time is up.... *ding*

firstly, sunny
I've registered with the Academy of Art University (San Fran/Chicago). Photography. I start Sept.1. This is the program I'm going to begin and finish. I'm going to complete my BA and move up from there. It's bad enough I'll be turning 26 this year. It's worse to think I'd have finished after 30.
So that's it. :) I like the program so far. On-line classes this semester, then switchin' it around for campus classes in the spring I think.

now, for thecloudy, with a chance of heavy rain and thethunder storms

My summer has been for the most part pretty mellow, but apparently only for me. I've reinforced the speculation of my outstanding ''laziness'' with the rest of my family now. No doubt left there. Can't even defend myself on that front, since saying "that's just the way i am" doesn't hold a grain of salt to the jobholding, house maintaining, members that I interact with every day. Can't ask for help, as there is no hand-holding in this arena, no no. One must stand on one's own two feet, on an upright log and damned be if you happen to get a crooked log that wobbles. Tough it out! It seems, and what an effect this has on my spirit, I just don't fit in here.. either.
To say I feel like an outcast is a bit harsh, but when you're someone who is used to affection, both giving and receiving, a constantly perpetuated cold shoulder and authoritarian tone meant to correct, chastise and distance all at once, just seems to continuously pick at scabs not yet healed enough to withstand. Someone who sits with you in a room, for the most part pretending you aren't there, only to light up and smile and laugh and share when someone else walks in........ it hurts.
Why is it, seemingly, that what I dream up in my head and what is going on in the real world are two VERY different things. That I don't open my eyes wide enough in time to see the bus coming head on, even though the headlights are REAL bright - and I'm always surprised at the result!
To be someone that is just continuously assessed as useless because I can't meet up with the standards that other people have set for both themselves (due to necessity, ambition, ego) and the mirror of those standards they project onto me. When I don't fall in line, when I don't fall in sync, I'm out.
I feel like a child right now. Completely out of my mind, confused, rejected, lost... My aunt told me today, "What are you doing with your life? You're 25, you've accomplished absolutely nothing over the last 5 months, you have no job, no home, what are you doing?" ---- .. all I could think was, ''wouldn't you offer me a home?" But that's an example of how unrealistically I compute. It's not up to my aunt to make it easier for me or to offer me something like that, especially when her own three kids are still nesting at home, she and my uncle work full-time. They have their own issues, and I'm not a kid anymore (so I keep being told). It's more about my soul, my emotion relating to the situation. I wanted to 'feel' like I belong, and for a little while I did. But all the lessons I was supposed to learn, about 'responsibility' and 'motivation' and the very basic set of rules pertaining to domestic behavior and having a sense of worth and obligation --------- mine are warped, and never has it been so glaring to me.
I've *always* set my standards low. Always. There is nothing more detrimental to me that falling backwards. Regret, resignation, loss.. I don't deal with these concepts well. I've built up my psyche to deflect them whenever I can, because if I don't, the result is.. well.. I turn into a mess. And I hate to admit it, but I'm teetering on the edge right now.
Too many things have gone wrong.
Too many times shunned.
I've had to stomach being ''re-educated'', sometimes from my betters, sometimes not, all the while my own observations and suggestions are rejected as being naive, useless, nonsensical. My opinion doesn't count, my advice isn't worth the air used to speak it.. I'm left standing alone, because I'm in a situation where I have no authority and no worth.
I'm being compared to standards that far outdistance my own.
I've become a pest, a bother.. and I've been told, rather directly, to go back home.
..
To a 'home' I was hoping to only see in passing on vacation.
To a 'home' where I get to go back to being just ''poor Joanna'', poor lazy, untalented, challenged, joanna.. <<self pity talking there<<
..
So .. I have a 'no-home' waiting for me, and a 'no-life' waiting to continue.. I prefer having no home (but in order for that to be, I have to be a burden on someone, and it does bother those who I'm using as substitutes now..) I'm expected to be independent and able to stand on my own two feet. And I'm not - maybe 1.5 feet, but not yet a full two.
My mother said, "She can always come home," and look'it'me. Tail between my legs, scratching at the door.

Not writing this for pity's sake.
If I don't write it down I'll just cry myself dehydrated. I'm just not up to fighting for anything at the moment.. the self-esteem market is rather low right now, but we expect it to be right back up there in no time flat.