Spoiler my brain keeps going "you're a girl" then going "non ononononoononon not a girl" and dysphoria in general in relation to my chest (and vaguely to my genitals... i'm feeling a lack? this is new :o|) a;lskghda;sf HUGS TO ALL
Spoiler sort of set off anxiety by doing that longass writeup in the ITA forum. fuckfuckfuck this was a bad idea hugs hugs hugs hugs
-submerges self in box; cocoons in blankets- Spoiler Should probably stick this in the advice section because fuuuuuuck. Also almost subaccounted this but fuck it I need the hugs. I'm gonna give a blanket CW because I'm stream-of-consciousness-ing this so I can actually do it and I've had a messed up life and I don't know which parts are going to come up. So my grandpa is 1) incredibly loud, 2) incredibly opinionated, 3) convinced that Meaning Well is enough, and 4) on a mission. He's retired from his cushy high-paying job to build a really cool thing. That's great! If it works, he wants to turn it into a company and make the entire family, even the extended branches, part of it so we all benefit from it. Also cool! I: 1) currently have my therapist debating a PTSD diagnosis (for mostly non-family related issues), 2) flip my shit when people close to me are In Conflict, 3) REALLY freak out when people are yelling, 4) am also emotionally stunted and have a hard time expressing said shit-flipping and instinctively hold it in until I'm alone to melt down 5) am innately self-destructive and will semi-intentionally put myself in the worst possible position (right in the middle) when conflict is happening, 6) am a shitty drain on society on disability for depression and anxiety, living with my grandparents on account of being unable to go outside more than twice a week. Brief history of my family fuckery so this makes sense: my cousin, little sister, and I both spent the later parts of our minority living with our grandparents due to various other family issues. My sis and I are adopted by them, they were going to adopt my cousin but her dad's been fucked off since she was 2 so they couldn't get his permission. Our bio parents are still our parents, it was just legally easier to handle us being raised by the grandparents if we were adopted. Since I was ~11 and my sister as ~2 we've lived with them, I moved away for a year after I hit 18 to live with my other grandparents and go to college, which was a cataclysmically bad idea and ended with my most recent and most serious suicide attempt. Other grandparents flipped out because hey, I actually AM sick, it's not just because of living with my dad's parents! (The whole thing between the two sides of my family will probably go on an ITA topic once I gather the spoons.) So they shipped me back not two weeks after I got out of the hospital. My cousin, on the other hand, is a brittle diabetic (type 1) diagnosed at 3, and six months older than me. She has a job, an apartment, a fiance, and as of last month a new baby. She was also emotionally abusive growing up (I think? Like I said, I need to make that post once I can), and is not the cause of my potential PTSD but definitely didn't help my mental state. But her illness is physical and notable and my grandma understood my depression more or less but my grandpa's a very physical-minded person. He didn't believe sinus headaches were a thing until he had his first one at 40. It took two years of watching me fight with my illness to understand something was legitimately wrong. Like I said, he Means Well, but in between telling me he loves me and would take care of me as much as he can/needs to, he would also talk about how I just needed to find the thing I really wanted to do and hold onto it. All I needed was a Dream to Achieve and everything would be shiny! And then I got caught self-harming and I couldn't function on weekdays after school, had to go to a continuation school to graduate and pretty much save my sanity, got caught still self-harming, and he finally caught on that there is something legitimately wrong with me. He was better with my sister's autism, but her symptoms were much obvious and they caught it early and started working around it when she was 4. I had been suffering depressive symptoms for 2-3 years before my diagnosis but my life was such a shitstorm and everyone including myself thought it was a combination of coming to terms with Certain Events + being a pariah at school + being a pre-teen-to-teenager and therefor Emotional (also afab). So fast forward to recently and Grandpa and his Project. He's retired from his job, is hiring people, making it happen. Cool, cool. But he obsesses over things, and would talk about it constantly. Pretty much everyone else in the house was Done with hearing about it by the first week but it's his Baby and not wanting to hear about it means you're against it! Also he wouldn't take breaks from Worrying About the Project and we'd try to get him to clock out, goddamn man take a break! But that means you don't want to