Tag: Depression


Let Her Cry

29
December

I’m not exactly sure how to structure this post because there are so many things I want to talk about, so if it is a little more flighty than usual, then I apologize.

I guess first of all, I should talk about Christmas.  My parents and I had our Christmas meal with Nana on Christmas Eve so that my aunt didn’t have to see me or threaten violence against me.  I cried almost the entire three or four hours that my parents and I were there.  I managed to almost have an asthma attack because of the crying and I messed up my internal system by getting so worked up.  (My temperature shot up, I started getting sick, etc.)  So, it wasn’t all that pleasant.  I felt bad for my grandmother because she’s almost 80 and she’s got a lot of health issues going on, so having to have separate Christmases was tough on her physically and mentally.  (She has a lot of anxiety issues, so this whole situation has upset her quite a bit.)  I also felt bad that I couldn’t even fake a smile or a good mood while we were there.

When my mom talked to Nana about how Christmas Day went with my aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin-in-law, and cousin’s son, she said that it wasn’t a really festive occasion.  Apparently, my cousin’s son went through Nana’s house looking for me and was sad that I wasn’t there to play with him.  I almost cried when my mom told me this.  I missed him, too.  He’s the one person that I have missed every second of this whole non-communication between my aunt and me thing.  He’s just so awesome and thinks differently and is so smart and creative, so being around him is always fun.  I feel like he’s a kindred spirit.

Nana said that my aunt asked how we handled Christmas without them.  When Nana told her that I cried almost the whole time, my aunt said that that was good because I hadn’t made any effort to apologize to her.  Okay, that isn’t true.  First of all, I actually did write a “letter” via Google Docs and sent it through my uncle’s email address with a note for him to please give it to her.  While the apology isn’t a complete acceptance of the alleged wrongs that I’ve been accused of committing, it is an apology for what I did do; a request that she cease this anti-Janet “campaign”; a request that she learn a little bit more about the physical and mental health problems affecting my mom, Nana, and me so that she could understand the context of the posts I write; and questions about why she made comments to my mom suggesting that I should be kicked out of my house, that I was a bad daughter, etc.   Anyway, the apology is the best that she is going to get.  I would’ve sent it to her personally on Facebook but  she blocked me from sending her messages after I sent the message chastising her for not contacting her sister (my mom) after the June 2011 hospitalization or any of the hospitalizations/surgeries.  I can’t do it via the phone (fear/anxiety issues), face-to-face is out of the question, I don’t have her personal email address, and I just don’t think sending a letter is practical.   I would post the apology letter on here, but she doesn’t actually read this site, so it wouldn’t do any good.

On Christmas, I wasn’t just upset about the downfall of that particular relationship.  I was also upset that my maternal grandfather’s only surviving sibling had unfriended me on Facebook, as had one of his kids.  These were two of my favorite people in the family, so being unfriended saddened me.  And part of me wondered if my aunt had anything to do with it.  I hate being paranoid, but it was weird how they unfriended me shortly after she had posted something on each of their walls.  That thought/paranoia, plus the knowledge that she keeps badmouthing me to Nana and (when my mom calls her) my mother, made me very frustrated because some of the key issues with being Borderline are the fear of abandonment/rejection and intense and unstable relationships.  I think anyone who knows me in any way, shape or form could cite any number of examples that I will go to a near breakdown state whenever things change, relationships end or near an end, I start feeling unappreciated, and when I feel alone, unloved, or unwanted. So, when I was crying on Christmas Eve, I was thinking about the familial implosion, possibly killing myself over it, and how I was somehow a horrible human being.  That’s not the kind of thinking that one should have at any time, but it is especially bad during the holidays.  And that thought process and the pain that it caused makes it harder for me to come up with a way to apologize over any of this or keep quiet about how I feel.  I don’t want to excuse my (sometimes) bad behavior, but I want my family to understand where it comes from.

