. But it's not so bad.
I dropped French. Rather, I hadn't registered for it yet in the first place, so I'm just going to stop going. The thing is, I'm taking three masters courses, and I'm teaching, so another class on top of that - and a very difficult one, too - is just too much if I want to do well at all this year. I'm a masochist, but not that much of a masochist. So, I'm not going to do that any more. I guess I'll just try to learn French using Rosetta Stone.
Still not sure about the whole pills thing. But I've only been awake for about an hour and a half, so there is that. Need to lay out the pros and cons. Maybe I'll do that tonight. It's so frustrating, though. For a while, I felt so good. Then, wham. Oh, well.
I want to do up a batch of Kitchensink Clusterfucks this weekend, but I don't have the time, and I don't have half of the materials either. I think that one will have to wait until Reading Week.
[edit 12:15 PM]
One thing that has been bothering me recently and not-so-recently is family history. I wish it was okay for me to ask about it. About who my relations are. About what we have done and where we come from and everything. Can I be proud of my family if I don't know my family? I don't know.
When I went to the psychiatrist, I was asked if there was anything relating to mental illness in my family history, and I said, "I don't know. There might be, but I don't know because we do not talk about it." We do not talk about these things. It is not okay to talk about these things.
I understand that we wouldn't talk about that sort of thing. I understand that it is not good, that we do not discuss it, that it is seen as something dishonourable, something to be ashamed of.
But what about anything else? Why don't we talk about anything else? Why can't I ask? Is our family so dishonourable that we can't talk about it at all? What was done that was so horrible?
I had been led to believe that my family (on my mother's side, at least) was very homogeneous. Her father was a Scot (from Scotland) and her mother, my grandmother, was Canadian, but born of Italian parents. But in the past few years, it's all kind of dissolved, and I find that even the locations are not as clean cut as I originally thought. They were from Italy, but at the time that part of Italy belonged to Austria. Okay. That makes sense. But then I was told that my great grandmother was from Poland, not Italy. And then again, late last year, I was told that no, she wasn't Italian or Polish or Austrian, she was Ukranian.
So where was she from? Why was I told she was Italian when she was not? And where does Poland fit in? Why won't they tell me?
And then I was told that one of my relatives died at Auschwitz, but I was not told his name, or how exactly I was related to this man, or why he was there, or anything at all. And my mother chose the absolute worst time to say it, too.
And I know even less about my father's side of the family. Those ones, they seem normal, but my mother goes on and on about them as if I should be ashamed of that part of my family.
But she won't tell me anything about her relations at all, and keeps everything in secret, as if they are a part of me that I should be ashamed of, too.
Even the relatives I did know - my grandmother, my great grandmother (the one who was supposedly Italian, then apparently Polish, and is now Ukranian). I met them, I knew them for years, but I don't know anything about them at all, nothing of their character or their past or the men they married or the relatives my great granny left behind when she came to Canada.
And I can't look for the answers, because my mother threw away all the letters, and I am not allowed to ask about these things.
How can I be proud of my self and my family when they act as if I should be ashamed of our history?
I.... I think I'm going to go outside for a while and frolic. After being stuck inside for a couple've weeks, and below -20 temperatures every day, this seems like something I really need. Gonna' soak up some sun, whoooo~!
And then I'll go to the Roastery to do some homework. Sigh. Need to finish parts 1 and 2 of Gulliver, as well as the entirety of Slash, for Tuesday. And lots of other work too. But it's not so bad.
I dropped French. Rather, I hadn't registered for it yet in the first place, so I'm just going to stop going. The thing is, I'm taking three masters courses, and I'm teaching, so another class on top of that - and a very difficult one, too - is just too much if I want to do well at all this year. I'm a masochist, but not that much of a masochist. So, I'm not going to do that any more. I guess I'll just try to learn French using Rosetta Stone.
Still not sure about the whole pills thing. But I've only been awake for about an hour and a half, so there is that. Need to lay out the pros and cons. Maybe I'll do that tonight. It's so frustrating, though. For a while, I felt so good. Then, wham. Oh, well.
I want to do up a batch of Kitchensink Clusterfucks this weekend, but I don't have the time, and I don't have half of the materials either. I think that one will have to wait until Reading Week.
