my father's moving out tonight. the sherriff contacted him today and because this is the fourth report of domestic violence they're going to have to make a formal enquiry, possibly involving 'interviewing' me and my teachers. dad hasn't been arrested or charged but one of the three possible charges against him is felony assault and battery. if he slips up he could spend the rest of my teenage years in prison. so he's moving out, to make sure absolutely nothing happens. he's not allowed to teach at gms anymore, he won't be allowed to teach a lighting workshop for us. he's not even allowed on campus anymore.

for some reason i'm not having any trouble adjusting to all this. i've always been this way, able to accept things as the norm almost instantly. i forget a lot of the time that mine is not what's considered a 'normal' life. i forget that maybe this really is a big deal. for me it's just the course of daily life. it scares me sometimes that i adapt to changes this drastic so easily. not that being able to survive family craziness is a bad thing, more what other changes i could adapt to.

i think my greatest fears are turning out like my parents and being a druggie. i have a mental image of me doing drugs and it becoming perfectly normal, like everything else has. that really scares me. above all else i don't want that to happen. i don't know why i'm so deathly afraid of addiction. maybe my father's alcoholism sparked it. it hasn't always been this way. when i was little and my father still drank i used to pretend soft drinks were beer because beer was what grownups drank. at five i didn't understand that my father had problems, that he was an alcoholic, that he was abusive. he was just my dad.

i feel like i'm five again, only now i understand what's going on.

i don't know everything, though. last night i went off on a tangent about jian (purposely misspelled) for some reason and ended up talking about the day we went to see rhinoceros and introduced jian to s3ema, my seventh grade science teacher, and how jian and s3ema really got along well (guess where that spelling came from) and all of a sudden i notice my mum has a funny look on her face. she says 'do you like s3ema?' and i say "yeah, s3ema's a sweetie. i really like her. why?' mum won't answer. which makes me wonder. is s3ema the next m1ca?

m1ca is h4nnah's mother. she and mum have always had a really volatile relationship, ranging from going out for coffee together to my mum hating m1ca's guts. as far as i know, the hate has never been reciprocated. m1ca just doesn't hate people. i have never fully figured out why my mum has such a problem with m1ca, but one crazy notion has plagued me for years. my sister once asked my father if he had ever had an affair. he said yes, once, when he and mum were split up. which makes me wonder whether my mum thought/knew that person was m1ca. her reaction to hearing s3ema's name brought up all these questions again because she reacted exactly like she used to react to m1ca's name. does she think there's something going on with s3ema?

life feels insanely normal, considering. the old adaption skills have kicked in again.