Ugly House

or how a place holds a feeling

This is an ugly house. I hate the wallpaper in the spare room. Those stupid miniature rooms on the shelves in the spare room, stupid ugly miniature rooms she made, why would anyone want a box of a miniature room anyway? She takes up all the space in there, gets mad at me when I put a flower arrangement in there. I’m sleeping in the room, let me at least put something in there so I don’t feel like I’m sleeping in a hotel that chose a decorator with no taste. Why does she have so much stuff anyway?? She’s got a third of her jewelry and half of her clothes there, and I’m the one who sleeps in the room.

I hate the multi-colored carpet in the living room, the barrel chairs with turquoise and melon vinyl coverings. The ugly statues mom is drawn to. A statue has to be inherently ugly for her to like it, I think. The lights hanging from above the bar, the lamp shades are Harvey’s Bristol Cream canisters. That mural of the 5 kids above the couch. I’m at the bottom. I look ugly. It was when I was subordinate and meek and stupid and helpless. Like now.

I hate the stained glass hangings in the kitchen windowsill. And you can see the black paint chipping off the refrigerator door so you know mom tried to cover up the turquoise. Silk flowers that look really crappy. The kitchen flowers are the worst. I hate the wood-branch-tree she decorates for any pagan season she thinks of, even if it’s not pagan, let’s decorate the tree anyway, no one will know the wiser. Or the fact that there are nice things in the house, like two Dali prints, but they look ugly here. Art even looks like trash in this place.

I hate the lamps hanging in front of those ugly melon colored front doors. And that wind chime hanging from the lamp in the front hallway. That rock garden in the front hallway, it used to have a working fountain in it, but I was too little when it worked, but that’s okay, because I think it would be even more frightening with water running down it.

And I hate the playroom, the room i’m sitting in now, look at how cluttered it is, all the jewelry she’ll never get around to selling, all the fabric for clothes she’ll never make, all the exercise equipment that collects dust because she feels she can WALK her way to a perfect body. You know, she doesn’t like me using the treadmill because she thinks I’ll wear out the motor. What difference does it make? Books she’s collected because I collect books. She wants this of mine, I owe her this, I adopted this from her... She’s so petty, and no subtle hint I make makes a difference. She slams on any idea I ever have. She makes me feel I can never be creative, because it won’t work out. And she wonders why I’m insecure. Don’t you get it? You made me this way, I hate what you’ve done to me, I hate what you’ve become, and now I have to sit here and live with you, in this ugly house. And when I move out I’m going to still have to live with myself, with all this insecurity, with all this anger. And I’ll still have the memory of this house in my mind.

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