(BTW – When my aunt tried to lay all the blame on me for this, Nana wouldn’t have any of that.  She told her that she [my aunt] was to blame, as well, and that she was the one who wanted the family split up. She’d also told her off on the 23rd when Nana mentioned that she had to fix the table for our lunch and my aunt told her not to worry about it with us because we “weren’t used to eating at a table” anyway. )

Aside from the Christmas tear-fest, I was going to share whatever the results were from my MRI and EEG.  I went to the neurologist’s office yesterday, but (after waiting an hour and a half) I was told that the neurologist had just left to attend to an emergency at one of the hospitals.  In a small way, I was upset over not finding out the answers, but I would rather not know what was wrong with me than know that my neurologist might have wasted time with me that he could’ve spent on someone who was truly in need of his help at that moment.  (And I know that neurologists are not exactly doctors who have soft-fluffy-type emergencies.)  Anyway, my neurologist was supposed to call me sometime later in the day yesterday.  He didn’t.  He still hasn’t called.  I could call them, I guess.  The only thing I do know from the appointment yesterday is that I had lost another 6 pounds, in addition to the ~50 that I’d lost in the last year.

Oh, I finally had my T4, TSH, LH, and FSH tests done yesterday afternoon, over a month after they were originally ordered.  The woman who did the test asked me if that was my husband in the waiting room.  I silently gagged and told her that that was my father.  She told me she was glad because she had been mad when she thought he was my husband because he should know better than to be with someone so young.  In a way, I understood what she meant, but it was kind of weird to have someone say that kind of stuff.  I mean, she doesn’t know me, so what was she going to say if she had been my husband?  How would she have gotten around her disgust?  And is saying that kind of thing a good idea when you’re sticking a needle into someone?  (It could cause someone to tense up and cause veins to ‘disappear’ in someone who, like me, is a hard-stick.)

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Facebook, Family, FPS-Related, General, Holidays, Mental Health, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

The Worst Month of the Year

28
November

I think that in the last 30 days or so, I have been seriously frustrated by some things that have gone on.  I’m not really sure why this month seems to have sucked more than usual.  Oh, wait.  I know exactly why it sucked, but I don’t really get why it all had to happen in one month.

First, there was the whole iTunes account hacked issue, leading to me getting charged for an app that I didn’t purchase.  I did get that taken care of, but I ended up having to delete my PayPal account (since it was the funding source and I felt like it might have also been compromised) and put a fraud alert on my credit report.  I had to change all of my passwords everywhere, but apparently missed a few, as I would find out a few weeks later.

After the iTunes issue, my laptop decided to take a break.  My external hard drive’s enclosure was also on a break.  The new enclosure came first, but I couldn’t see if it still worked until the laptop came back.  When it did come, I had to format the external hard drive’s drive again.  Now I’m working on getting everything back on the drive.

Meanwhile, I go to log-in on likesototally.me’s WordPress and find that it has been hacked.  I figured out what was hacked–the .htaccess.  I decided to download files from it that I knew were safe and not located elsewhere before trashing everything else.  The deletion finally got done last night.  I changed the domain’s username’s password before I decided that I needed to change the username as well.  So, that was fun.

In terms of non-tech related bad things, I had thought the disintegration of my extended family on my mom’s side was the worst possible thing in the world that was going on, until we got a nice little letter from ALFA (our insurance agency) letting us know that we would be dropped from our homeowner’s policy in February.  Apparently, insuring us was “too risky” and wasn’t worth continuing the (at least) 26 years of business with my family.  Well, technically, they’ll still be doing business with us because the life insurance policies for my dad and for me are under them, but my parents are planning on moving the car insurance when they find a new insurer.

I felt like it was my fault that the insurance got dropped.  First of all, ALFA is the employer of certain members of my family that I am not really on speaking terms with and their position in the company is fairly high, so my first thought went to that ongoing crap.  Even though they don’t want to be around us, I figured out that they wouldn’t do something that petty in order to punish me for talking about them on here.