[edit 12:15 PM]
One thing that has been bothering me recently and not-so-recently is family history. I wish it was okay for me to ask about it. About who my relations are. About what we have done and where we come from and everything. Can I be proud of my family if I don't know my family? I don't know.
When I went to the psychiatrist, I was asked if there was anything relating to mental illness in my family history, and I said, "I don't know. There might be, but I don't know because we do not talk about it." We do not talk about these things. It is not okay to talk about these things.
I understand that we wouldn't talk about that sort of thing. I understand that it is not good, that we do not discuss it, that it is seen as something dishonourable, something to be ashamed of.
But what about anything else? Why don't we talk about anything else? Why can't I ask? Is our family so dishonourable that we can't talk about it at all? What was done that was so horrible?
I had been led to believe that my family (on my mother's side, at least) was very homogeneous. Her father was a Scot (from Scotland) and her mother, my grandmother, was Canadian, but born of Italian parents. But in the past few years, it's all kind of dissolved, and I find that even the locations are not as clean cut as I originally thought. They were from Italy, but at the time that part of Italy belonged to Austria. Okay. That makes sense. But then I was told that my great grandmother was from Poland, not Italy. And then again, late last year, I was told that no, she wasn't Italian or Polish or Austrian, she was Ukranian.
So where was she from? Why was I told she was Italian when she was not? And where does Poland fit in? Why won't they tell me?
And then I was told that one of my relatives died at Auschwitz, but I was not told his name, or how exactly I was related to this man, or why he was there, or anything at all. And my mother chose the absolute worst time to say it, too.
And I know even less about my father's side of the family. Those ones, they seem normal, but my mother goes on and on about them as if I should be ashamed of that part of my family.
But she won't tell me anything about her relations at all, and keeps everything in secret, as if they are a part of me that I should be ashamed of, too.
Even the relatives I did know - my grandmother, my great grandmother (the one who was supposedly Italian, then apparently Polish, and is now Ukranian). I met them, I knew them for years, but I don't know anything about them at all, nothing of their character or their past or the men they married or the relatives my great granny left behind when she came to Canada.
And I can't look for the answers, because my mother threw away all the letters, and I am not allowed to ask about these things.
How can I be proud of my self and my family when they act as if I should be ashamed of our history?
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 06:44 pm (UTC)I've had similar problems with my family, nationality-wise. On my mother's side, at a young age, I was told that I am half Hungarian. I did my research on the country and took a real interest in it, I even altered my FP interests to include the four Hungarian dog breeds (Kuvasz, Komondor, Puli, and Vizsla). Then, when I was older, I was told that my grandfather wasn't really from Hungary, but from Romania, and that given the weird border situation during WWII, he fought for the Romanian army but was considered Hungarian. He can speak the language, he has family there, but he still claims some part of his Romanian-ism. So I have no idea what to call myself. D: I'm just sticking with half Hungarian.
Same deal on my dad's side. I'm 1/16th Native American Indian, that much I know. I asked my grandmother, and she confirms that HER mother was half Native American Indian, so that makes me 1/16th. I was told at first that it was Blackfoot Indian... later on, though, I got all sorts of different tribes from my dad and grandmother, until it got to the point where... I don't even know. D: I just say "Native American Indian".
And finally, my dad isn't very proud of his living relatives. He sees them as "white trash" and "hillbillies" who just sit around all day, getting fat and having more babies so that they can get money from the government and not have to work/go to school. Apparently, one of them was also a pedophile (possibly rapist) mentally retarded man, who only recently got out of jail, so he doesn't talk at ALL about that particular branch of his family. It's weird because my cousin from that side of the family is on LiveJournal... and I only get good comments on our family members from his end. Completely contradicting stories, and I don't know what to believe.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 06:47 pm (UTC)I wish I had asked when I had the chance. Damn it not being talked about - I should have asked anyway. They act as if it is none of my business, but this is my family, so it is my business.
But now, everyone who might have told me is dead, and there is nobody I can ask.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-18 06:08 am (UTC)Well clearly you are secretly Jewish, for starters. Or not because I'm just being a jerk because I feel bad, but - man, that's really kind of harsh. I wish I could help you find out things.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-18 03:00 pm (UTC)Or maybe that relative was secretly queer. Which would also explain why nobody talks about it. *sigh*
You're not a jerk, honey, don't worry about it. *squeeze*