We were eating dinner. I was getting something from the kitchen. My father says something in Chinese, but I don't say anything back to him because I don't think he's talking to me. My father says something again, this time in English, but he doesn't say my name, so I don't answer. He wouldn't talk to anybody else there in English, so I guess I should've said something, but ... I don't know, he was talking about whether I drink water in the morning as he recommended/ordered in the past, so maybe I was subconsciously afraid he was going to lecture me, and also it sounded like he was in the middle of a conversation and if I wasn't talking to him at the beginning of the conversation I wasn't going to answer him, and maybe I was thinking about eating my noodles or just spacing out in general. He didn't get mad; he just kept talking to my mom, and he seemed to be in good spirits.

But later? I don't know. He pulls passive-aggressive bullshit a lot. I'm afraid he's going to yell at me tomorrow for something, and he'll feel he gets to yell at me after I ignored him at dinner, even though I didn't hear him or understand him or I did hear him I wasn't paying close attention and fuck you, you were just going to yell at me again for something you don't think I do. Well, Father, two people can play this game. Why didn't my chopsticks match? I had one plastic one, the one we have the most of, and a smaller, wooden one. They didn't meet up at the end so I couldn't pick up small pieces of food in my bowl of noodles. Why couldn't you give me matching chopsticks? Are you mad at me for something? Does this mean I can yell at you tomorrow for something? And don't give me that bullshit that Grandmother or Mother set the table, I know you did it and you wanted to pull this crap.


See, I can be paranoid, too. I just feel I'm right.