After realizing that they were probably not behind the dropping of coverage, I thought that maybe my dad had decided not to pay the (staunchly conservative) PAC  ”contribution” when he paid the membership dues for the farm bureau.  (You have to belong to the bureau in order to get insurance and it is requested that your membership payment include a “voluntary” contribution to the PAC.)   But they say that you don’t have to pay into the PAC, and I don’t know if the company would really drop people because you choose not to contribute to it.  Somehow, I’m not sure if that decision might keep us from being insured.

The other possibility is that because of the continuing issue with the grass, this house might be considered too unsightly for them to insure.  Their standards are pretty high, and my mom suggested (at one point) that they may have been doing some of the reporting to the city about the grass and the stuff on the porch.  Of course, that makes me even more paranoid.  The idea that you can lose your insurance and get threatened with jail time because of grass and because of other random crap is just something that causes me intense anxiety.

And, as per the norm for me, I have felt worse lately.  I’ve had bouts with dizziness, pain, fever, sinus crap, and (of course) the heavy period that came around for a week and a half, and is currently on hiatus again. And I got a call from my family doctor about wanting to do blood work, which is always torture for me, so that has me kind of apprehensive.  Then, of course, there was the depression, mood swings, and generally nuttiness that I usually deal with and that usually gets worse this time of year.  It’s just been the rotten cherry on top of a melted sundae.

So, yeah, this past month has really, really sucked.  I’m hoping that December will be better.  I’m guessing that it won’t, though.  That’s not me being pessimistic or anything.  I’m being completely realistic.  And realizing that the most joyous time of the year is probably going to be suck-filled is awful.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Geekery, Internet, Janet Goes AWOL, Like So Totally Me, Mental Health, Music Stuff, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is, My Sites, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

Come On Now

15
November

My mom decided to call her sister on Saturday to find out why exactly her sister’s family won’t be at Thanksgiving. It was, of course, my fault. Apparently, she is upset because she had been told that I called her an evil bitch. I didn’t remember doing this, so I decided to do a search. In the ten years that I have had this site, I have used the phrase “evil bitch” 3 times.

  • The most recent was in 2010. I referred to a psychiatrist as an evil bitch after she told me I smelled bad, even though I had showered, put on nice smelling clothes, etc. Valid use of the phrase, no?
  • The next most recent was in 2005. It was a reference to the furthest back entry where I had called a psychiatric nurse at the Mental Health Center the “Evil Bitch Monger from Hell”.

Clearly, since my aunt is not a psychiatrist or a psychiatric nurse, I didn’t call her an evil bitch.

I decided to try just evil next.

As for various forms of the word “bitch”, I said others described her decision about the separate Thanksgivings as bitchy, I described someone from the other side of the family as saying things that distressed me and led to me making bitchy responses, I mentioned an argument between my mom and me (later in the argument, my mom began talking about how awful I was vs. her sister, which led to sarcasm from me), I called myself bitchy, I called my eighth grade history teacher a bitchy person and said she was a misogynist, I described the call from my aunt’s daughter-in-law as being done to bitch me out, I described my mom’s mood swings as “incessant bitchiness” right before I first mentioned how frustrated I was about the video on the news, talking about nother bitchy psych nurse, a reference to myself, my mom calling me a bitch, saying my dad was bitchy about Farmville and Facebook, my being pissed at a former family friend, me mentioning a philosophy teacher that I felt was bitchy, and talking about the evil psychiatrist. That’s pretty much it when it comes to calling people bitchy or bitches or anything of the sort. So, technically, I didn’t call my aunt a bitch. I also didn’t call her evil.

She also said that I said that she made my life a living hell. I did accuse her of that as part of a meme I was participating in April. I spelled out my reasons for it, too, which I think she should read since apparently she has never read the actual entry. Other than that, my comments about her have been relatively mild. They have all been based on the same things that were discussed in the other post, which makes sense because we, as a family, have not dealt with the cause behind the feelings. Until we do that, the words will continue to be something that probably comes up. That isn’t a threat. It’s just part of what goes on until some kind of resolution happens.

