it's amazing how a show can go from falling apart to perfectly cohesive in twenty-four hours. you guys rock. i feel rather stage-managerly despite the fact i'm not. i was nearly the last person there, the one who fixed tech problems and talked lighting design with paz and made sure everyone was out and made things work and i felt so responsible. paz wants to pay my father to sit in the audience and laugh.

i think my life is bipolar.

an hour after one of the most miraculous opening nights in history, i've been kicked out of my house.

i got home at 11:30. mum and kit were asleep already. i find out from dad that thompson and mitchey have sent home progress reports (oh joy). mum wakes up and tells me to go to bed. i tell her i have an essay to write. she says fuck you. i don't say anything. i get out of the bathroom and she mentions the progress reports as if i ought to have already known all about them. i tell her neither of my teachers told me they were being sent home. mom: have you started your essay? me: no. mom: well you aren't staying up now to finish it. me: yes i am; i have to. she says fine then, if you're so dead set on being independent, go ahead. [long pause] me (quietly): thank you, mom. her: type quietly. me: no, i'm going to play loud music. [i attempt to get past her, in the process knocking a empty clothes hamper sidways onto her. she screams, loud and piewrcing. i can't take it. i cover my ears and run down the hall. she screams again. i say mom, stop, please. she cuts me off with another scream. i say i can't be the sane one around here. she cuts me off with another scream. i can hear her loudly sobbing. my ears are still covered. my sister wakes up and goes to her. the sobbing continues. eventually she goes into her room. then she comes back out and says she wants me gone by tomorrow. i find the phone and call toni. wake her up (oops). tell her i've been kicked out. just them mum says she wants to talk to me. so i go into her room and she spends fifteen minutes breaking down and crying about how hard this is and then accuses me of being self-centered because of my age. that really pissed me off but i didn't want to say anything because i couldn't take any more screaming. my mother is falling apart. if i'm self-centered, then i'm certainly not the only one. she has eyes only for how hard her life is and how i contribute to that. she can see me only as mini-dad, girl of sarcasm and passive-aggressive behavior. i am sick and tired of being the sanity in this house. my sister is too young, my father is absent, and my mother is falling apart. i am not "dead set" on being indeoendent, i am independent because i can't depend on either parent to get much of anything done.

and i realized something awful tonight: i feel nothing for my mother but pity.