hear about the Project which means you're against it! Finally we got him to grok that no, we just don't want it to be the only thing you ever talk about. We could be discussing dinner and he'd turn it into being about the Project. It was bad. He's got the point now, and it's easier now that progress is being made. My cousin's fiance has a shit job. My grandpa, in his grand vision, asked him to quit his shitty-but-going-to-be-there job to manage the people being hired to work on the Project with higher pay. (Did I mention everything is all about the Project? Yeah.) Since they haven't even made the first unit yet, much less sold one, and grandpa's paying everyone out of the savings and retirement money right now, cousin's fiance refused. I understand why: his job is shitty and low-paying but he's got an apartment and a fiance and a new baby and that job's going to be there a month from now, two months from now, half a year from now. If grandpa's Project falls through, where does he and his family get left? (The insinuation that the Project might not shit gold bricks means you are against the Project) Grandpa's very big on being the Provider, and since my cousin and her fiance are both young adults still slogging through college and working shitty jobs, the grandparents have been helping them make rent, making payments on their car, bought most of the baby stuff, and so forth. Another thing about my grandpa: he drinks with a fervor that borders on religiousness. Beer and tequila mostly, and he doesn't get violent or pass out or anything like that, but he gets talkative, angry, and loud. And since everything is about the Project... A few facts about my dad: 1) He's low-empathy and self-diagnosed himself as a high-functioning sociopath when he was in high school. He'd be getting an actual diagnosis except for 2) a significant part of my crazy fucked up life was also his crazy fucked up life and I was mostly too young for permanent memories to form. He wasn't. Even before I was born his life was crazy and fucked up, and it's left him a little crazy and fucked up. He deals with it by being either completely candid the way people share amusing high school memories, or he becomes incredibly and increasingly hostile until people stop prying. This is a barrier for therapy. He acknowledges this and has given it several tries (and is actually working on going in again) but he's intimidating and finding people willing to work with his particular brand of fucked-up in a small area is... difficult. 3) Between his experiences and his coping mechanisms (various drugs to various degrees) he's now agoraphobic and has a harder time going outside than I do. After couchsurfing for several years as he lost functionality he moved back in with his parents (and us! Yay!) but doesn't have a Proper Job. He mostly does troubleshooting for all the computers in the house. 4) One of the ways you know dad respects you is that he is completely, brutally honest. You might not like what he says, but if you ask him for his honest opinion you will receive it without any bullshit. 5) Relatedly, he's a very logical person when it comes to emotions. He recognizes his aren't exactly standard (see: low-empathy) and has built up a structure of rules when dealing with both his own emotions and other peoples' that makes him semi-functional and also (by his own terms, not mine) Not a Monster. He's not a Spock, but if you claim you're trying to have a logical discussion but keep filtering everything through your emotions he's going to keep hitting you with the logic hammer. And if you keep saying "I don't know why X" even though he explained EVERYONE's POV on the situation, he's going to be annoyed. Neither my dad nor my grandpa are willing to be the first to walk away from anything. Dad respects grandpa, and therefor doesn't dance around his point or try to protect his feelings when they talk. When grandpa is drunk-rambling, anything that isn't total agreement is an Attack, and him being wrong makes him a Horrible Person who should just move into his trailer and send us checks. This is bullshit. Dad points out this is bullshit. Grandpa gets angry! He roars on and on about how he's SO TERRIBLE for taking care of us BROKEN PEOPLE (to his credit, he's never actually referred to us as that specifically) who Contribute Nothing and Drain Everyone's Resources and Patience. "When was the last time you had a job?" he asks my dad, who stares at him like he just shat on a plate and microwaved it because the question is that unimaginably stupid: dad needs two week's advance warning to gear himself up to help with the shopping. Now that I'm getting disability and paying rent I'm no longer a target, but I used to be. Now grandpa uses my being on disability against my dad! Goodie! Fortunately we've been short on THAT particular conversation thread now that the Project is All. All Hail the Solar Trailer. All Hail. This one got so long it won't let me post it all at once. Fuck.