It’s weird how she is upset over the 5 or 6 that had any negative content about her in the past year, but doesn’t realize I’ve also posted 1 where I was genuinely concerned about her after she had eye surgery, quite a few posts after Thanksgiving last year gushing about her cooking the meal, the 3 or so in the last year where I talk about missing her in some way, etc. That’s out of around 100 posts total that I’ve made on fuzzypinkslippers.com in the Family category and the 152 on the site overall the beginning of 2011. Most of the posts in the Family category refer to my mom or my dad or both. There are  probably more posts from the last year about going to court over my grass than there are about my aunt. So, I think a littler perspective might be helpful.

Now, if she wants to claim that I’ve been more harsh about her daughter in law, then that might be a legitimate issue, but…I haven’t even called her a bitch or evil.  I did accuse her of being a catalyst in tearing apart our family and of having a double standard about medications, but I didn’t even get all that vicious on her.  So really,  they need to get over it.  If what I say is causing them so much anxiety, stress or anger, then they are old enough to know how to click the little x in the corner of the browser.  They are also old enough to not have surrogate blog monitors check out the site for them.  I think that if they would lay off on the familial pressure (via the monitoring and the accusations they make to my mom and grandmother) then things might get better.  I keep posting things related to them because their anxiety heightens my anxiety and my paranoia.  I really wouldn’t think that people who are related to me would want to cause me to either get so angry that I have severe headaches or so depressed that I cry for hours on end because I’ve heard yet again how horrible (in terms of actions) yet insignificant (in terms of importance to them) I am.  Honestly, the best way to end all of this drama is for them to back off.  They want to prove that I’m immature or wild or needing to be controlled by my parents*…that’s fine, but this all seems like a way to bait me, which doesn’t make them come off as being much more mature than me.

*Yes, my aunt actually told my mother that my mom should be able to exert some kind of parental control on me about what I blog about because she is my parent.  Yes, my aunt knows that in less than four months, I will be 28.  She also knows that I am a lot better behaved at 27 than my mom was during her teens and twenties.  So, again…perspective.

3 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Holidays, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is

A Face That Laughs Every Time I Fall

7
November

I had therapy this afternoon. As usual, I forgot that I had therapy today until I saw the appointment on the family appointment schedule/calendar. The appointment was going to be one where I discussed something that has been pestering me since I was a little kid. It was going to be one where I discussed something I’ve only mentioned to two or three people total in my life. Of course, therapy never seems to work out the way I plan on it working.

One main reason that I didn’t discuss that pestering issue is that Nana had called at about noon today. She’d told me that a certain relative had been talking to her about Thanksgiving. The relative asked if my parents and I were going to be at Thanksgiving dinner (lunch) on Thanksgiving Day. Nana said that of course we were going to be there. The relative then said that that meant she (and her family) would not be at that dinner and that they would have Thanksgiving some other time. I wasn’t too surprised by this, given the amount of drama that has been brewing related to it. I was okay with it, or so I thought.

Having them there in a “normal” year is a rather stressful thing for me anyway. I have internal fights and arguments in preparation for the day. I have panic attacks about what might happen if I mention certain things during dinner and cause an actual brawl. I stress out over how I might end up being belittled for my education (or “lack” thereof) or how I might see or hear them give someone (Nana, mom, or me) a difficult time about their use of pain medicine or some other relatively minor thing that ends up causing major family drama. So not having them there means that I won’t be feeling quite the same level of pre-Thanksgiving anxiety and stress. That should be a good thing.

It isn’t, though. I feel guilty. I feel like this drama is my fault, even though it wouldn’t have started if there weren’t issues with how the family functions to begin with. The drama has been there for a long time, even if it hadn’t been exposed. So I shouldn’t feel so horribly guilty about it, but I do. And I think that was the purpose of the boycott. Maybe that’s just my inherent paranoia, but it seems like this is a way to make me feel bad about the whole situation and to feel even less comfortable about my blog and my way of handling stress related to this kind of stuff.

