I'm human and I gave up.

I wasn't even aware that I was seceding everything to absolute nothingness, unproductivity, and despair. A cold sense of irony pervades me as I write this; having championed and fought so hard for self-awareness, I didn't sense I was falling and with it, my plans and hopes for a very new direction in life whistling down through the air with it.

I'm now sitting in front of the television every night with them, hating everything but doing nothing about it. My room is where I sleep and escape, my desk – the one I spent time on organizing and personalizing – is no more than a glorified filing cabinet.

I have no desire to do anything. The environment I come home to every day is one preoccupied with preservation and avoidance of all disturbances. At all and any costs. After a while, as I wasn't vigilant in countering this by writing, creating, struggling, because I gave up, the environment affects you and soon after, you're sucked clean of all your anima.

I'm scared that if I stay in this environment any further, I'll condemn myself to go back to that hungry circle where I feed off myself, saying how I feel so constricted in doing anything, how crap I am, and how I'll never do "what" I want to do. I never want to go back to that circle. I've made progress and I've moved forward, I'm not prepared to go back. I'm not going to go back to that circle and then convincem myself I'm shit when I know I'm not.

My parents think I don't listen to them and I always ignore their advice, but I do albeit on a selective basis. The things to do with thinking, talking to them, making decisions: I've implemented all points they've advised on. I come to use it with them and no, it's not good enough. Nothing is good enough.

Could they see I spent 5 months to come to this decision after many unexpected turns and events, after much self-analysis and circumstantial evidence, after reviewing all my plans about staying at home for at least 1 year, and after realizing that I'm doing everything I can to adapt to home life and they're doing nothing.

They don't. 

My environment, implicitly – directly, says that it's not worth trying anything in case you fail. It's not worth doing anything else lest you tire yourself. It's not worth doing anything because it's a waste of money, time, effort, and energy. Why would you want to spend all that on something useless when you could do all the same in front of the TV?

On Monday night, I spoke to my parents about my desire and plans to move out.

I might as well declared I'm now a homosexual Muslim.

I was upset by what they said and how they said it, although I expected it. Expecting something doesn't make you immune from the natural emotional reactions to people and events.

They didn't understand me and they consequently embarked on a campaign to make sure any of my decisions seems stupid, harried, and ultimately going to permanently scar me. I was sure of my decision but now, I'm not. Not because they unlocked something in my awareness that makes me now want to live with them even more.

They tapped into a well where all my self-doubt and self-anxiety lays still, rotting. Then, I go through the whole process of "Man, can't they just support me once? Can't they say I've done a good decision once?"

Then, I still try to stay analytical. I go back quickly in my head and think about the last major decision I made – the one to move back. And then smaller ones since I've been here. I could see just one pattern emerging. If the decision doesn't fit them or fit the idea they have of me or doesn't align with their desires and plans, then it's a decision that will get raped to death.

So, they've been egging on me for years to be objective, to take time in my decisions, blah blah BLAH!, and now if it's not something within their mental framework, it doesn't even matter if I want to become a priest.

By the end of the conversation, my dad did the usual silent, withdrawn thing. My mom kept on talking but we weren't getting anywhere.

Last night, I come home very tired from a long day and a long schlepp in traffic. I walk in and there's a frosty air to the living room. I sit down to have dinner. They continue their conversation as I'm there. My dad barely gives me eye contact. My mother speaks to me a few words. Same with my sister. I give myself an hour to relax before I go up to do some private work.

I couldn't take more than 30 minutes. I'm being ignored and it's obvious. I kept on thinking and rechecking, thinking back to the last time this happened, that retarded fight with my mom and sister. Yes. Exactly the same behaviour, body language, tone, and atmosphere.

I go up to my room and slide defeated on my bed to calm down. I end up passing out and waking up very early.

Perhaps someone came up while I was sleeping.

I woke up this morning and it continues. My dad just says hello and nothing else. Then my mom asks if I'm angry or upset with something at work.

Keeping my cool, I say that everything is fine and I was quiet last night because I was very tired.

I'm tired every day after work but I don't come home to a house call by the Ice Scapades every day.

It drove me crazy as I was preparing my breakfast. Why do you project your shit on me and make it as if I'm the one who alienated myself?!

In response to this curt exchange, I get dressed and leave the house without saying goodbye.

My mother interrupts me driving out of the driveway. I lie. Flat out, unabashed lie. She knew it. I knew it.

I left in a huff and puff.

I'm being treated like I've betrayed or failed them. How can that be? How? I just want to move out to have my own place.

I keep on doing real-time Transactional Analysis (TA)  as I deal with my family. I always get treated and spoken to like a child, no matter how much I change or adapt my behaviour upon their request or on my own accord. All I can feel is despair because I've run out of options. Confronting them doesn't work, talking them through the process doesn't work, ignoring them is not something I do, and trying to use humour or hyperbole just exacerbates everything.

I was venting to a friend about this this morning and I came to a conclusion as he was trying to help me out.

It's a metaphysical catastrophe for me (the word I used in the discussion was crisis, I use catastrophe here after more thinking) to accept that there can be no fairness or decency with your family. I expect shit in the world, with friends, with lovers, with wives, with your colleagues, with your managers, trying to pay a phone bill, trying to get your money back.

I expect shit in church. From priests, from servants, from deacons, from bishops and patriarchs. I expect spineless treatment, done in the name of Christ, by well-meaning, incompetent people at all social and ecclesiastical levels.

But not inside my family and my home. Please God, no.

A home doesn't have to have divorced parents to be a broken one.

I can't accept this right now as much as I will have to or else I'm headed for another theological state of turmoil.

If every unit of God's economy – church, government, secular society, believing society, friendship circles, relationships, the workplace and family – has become for me places where I encounter hardship, what else do I have left?

My friend told me this morning,"Yourself and God".

That's a lonely, lonely last resort. If this was the desert and I was hermit, fine.  But I live in the secular world and interact with people.

I can't give up on the concept of having a barely functional family. I can't just rely on myself. Not because I can't.I don't want to. I tried it before, have seen it in others, and don't want that. At all.

… I will accept the unacceptable… I don't see any other way around it. I won't stick around anymore and wait for something to change towards a more agreeable state for me.I don't know what's the consequence of accepting the unacceptable if I won't be doing the whole "myself and God only" thing.

But with my family? I give up. Really give up. Nothing will ever change. They won't change. I will follow their rules at home and listen passively, react to them and proact when I have to.

Otherwise, default plan of action is withdraw, become a hermit and rock up for dinner to eat and be treated like a child.