Oh god. Maybe I'm completely wrong about everything.

Is what I think sometimes.

When I let my Dad in an inch and he takes a mile. It's my fault really. I don't say how I feel enough, so he doesn't know when I'm feeling red raw about job rejections and just can't take even mentioning it unless it's a joke, and when I can talk or not.

And then once I start talking to him about that, he starts talking about learning programming and how to design websites and everything else, and I just want to crawl the walls, because I feel like I've just let him in on this part of my life and now he wants to colonise it all, wants to take over and make me learn new things.

And he doesn't. He just wants me to try something he thinks will give me a lot of pleasure.

But I think back to the maths tutoring at fifteen, and the reading at two, and how much they weren't fun. How much he wanted me to succeed and enjoy and be advanced, and how much I hated being bent to someone else's desire for my own good, even if it was for me to do better and be better and be happier. Why can't I say this to him? I just don't want the tiresome long debate that comes after it. And it sounds so spiteful, to hold over his head something that he did (especially as he was believing it to be for the best, and perhaps it was, because didn't I get an A in maths, and didn't I do very well at school, and can't I read the fastest out of everyone I know?) decades ago, or seven years ago. It sounds petty, like I haven't moved on. But the truth is I haven't. Why can't I just say, yes, I am petty. Yes, I am inherently spiteful in how I think, and I can't help it, and this is how it is?

Instead, every time he mentions me programming, I just shut off and close up and say, mmm, mmm, hoping that conversational markers and lack of real response will make the issue go away. Because I don't like being such a spiteful bitch without reason, I don't like preventing myself from learning something because of past hang ups, and I want to let go of what I'm feeling because I know I'm wrong because he's right. And I am wrong. I know it. I am who I am because of what he taught me, I'd be nothing if he hadn't spent all that time teaching me things. And maybe that's it, there. I'm scared to take his help because it feels like I can't make anything of myself unless someone else is there helping me along. I want to make something of myself on my own, not because anyone else has helped me. I need to be able to say, I did this myself, without falling back on anyone.

So do I want to be miserable?

My brother's having a christmas dinner with friends from school, and Dad said I should have a christmas dinner with my friends from school. He doesn't understand, I don't think. We are having a few get togethers, and I like my schoolfriends, but I've made others who are really and truly friends, and my brother's schoolfriends are his true friends. He's Mr Popular, and I can feel my parents worrying about my lonerish tendencies, my lack of aesthetic value. They advise me to be more like him instead of as I am. I should be more like my brother. He's charismatic and will get through life wonderfully. I won't. I take things too hard and I'm narcissistic and dull and I'm not even a perfectionist to make up for it and I've got all sorts of strange hang ups. I didn't do well. He'll do well, with less effort too. He'll be brilliant. He'll get jobs and be successful and noone will ever worry about him being a loner because he's got far too many friends. He's bright, and he didn't have the same help as me.

Why do I feel like I'm so much worse than everyone else?