It is strange to realize that my parents are neither mature nor well-adjusted.
Granted, they are wiser than me in some ways, and probably much more experienced in the matters of life and its hardships. But honestly. Sometimes I think my parents are pretty immature.

For one, my mother has said to me:
"I love you, but I don't always like you."
This is sort of a backhanded insult (I used to dole these out all the time, after the fashion of my mother, before I learned what I was doing and how I could improve). One, it's a statement of unconditional love, so it's [theoretically] great. But two, it's a statement of how unlikeable and simply disgusting I am, implying that my mother is forced to love me against her will.
What the hell is that?
My mother has her own esteem issues in that she feels as if her self-worth is solely determined by exterior, quantifiable characteristics such as "weight," "wealth," and "education." This is a sad state of affairs, both for my mother and for her children. She attempts to project these values onto her children.

[+ thoughts that will remain unposted]

So, as you can tell, I am unusually callous and very pretentious when dealing with my mother as a human. It's all ameliorated, or at least mediated, by my irrefutably innate connection to her. I am weak before her because she is my mother, and she weak before me because I am her child. I shouldn't exploit those vulnerabilities to gain the upper hand. I will only be slighting myself by denying tenderness and all those other things.

Anyway I am developing a headache and I should get up and get some blood circulating.
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lastly:

St. Leonard touched a philistine
a sacred tongue, a perfect rhyme
But even he was "not much nourished by modern love."

So I told her that everything she does is divine
and she replied with a blank expression (an object lesson in making me feel benign)
Then whispered, "independence and indifference are the wings which allow the heart to fly."

Feelings I've had too often, still no plan in place to soften the inevitable blow (the rituals we know).
And with the right revolting piety of tone,
the word "freedom" can make you want to lock yourself in a deep dark dungeon.

But I know everybody follows pleasure, everybody gets somewhere.
I swear, I wish I could be less aware...
now it's absolutely clear to me that solitude is not the same as singularity,
but that's not why I'm lonely.