Today I moved into college.

I’m a sophomore now, so there was nothing particularly amazing about the experience. Mostly I was excited to get away from the ticking time bomb that is my parents’ house and see my friends.

I want this year to go well. Last semester was absolutely terrible, and I will write about it in another post. Everything was set to go splendidly.

But of course, of course, it had to start off badly.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but my mother has bipolar disorder. One day she can be absolutely happy and loving and awesome, and the next she’s sobbing about nothing in particular and there’s nothing you can do to make her stop.

Now, you might think that the reason she’s like this today is because she’s upset that I’m leaving. But let me assure you that that is NOT the case. My mother cannot wait to be an empty nester. She cried a little bit on the day that I entered the Removed Time, but other than, she has shed not one tear for my living independently. She associates me with drama at home. Never mind that my six days home saw endless freak outs by my younger sister Vered and my mother constantly getting mad at my little brother Lior for quite honestly nothing, as well as periods of my mother being in her usual spontaneous depressed moods. But yes, she’s been waiting for me to leave since the day I was born.

Consequently, this meant an hour of her playing the blame game, three hours of her crying, and deciding that the most she would do to help me bring my stuff to my dorm room was take it a short distance to the door while I was left to lug everything (and I brought a lot of stuff) up two steep flights of stairs and down one long hallway. She brought two small boxes to my room. And her goodbye consisted of a frowning one arm hug and a muttered ” ‘Bye.”

I shouldn’t have expected anything different.