Everything stems from jealousy.

All my bad moods lately, anyway.

It's been getting worse. I get angry at my little brother so my mother snaps at me, so I get grumpier and even more pissed off when my bro does something that irritates me, so my mother gets even angrier at me...

It's a whole horrid spiraling circle that just gets darker and darker and nastier and nastier.

It isn't pleasant.

I want to be nice to my little brother but--

Oh, why the hell am I kidding myself? I don't particularely want to be nice to him at all. I want him to feel as rotten and as absoloutely crushed as I did when he got that fuckin' call from the stuffy up-nosed suits saying they'd send him to Brazil for a year.

And fuck, no one will stop talking about it.

I, me, everone knew how much I wanted to go on a student exchange, and I tried. God I tried! For four years I tried everything from subtle to blatent, and he, he goes and applies on a faint uncaring whim and them suits pick him first shot.

And I asked everyone to not talk about it around me so I could blissfully pretend nothing had happened.

That's the best way, you know, for me to get over things. Let the pain dull, the wound heal, the event to drift off into the past and the memory fade.

But this is like a wound that keeps getting ripped open. Every day it gets torn open, teased, and jested at.

And it hurts. I've always wanted people to think the best of me. I've gone out of my way to try to get people to think the best of me.

Not to mention I've got this horrible thing ingraved in my head. This things, this desire, this doubt, this little voice that always says: "You're not good enough. You have to be better."

And I truely believe that.

Where did it come from? I don't know. A combination of places I suppose.

My mother being first, always pushing me to be what I'm not. Well, she's got her final wish. The thought, the idea is there but the motivation is lacking, the energy, the 'get-up-and-go' is missing.

Where else? From my own head, I guess. Realizing things. Things like: I'll never get where I want if I'm not the best. I have to be the best.

Things like that.

And to have some of the most respected business men in the city to think I'm not good enough...Well, that's equal to a good chest stabbing, and wound that I'm always aware of.

And my little brother keeps pulling at the wound. I've asked and asked, but he always talks to me about learning Portugese, and 'when he goes to Brazil' and so on and so forth.

My dad's okay. He doesn't really pay much attention to anything anyway, or doesn't say anything if he does.

And my mother always makes little comments like: "Sit up and eat, David. What will your host family in Brazil think of you if you go there and eat like that?"

Shit like that.

So I've been really irritable all day.

I've been blaming it on my period, and on cramps, but the truth is I have no cramps and my period ended this morning.

I feel fine, so long as you don't count this splitting headache from crying so much.

Fuck.

I wish I could brush of this jealousy, but it's really, really hard.

Help me someone?

Before&After