Spoiler: Part 2 So, tonight, grandpa brings up cousin's fiance turning down his Generous Job Offer for his Shitty Dead-End Job. He brings it up while I'm poking at my art, out of nowhere, talking about how I have a thread of reality to me (MY SENSE OF REALITY IS WOBBLY AT BEST. I PERFORM REGULAR REALITY CHECKS. I'M NUTTIER THAN A GODDAMN FRUIT BAT.) and I keep him anchored. Aww, that's nice! I think. I point out that I'm the certifiably crazy one in the family. I spent time in a psych ward and everything! It's kind of a running joke, and one of the things that helps me cope: we loudly discuss my being crazy. It... sounds counter productive but it helps. I'm not making it up, I'm not an attention whore, I'm batshit! It's validating. He laughs, and then brings up how stupid <cousin's fiance's> decision is, turning down the job. By comparison, I'm the sane one! Fiance turned down the job a month ago. Usually dad's the one who talks him through his late-night drunk rambles and they always end up fighting and some tiny fucking naive part of me thinks that maybe if he actually talks to someone who'll be diplomatic about it, it might finally make it into his head instead of ending in another shoutfest! I hate shoutfests. They are emotional kneecaps for me. So I point out a couple of potential thought patterns cousin's fiance might have gone through before reaching his decision. All of them are met with variations of "That's fucking STUPID. That's not the decision *I* would have made." Each variation is louder. He's shouting now, and I am in Crisis Mode, which happens when people are shouting. Crisis Mode consists of: not getting run over, shutting down all extraneous emotions, and absolutely not crying. Shouting/yelling always makes me cry, but I am in Crisis Mode and cannot. It's a thing of beauty: I can feel the tears burning in my ducts but my eyes don't even water. I am very experienced at utilizing Crisis Mode. (It kind of screwed me over during the pre-diagnosis "I think something's wrong with me" phase: I could seem fine for an indefinite amount of time until I was in a safe place to break down. Safe place means no-one can see, hear, or otherwise notice that I'm crying. I don't cry quiet. I have managed Crisis Mode for days when I felt I needed to.) The repetition is a thing that happens every time: Every fifteen minutes the conversation restarts from square one, except our emotions are even more worn. Later he insists it's because fiance is afraid of actually working. "It's a five dollar raise for less hours. All he does now is check people in to the shitty hotel. If he worked for me he'd be managing people, which is Real Work. That's why he doesn't want to do it." This is wrong on so many layers of wrong I'm speechless, and point out Yet Another Alternative Viewpoint once I remember that I am Not Getting Run Over. Yet another variation of the previous song and dance: completely idiotic decision and not what he would have done. There is no escape now, and I'm only fielding it more-or-less alone because dad was asleep when he started, though the shouting woke him up (he sleeps on the futon in the front room, we're in the dining room right next to it) and now he's taking potshots. I think he's trying to take heat off of me- Dad's an asshole, everyone knows that, he's 0k with being the villain if that's what it takes- but it's not helping because I'm sitting right across from grandpa and have mentioned the possibility that the Project might not be successful. This argument is with Me now. I'm ok with that. I can take it. I've survived worse. I am Expendable: if he's fighting with me he's not fighting with dad. Raised voices are kneecaps for me: Conflict among my loved ones are curbstomps. My usual little tremors are climbing the richter scale and my lips have gone numb, my eyes are burning hot but I'm still Not Crying. Crisis Mode holds. "I keep asking you guys for advice and all I get is ridicule!" Grandpa says. This is another mainstay of every argument. We all deflect with humor. It keeps us friendly. But when he's in Serious Mode there are No Jokes Allowed. I deal with conflict with people I like by making jokes. Usually at my own expense, but sometimes I rib others too. It's not mean spirited. It's hardly even rude. But he's in Martyr Mode again. I check the clock. 