It doesn’t really impact my decision about what I’ll talk about online, though. I will continue to talk about how I feel openly. I’ll do it even though it might be part of what drives a wedge between the two sides of my family. I’ll even do it knowing that there are still regular visitors from Oneonta and Guntersville/Arab/Boaz/Albertville, which I know must be them coming to check on me to see what I might be saying about them. (Yes, Analytics is still catching them checking out fuzzypinkslippers.com, my personal tumblr, my LJ, Hyperaware, and Blah Blah Biddy Blah. They may be visiting other sites of mine, which amps up my paranoia.)

Instead, it just makes me feel like it doesn’t matter that the problems with the family wouldn’t be discussed if I didn’t blog about it.  It makes me feel like my feelings about everything are insignificant.  And that is what I mainly talked about with my therapist.  Anytime I’m told not to talk about something or told, in general, to shut up or that someone doesn’t care, it triggers the internal belief that I am insignificant, which triggers the brutal depression and the worsening of social isolation.

It also makes me feel like I’m supposed to feel guilty about how I am tearing apart the family, even though I am not the one making the decision not to show up for Thanksgiving (for the third time in a decade) and I am not the one who is trying to make this about one part of the family being more important than another part. Knowing that family is extremely important to me and then trying to use it against me to make me feel guilty is about like handing a razor blade to a suicidal individual and challenging them to end their life.  It is using a known weapon and a known psychological stressor to manipulate one person into doing what you want, and that isn’t fair.

Between this ongoing drama with those family members and the repeating pattern of destructive interpersonal relationships, I broke down about how “people suck” and how I felt like I keep entering and perpetrating dysfunctional relationships because I get something out of being in those relationships.  (Almost twenty years of therapy and I just figured this out.)  She told me to look up the Karpman drama triangle, which I’ve added to examples of below:

Karpman drama triangle - ex 1
Karpman drama triangle - ex 2

So, I guess that internet theory about online drama perpetrators/victims being equally responsible for online drama also applies to real life.  I think, in many of the relationships, I am definitely continuing patterns of victim-like behavior and perpetrator-like behavior.  (Sometimes I trigger/accuse someone of doing something, which starts the whole cycle over again.)  My therapist compared the drama issue with something that foster kids do.  (She was a social worker with the agency we did foster care out of, and handled Stephanie’s case during part of Stephanie’s stay with us.)  Apparently, what I do is like what those kids do when they are so used to placements failing that they become convinced that a placement will fail and decide that they will make it fail so that they have some level of control over their lives.  I guess that makes sense.  I’ve always felt out of control when it comes to a lot of my life, so it would make sense that I would do something that causes me to not only be miserable, but also allows me to control when I am getting miserable.

I need to get out of that cycle.  I also need to form healthier attachments.  And more than all of that, I need to figure out a way to be happy.  I’m not talking about the little bursts of joy that any person might have during their life.  I need to find a way to have some kind of sustainable joy in life. I didn’t want to work on my mental health for years and I actually enjoyed periods of crippling depression because it was more predictable than happiness. I really need to change that mindset.  I need to learn how to deal with life and how to be happier.

So, I didn’t get to talk about one thing that may have been to blame for some (or many of my emotional issues), but I did get to talk about another.  It actually makes me feel grateful to the family member for reacting in a way that some close to me have referred to as being “immature” or “bitchy” because without that reaction, I might not have started working on one of my major psychological issues.  So, yay for that.  Maybe I should have more thoroughly pissed that person off much sooner.  I might have graduated from college.  I might have gotten married by now.  I might have felt happy.  Okay, maybe none of that would have happened, but it does make me wonder.

3 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, Blah Blah Biddy Blah, Confessions, Family, Friends, Holidays, Hyperaware, Internet, LiveJournal, Mental Health, My Sites, School, Tumblr

When You Say Nothing At All

10
October

Well, in less than 48 hours, I may get to find out if I am going to go to jail or pay some hefty fine. I really am not looking forward to this. I shouldn’t be too nervous, since this is the third hearing that I’ve been scheduled for with this and, aside from my outburst last time and being made to feel like I was about 2 inches tall the time before, nothing has really happened this time around. I don’t want to quit worrying altogether, though. I have this feeling that if I don’t go in at least slightly anxious, then I will end up feeling completely overwhelmed or unprepared by whatever ends up happening.

