I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I am the way I am. I used to do a lot of writing about it (the personal ramblings of a 18-23 year old forever archived in my MySQL database) but these days it's mostly internalized. A lot of who I am seems to come from my parents, which is annoying and kind of fucks up the whole nature vs nurture thing because I'd rather believe I managed to avoid subconsciously picking up any of their habits and instead they are embedded in my genes and are thusly inescapeable and I can easily make excuses for them: "it's just the way I am, it's in my jeans... along with my wallet, back at home, bye."

However I am an incredibly nostalgic person when it comes to people, and since my parents seem to have basically no friends nor have ever really seemed to be close to anyone in their whole lives, I wonder where that comes from. Just today I was driving to work and I passed by the school I went to while I was very slowly dropping out of high school and I thought about how I never went in to say bye to my teacher on his last day of work. Just writing this makes me feel sad. I doubt I'll ever be able to contact him, and his last day was four years ago, so if I really don't care, then why don't I just care?

I think about a couple ex-girlfriends enough that I feel like saying "all the time", though it's really just a couple times a day, and it's not like I've ever had a relationship that ended pleasantly so it just seems foolish. Why reminisce over the few good moments that existed within oceans of vitriol? Why can't I just let go?

My mother isn't a hoarder, not yet anyway, but she is a pack rat. Both my parents are pack rats. They collect useless crap and apply value to it and then never want to get rid of it. They lack the ability to be hoarders, I think, because they don't have personal/social relationships. Hoarders often apply sentimental value to their pieces of junk in relation to the people in their lives. My parents are, perhaps, lucky in this way, to be spared the fuel to start the hoarder fire.

Perhaps because I have so strongly resisted the urge to collect crap like my parents that I've developed their habits in some other way: I pack rat memories of people, and I can't let go of them. I won't ever forget that night she came home drunk and actually looked like she wanted to sleep with me. I won't forget the coldness of her engagement ring on my skin. I won't forget how every time I tried to take a picture of us together she'd cover her face. These memories, even if they hurt a little bit, will haunt me forever.

So will the fact that I never said goodbye to the teacher who let me drop out of high school, and feeling bad about the kid who tried to help me at the skeeball rink by handing me the balls and I thought he was stealing them so I acted mean and then I felt bad... and I was probably 9 or 10! It's been 15 years and I still feel guilty! Jesus, was I raised Catholic and never made awares?

It's Friday!