10:40. Crisis Mode starts to fail: extra emotions slip through. All of these arguments happen between 9 and midnight. Drinking starts with dinner and ends when he goes to bed. I am tired of the fighting. He doesn't even remember them most of the time. Maybe it's the drinking. Maybe it's the mini-strokes he's been having (I can't bring up the memory loss in case it's the latter: that puts me too far into the Asshole Zone and he's never hit anyone in the family as long as I've been alive but he's bigger than me and he's Loud and he's Angry and I'm a scared little kid. I'm 22 and eight years old all at once and it's not his fault but I'm scared to push too hard because what if. It'd never happen: he'd never forgive himself if it did. I know that. But I'm small and I'm scared and I'm tired. Shore the breach, devote an extra subroutine to not hunching in, ducking down. Don't Look Scared. Sometimes that's part of Crisis Mode too. "Maybe this isn't the best time to be having this argument." I say. If we can talk about it before he decides it's time to rant at everyone maybe something will actually change. "Well when I wake up in the morning all of you are asleep! I figured you're all awake and ready to talk to me." Dad and I are both insomniacs. Sometimes we don't sleep for days. Sometimes we sleep too much. We're never rested. We're always tired. Our schedules almost never coincide. This is also another old hat: we're always sleeping when he needs us. Useless. Lazy. Worthless. The things he's too nice to admit he's thinking but we both here. Neither of us acknowledge the unspoken. "I'm sorry both of our sleep schedules are fucked!" I hate that. 'I'm sorry I'm so terrible' because that's what he wants to hear but I have to say it to reach the next part. "I didn't mean in the morning. Just not at 11 at night when you've been drinking and we are all so done-" "I am definitely done-" Grandpa starts to say and I know that argument too: this is where he 'ends' the argument, I turn away and go back to what I was doing (the art-pokings are spoiled. Yet again I have failed at picking up the pen. Even considering doing so feels like sisyphian task. Fucking great: something for me to hate myself for later), he stews and eventually starts taking potshots at me until I respond, and then it's my fault for starting the argument over again. I'M the one who ~can't drop it.~ I interrupt before it gets that far. I do not wince. I want to but I don't. Do Not Get Run Over. "I meant with the DAY. We have these arguments and then we all go to bed and nobody talks about them until they happen again." Do Not Get Run Over. Do Not, under any circumstances, Cry. I forget what he says next, but he turns it back on us for not bringing it up. He says these times are the ~perfect~ time for having these conversations. Starts talking about how when you're down- it takes him a couple of false starts to say drunk specifically- and you stumble, you see who your real friends are, who's willing to stick with you. click goes the realization. I ask just to be sure: "Did you just admit that you get drunk and start these conversations to see if we'll agree with you?" Eyes shift left, eyes shift right, "No-" then, almost proud: "-Yes, a little bit! I want to know if-" I am not afraid to interrupt this time. "I am going to be completely honest and you probably won't like it." Everything is icewater. I'm watching everything down a tunnel but this is perfect and clear as pain. "That." I'm not raising my voice to be heard over him any more. I am making eye contact. I am bad at eye contact, but I am making the effort and it is notable. The words are carefully formed and clear: I cannot be Emotional for this. "Is emotionally manipulative bullshit." I let an emotion slip through because I am allowed to be proud of this. This is my Very Serious Face. I do not make this face at my family much, but it is Very Serious. I want to add that he should knock it RIGHT THE FUCK OFF but he doesn't hear dad echoing assent from the other room, the conversation turns. I don't remember the rest. He decides that "he needs to find something to make him feel better about the whole thing." Examines the counter. I might be glaring at that. He decides better. Turns on football. Goes out the back door a few minutes later. Comes back a half hour later, leaves his computer and TV on, slams the door to his and grandma's room when he goes to bed. When he first turns on football I gather what nerve I have left, ask if he remembers the argument last week that ended with me having a meltdown. (I ended up shouting down both him