Other than my inevitable meeting hearing with fate the judge and the city attorney, I don’t think I have anything else going on this week or anytime soon. Molly is going back to the vet this week, I think, to get her stitches taken out from her surgery. My mom will probably have lots of fun chores for me to do for her.

Oh, my mom is supposed to try pool therapy. I have a feeling her trying it won’t last long. I think that she truly has given up on getting around by herself and that she doesn’t feel that she needs to work toward getting better. If I suggested that to her, as I have tried to do in the past, then she would freak out and act like I’m just not understanding her pain or her weakness. I understand the issues that she has. I understand them quite well. What I don’t understand is how she thinks that that pain or that weakness means that she is excused from ever even trying to do anything at all. (Yeah, I know that sounds weird coming from me.)

Ugh. I’ve had (what feels like) a migraine brewing for a few hours now. I know that getting off the computer, shunning all electricity, etc. might help it get better, but it also might do nothing and will leave me in pain and bored.

I was going to call my family doctor to find out the results from the tests related to my last appointment, since I haven’t heard back on the ultrasound and the urine culture shouldn’t take too long to do. I didn’t call since it was Columbus Day and I figured that their office would close up shop for a holiday. I just need to remember to call tomorrow.

Comment » | Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Sickness and Health

Once Upon My Life

22
September

I get to go to the doctor tomorrow. I think I have a UTI, which probably embarrasses me more to mention than it would embarrass anyone else to read. (I have this whole shameful feeling issue when it comes to bodily functions.) I tried to ignore it for the first half of the week, but around the time my back and side started hurting, I decided that I needed to see a doctor. So, even though I ignored my need to go because of the continuing sinus/lung crap, I am not going to ignore this particular issue.

Since I really don’t have much else to mention, I guess I could share my new Google+ profile. When my old Google/Gmail account became disabled after the massive spam issue., I also lost my Google+ account. So, now I have a new one. Feel free to add me. If I don’t add you back soon, please let me know in the comments. Sometimes I have this very ditzy tendency that can manifest in scatterbrained behavior. It can range from simply seeming dumb to being completely clueless about various things.

Oh, last night, while writing that massively moody post, I realized that I must be going into my severe depressive season. Actually, I think I’ve probably been in it for a while now. I don’t know that I ever really stopped being depressed after I started going into the sad/tired/worthless moods last Fall. Around the time that I decided that I didn’t have any real friends, I guess I just started tuning out of my life in general. I’ve ignored a lot that people have been saying about their private lives. I’ve not been as talkative on Twitter or Facebook. When I am talkative on any site, I seem to be picking more fights, which is something I do when I start feeling more depressed. (I also do it when I’m in a mixed episode.) I guess it just became easier to not function at all in the world. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to start functioning anytime soon, but I want to and that’s gotta count for something, right?

Comment » | Google+, Mental Health, Sickness and Health

You Don’t Know a Thing About Me

21
September

In a little over a week, I will be back in court. Even though I know that the city was lying in court back in July about the grass, I am still very, very nervous. Since, according to one of my cousins, Municipal Courts are basically set up to be revenue sources for the city, it is unlikely that I will be found not guilty. So, I will be told that I have to pay between $200 and $500, plus court costs, and I could go to jail for “not more than 30 days” for the violations.

I don’t have that money. I will not have that money anytime in the near future, but it will still be expected of me. And when I tell the judge that I’m on a fixed income, he’ll suggest two months. If I tell him that two months won’t do a damn bit of good (in a nicer tone, of course), he will say that that doesn’t really matter. I guess once you’ve been a lawyer long enough to be a judge that you don’t really understand the idea of having less than $500 a month in income coming in.

And while I’m dealing with all of this court crap, I’m also dealing with all the stupid family drama. My mom and I got into a really big argument the other night. She threatened to call DHR on me, which I told her that she could go ahead and do. She started saying how they would move her out and suggesting I would go to jail.

