I'm getting closer to seeing what the actual end product of my project will be. It's six songs. There's an underlying story that interrelates all six of them. When I first started writing each of them, they were all individual narratives, but I've been able to fudge them around to fit the main plot that I now what the whole thing is about. It's about a man, probably in his 40s, whose main frustration with life is his marriage. I'm not sure why he's frustrated. Sometimes, it's sexual and other times, he's just plain pissed that he has to live with this person he doesn't really like to be with who doesn't even like him back. He finds ways of coping with it, like trying to get abducted by aliens or fantasizing about killing his wife. I'm not entirely sure of the ending yet. The last song, for now, is this tune I wrote a few weeks ago. On the way to get a haircut in the city, I  collected different phrases I saw in the subway or on people's shirts, or different objects and people I saw on the way and built a story around that. It's really a nonsense song, and I feel like it has something to do with the plot with the frustrated man, but I'm not sure yet.

I've thought about my project and the plot, and I'm positive this thing is about me and my mom. Things have always been weird between me and her, and I've been thinking about our relationship a lot after the Enneagram. A book I have talks about the childhood origins of Sevens says that as children, they had a negative orientation to their mothers. Sevens feel frustrated by their mothers who did not make them feel secure and try to compensate for the nurturance they feel they didn't receive by getting thing for themselves. When I was 5, my brother was born with a defective liver. It was pretty much life or death for him, and eventually, they were able to transplant a piece of my mother's liver into him and now he's in middle school and doing well. He just came back from a track meet actually. I don't really remember any of this, but my mom told me once during that time, she had to meet with my kindergarten teacher because I wasn't participating in class at all. I would just look out the window by myself during class and just kind of sulk all day. My mom recently told me that while she was in the hospital with my brother, she sensed that her first son was in need of her and looking for her at home, but she couldn't really do anything because of my brother. Like I said, I don't have any conscious grudges against my mom for what happened, but looking back, I've noticed a bunch of things. I used to literally dream about running away from home and my mom catching me, only to be happy I was leaving or to make sure I had all my bags. I remember one of my nightmares was where some guy was wooing my mom and trying to marry her while she was giving in to it. With that said, I've realized that I've always been incredibly jealous and possessive of my mom's love. As a child, I've always felt something missing even when she was showering me with kisses. Even now, I've noticed that I'll argue with her or do stupid things in the hopes that she'll be the first to apologize. I'll push her away while hoping that it'll bring her closer to me or make her want me more. I can't really explain it. 

So now that I'm conscious of my relationship with my mom, or my side, at least, I'm still not sure where the frustration that the man in my story is coming from in my life. It might be that general frustration I've kept with me since childhood that I haven't really addressed until now, or it might be more current. Things have been pretty rough around the house lately. I'm leaving the house in a few months, so she's trying to get her last words in. She's being really clingy and getting worked up about every little thing, but on the other hand, I just want her to relax. I want to tell her that everything is going to be alright with college, but she's not responding the way I expected her to, which is to understand me and to leave me alone. Maybe I'm also secretly beginning to realize that as I leave for school, I won't need her support as a mother who cooks and cleans and buys me stuff anymore, so I'm frustrated that she's acting like I'm living with her (which I am). Nonetheless, I'm really happy that my issues have actually appeared some way in my work. It's good that I'm addressing my issues, but I need more than that. I need a resolve, a way to deal with my mom and to balance being an adult and her son at the same time. I have a feeling that this EP will teach me just that, especially that last song. Still not sure, though.