On mother issues and money issues

I wonder if I'm being ungrateful by thinking that my parents, or at least my mom, is being kinda ungrateful. It's been happening quite a lot here in Tokyo, where I feel like I've been bending over backwards to try to accomodate to her by being a combined tour guide and interpreter, and it feels like she's just throwing it back in my face. Like today, when she was trying to find a specific kind of tea kettle, she snapped at me for not wanting to go check out rice cookers and leaving her with the poor tiny Japanese girl who didn't know English. "We've been doing just fine without you!" The other day when I wanted to meet T, but developed a migraine, she told me to just cancel the whole thing, because "Well, it's not like it's super fun for us or anything," as if the shit she's dragged me to has been super fun for me. Also mid-migraine she told me to stop being such a wuzz, and despite never ever having had a real migraine told me that "It's just a headache, I get headaches all the time", refused to let me take some of her painkillers to work and told me to go buy my own at the store in my own time as well. Yeah, I need my own painkillers, but I'll be at a desk from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. How difficult would it have been to just give me two? How was that even an issue? And now that I realized that I wouldn't be able to pay the initial money for the apartment via internet but instead would have to either go to the bank or to do a transfer via ATM, she decided to go ahead and go to the Bunka Gakkuen Costume Museum without me, because I told her I was nervous about making my 1 p.m. deadline for work in Ikebukuro. "That's not my problem. It's not like you have to go. I'm going though."

I doubt that my relationship with my mother is the most constructive thing to ever have been going on. Obviously I love her, because she's my mom, but there are so many times where I just kinda don't understand why I even bother. Like how she's always insisting that she was so much thinner when I am when she was younger. "I don't get how you're a size 4. I never wore a size 4, and I was far skinnier than you are." I just don't get where you get off on telling your daughter, who used to have an eating disorder, that she was more successful in the slimming department. I want to kinda say "Moms, right?" but I don't think most peoples' moms are like mine. It's like constant undercutting, and while I don't think it's intentional, it's both annoying and hurtful all the same. The Philosopher overheard a phone call I had with my mom before leaving, where he joked about that if I was just some person and the person I was on the phone with was my significant other, he'd tell us to break up. We're clearly just getting on each others' nerves and are not particularly compatible people. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm looking forward to my parents going back home. They've been a huge help financially, but I just can't wait to be left to my own devices again.

Today I got some shit together and finally actually payed off all of the bills that have been lagging because of my recent few months' total inability to do anything productive. I'm worrying that it might be too little too late, but at least everything's payed now, so I don't have anything that's weighing on me all that heavily from Sweden. Things have just been a mess this year, and it's been hard to try to turn it around, but I'm really hoping that Japan will be the new starting point that I wanted it to be. Maybe it's here that I'll grow up a little and not be such a broken person. I mean, I haven't been myself since crashing and burning after graduating school. Architecture school kinda broke me. I haven't been myself since. But now it's like I have a new shot at getting shit right, and that feels pretty good. I just hope I haven't done anything to cause any lasting damage to my economy. I don't think I have, but it's a scary thought all the same.

Today was also the last day of my Initial Certification course, which has been a bit of a handful. Or mindful, more likely. I'm pretty exhausted from all of it, but tomorrow I still need to look alive, seeing as it's my first meeting at the Learning Studio in Ikebukuro. I think they want me to teach a practice lesson there too, but I've had quite a bit of practice, and I feel kinda okay doing that. I'm just really wishing for all of this to be over so that I can try to have a kind of everyday life here. I want to know what I'm going to be doing for work, where I'm going to sleep at night and what my address will be. The uncertainity has been killing me, but at least now I know that the Certification staff found me good enough. My nervousness hasn't been to my advantage, as new situations make me antsy, but I've really tried to talk and be as open and social as possible, and it would seem like it made a difference. In their feedback, they wrote that if I could just hide my nerves, I had the potential to be a very popular instructor. I'm narcissistic enough to know that that's probably true, given that I'm good at trying to make conversations about the person I'm talking to, and I like being in a position of authority the way teaching does.