I love how my mom’s memory is so great that she remembers that DHR said that she could be moved out of the house if conditions weren’t good enough for her care, but she didn’t remember that the social worker told her in the same breath that I could also be removed from this house if conditions were not good enough for my care. Of course, my mom’s always been good with the revisionist memory when it could suit her.

My mom and I got into the massive argument, which had basically been brewing for weeks now, because she wanted me to take garbage out. She was demanding that it out right that moment. It was about one o’clock in the morning. I don’t live in a really bad part of town, but I didn’t want to go outside by myself in the middle of the night. I told her that I would do it later, which wasn’t good enough for her. So, I took it out. She and started bitching back and forth at one another, which led to me telling her that I some point she needs to learn to get up off her couch and start getting her water and her food for herself from time to time. This fight occurred after two straight nights of being awakened twice to bring her water and food and being ordered to get my father up because she couldn’t walk five more feet from the bathroom to the door to the bedroom. (She can walk to the bathroom most of the time, and that day was no exception to that ability.)

During the fight, she went from claiming that she had fallen the night before to basically admitting that she’d just stumbled. (Bouts of stumbling are regularly classified as falls from her.) I tried to get her to understand that she isn’t the only person prone to falling, and that when I fall, I generally hit the ground. She was then trying to explain how she just can’t walk and she just can’t go back to physical therapy and she just can’t get the doctors to understand that she has problems with things like her memory or her ability to get around. I have a feeling that if they aren’t understanding that she “can’t” do these things or that she’s having trouble with things that it is probably because she is not telling them things properly. She is probably telling them something that she thinks that they expect her to say. She does this on the phone with people and I’ve seen her sit back and let doctors think that nothing is wrong with her. Regardless of what she says, I think she does enjoy having things done for her. And I don’t mind doing things for her if she absolutely cannot do them, but I have a feeling that she can do more than she lets on. I also have a feeling that she doesn’t completely grasp just how difficult she has been, as of late.

I know that she thinks that I whine too much or that I’m lazy. I know that both of my parents think that. I know that friends that I know both online and offline think that, too. And I guess that maybe I am lazy. Maybe two years of being on what seems like an endless shift of care-taking (i.e. fetching things for my mom, sleeping in the living room so that if she needs me I will hear her, sacrificing sleep so that I can make sure that I do actually hear her if she needs me, standing around fixing food and water in the way that she likes, hearing how I’m doing something wrong, hearing how I don’t get things to her quickly enough, and taking care of almost anything she asks me to do, and some things that she doesn’t) has worn me out. Half the time, I feel so damn exhausted that I think that if I died it might actually be a good thing. I have given up on ever having a life. I have done a lot of that for my mom. I could still be hanging out with my church “friends” and doing things that they liked doing (not that I really enjoyed them that much) but every time I try to get away, it seems like I get to go through a guilt trip. Hell, I get guilt trips even when I’m here all the time. I am tired. I am really tired. And I was so tired the other night that I told my mother, among other things, that maybe she should move in with my aunt–her sister, aka the one who won’t talk to me. (This is also the aunt that my mother has recently begun waxing poetically about how perfect she is and how wonderful she is, even though the total contact that her sister has truly initiated in the last 2 years was a Get Well Soon card.)

I guess I have to accept that this is my life. Misery is apparently my destiny, so I guess I should just get accustomed to it. And in case you’re wondering what the fight with mom and the court stuff have to do with one another: I am often reminded that this house, though it is in my name legally and though I can be fined and imprisoned for things related to it, doesn’t belong to me. I am a guest here. And sometimes I really feel like I am definitely unwanted.

I could probably bring it up in therapy, and the therapist would probably suggest I move into low-income housing. This would lead to another fight, my self-esteem tumbling even more, and absolutely no good coming out of it. I can’t go back to school. Even if I could focus, there is no way that I could ever pay for it. So, I’ve got to figure out how to get out of this damn house and out of all of this unhealthy shit before I go off the deep end.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Friends, General, Mental Health, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

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