I’m Angela f*cking Chase. So maybe I don’t necessarily have crimson glow hair. Or an abnormally large percentage of flannel in my wardrobe. Or a neighbor with freakishly big hair that rises like the unleavened bread of his ancestors. So maybe we just have one thing in common: Angela’s relationship with her mother eerily parallels my relationship with my father. I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her. I could’ve said that! Lately I can’t even look at my mother without wanting to stab her. Repeatedly. I could’ve said that, too! Except replace the mothers with fathers, and I would’ve never said the latter (out loud). Why do I have such a horrible relationship with my dad? When did it get like this? My dad doesn’t approve of my passion, my art. My sister is graduating from a university this weekend with a Bachelors in ACCOUNTING. She has already been hired as an auditor for Ernst & Young, one of the big four accounting firms in AMERICA. My father adores her. He is SO proud of her… and then there’s me. The struggling artist. The daughter who always manages to f*ck up. My dad EXPECTS me to fail. I know it by the way he talks to me… by the evil stink-eye he gives me whenever I’m home (and he wonders why I’m never home!). I don’t know why he is so f*cking bitter. I go to school. I work. I don’t party. I don’t smoke. I didn’t have any teenage pregnancies. I’m a f*cking saint compared to a lot of people in and around my family. Now I have to tell him that I need another class to get my transfer studies degree. To a normal dad, that wouldn’t be a huge deal. I take one class in the summer and I get my dinky junior college diploma… but to my dad this means that once again, I have FAILED HIM. I cannot graduate (and I use the term loosely here since technically, even though I have acquired enough credits to “graduate” from a junior college, I will still be taking classes at a junior college for the next year because I’m not transferring to a university yet since I’m denying San Diego State’s acceptance letter—because I want to move to the OC and away from SD—and Cal Poly Pomona never graced me with one). I can get my diploma at the end of summer, but I can’t walk till next Spring because they only hold one ceremony a year. A third of the people don’t even attend the ceremony for getting their transfer studies degree. I don’t consider it a milestone in my life, and I know my dad will blow this out of proportion when I tell him tomorrow. I won’t even be able to say anything in my defense. He takes whatever I say with a grain of salt. He will find a way to lecture me… to tie this in to something completely separate from school and some how bring up the fact that I don’t floss enough or I don’t make my bed every morning or I should sleep earlier. I try to spend as little time as possible alone with my dad in order to avoid these ridiculous lectures (not to mention his aforementioned stink-eye). In the end, he just ends up making me feel like shit. My sister says that she’s proud of me and that I deserve so much more credit than my dad gives me. She tells me to just brush his shit off my shoulders, but I can’t. I’m too sensitive. It makes me angry and sad at the same time… He is one of the main reasons I decided to leave San Diego… And with that, I leave you all with a quote from J. Pierpont Morgan: The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. I’ve decided. Now if you call me repeatedly tomorrow and I don’t pick up my phone, please come to my house to make sure that my dad didn’t kill me for not being able to walk next week. I’m only half kidding.