Me, my parents, and ridicule.

Can anybody explain the obsession women have with shoes? Normal women that is, I hold a very respectable 5 pairs, of which only two are in frequent use. Proving that I'm not normal. My mother on the other hand, who you might consider a normal, bordering on hormonal 'giddy' person, has enough pairs to line all the plinths of the house. Most pairs she probably only wore twice or something.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I stole the lesser loved half of all her pairs of shoes, she probably wouldn't notice even if I was wearing them. Not that I would want to, some of those heels seem like pure torture, and don't get me started about my mother's total lack of discretion in the choice of her colours. Turquoise blue is among her favourites, as well as orange, and fuchsia. She actually owns a woollen longcoat which is entirely fuchsia. Plus tape-à-l'oeil que ça tu meurs. She has a penchant for loudness and extravaganza, and although I don't usually object to that, when it's your mother, someone who should at least try and be a role model, it puts a whole different perspective on the situation.

My mother is embarrassing, she's the total opposite of me with my quiet, cynical nature, and she seems surprised that I'm not your average teenager. Elle me pousse au crime is what it is. But I am a typical adolescent in the fact that I have frequent fights with my mum. Oh don't misunderstand me, I love my mum dearly but sometimes she is just so infuriating I want to slam my ashamed face into the nearest wall.
Those are the moments where dad looks at mum with an adoring look in his eyes and tells not to be ashamed of anything except our own actions. Since after all ridicule never killed anybody.
The whole process is so sickeningly sweet it brings bile to my mouth. God damn those stupid three-minute life lessons.
Not that I'd ever dare to oppose to dad. I idolize him, and I know that's doing no good, not being able to be critical of him makes looking at the world objectively really hard.

Every time he tells us and more particularly me that ridicule never killed anyone, I mutter "I know that by now, the whole family would already 've died thrice if it did", in a bittersweet kind of way. Shame is an annoying emotion, seems to be chronic in most humans, considering one or another member of their family, the 'black sheep' in some cases.

I'm not a black sheep. The whole family is too weird to fit in the concept of black sheep. In fact we'd be the black sheep family, resulting in us all being normal in our weirdness. Follow my trail of thought? Good, neither do I.

Yet I differ from my parents and the rest of the family in my shyness, my independence, my cynicism, my pessimism. I wish so much to be discreet I sometimes get confused with the wallpaper. Quite an achievement. My greatest one yet? How should I know.

On choisit ses amis, pas sa famille. Right-ho. I wouldn't trade mine, though. They are infuriating beings, but I love them too much to ever consider changing them. They're family. They are the ones you learn to live with, by definition. And as long as they don't treat you too badly, you owe them. So guess I'll go on loving them, all the while muttering and whining while I disappear in the wallpaper, never admitting how much I like them, their weirdness and their quirks.

God, if he exists, is a bloody bastard.