and dad, told grandpa to go the fuck to bed and they were both assholes. Neither of them are willing to be the first to walk away. I almost cried. Because of the way I'm broken, because I'm not allowed to let people see me cry I get angry instead. They were fighting and I couldn't breathe and suddenly I was shouting at them both, and then I went through the self-loathing dance because I hate when people raise their voice and I hate when I do it most of all.) He either didn't hear over the TV or ignored me and now I still don't know if he remembers that. That was the last Big fight and I don't know how much more I can take. And I am so fucking tired. That was 11:20ish. It's 2 in the morning now. I don't know if he's even going to remember, I don't know if he remembers the last one, and here I am typing this up and pacing and hating myself because even though everyone but the dog's asleep I still can't let myself cry because I forgot how and all I can do is feel my eyes burn and pace and let out these tiny little half-sobs that don't go anywhere and I'm just fucking tired. And I didn't sleep last night I've been up for 48+ hours and maybe the meds will work this time but just FUCK Goddamn. This is how I felt the last time I tried to off myself. I'm not going to. I'm safe. But this is the same soul-gripping I-Don't-Know-What's-Going-to-Happen-Next uncertainty that terrified me into trying to die rather than face it. I'm dealing with everyone's second hand stress from getting grandpa's FUCKING TRAILER project off the ground and my cousin and her baby and family members who were major parts of my childhood killing themselves and another's succumbing to alzheimer's and every time I think I might be getting better I get knocked back down to wondering what fucking point even is. Oh. Hey. I managed to cry. That's nice.
@Lazarae hugs forever. Hugs and quiet little safe spaces and sleep and warm tasties and the really good meds. Hold on. It'll get better. It will.
God, please Spoiler: dumb gay sads this girl I've been talking to since november has been slowly stopped talking [ugh grammar whatever] to me after visiting me early last month. and we're both young adults, so it's not like we were going to end up together forever, but she was the first one where I could actually kind of see it happening, y'know? She was cool with the weird gender things, and she's gorgeous and we have the same sense of humor and we can talk music all day, but it hasn't happened for a few weeks now. and i'm afraid of asking because if we're done, then i'd rather live in denial for a bit, but i'm gonna have to figure this out eventually i've been thinking that maybe this is what's been happening for like two weeks now, but i think now it's actually hitting me i'm trying to come up with reasons not to go on a bender, but the only one i can think of is financial it's just bringing up all this..bullshit, where my brain's going well, of course, you act really young and you're way too enthusiastic about dumb things, fer chrissakes it's like you're a golden retriever and well, who would put up with you for that long anyway, you spend 4 months out of the year procrastinating yourself into depression and i know it's bullshit, but i can't make it stop it just hurts, getting left behind
i know it, but i don't want to know it. if we don't talk by the end of the week organically, I'll ask her. #look a' that #even got a deadline how adult #it'll give me some time to get my shit together too
Doctor's waiting room. My heartbeat is insane and I'm nervous and lonely. Also the appointment will be an hour late because of schedule mess-ups, so the torment of the waitng room persists. Hugs please.
Heavy conscience about things outside of my control: not fun Spoiler: unironically guilty thoughts about capitalism I had a talk with my friends about how much cheap crap we buy that we know is only this cheap because it was made by slaves. And then about how even expensive stuff was probably also made in sweatshops under appalling conditions, and the price difference just goes to sellers and importers, not producers, but we as the middle-class, while being enormously privileged on a global scale, also have little to no means of surviving only on ethically sourced clothes and food, and frankly no way to check claims that products are ethically-sources because we are still a part of a capitalist system. And then a friend told me a story about a mutual acquaintance who got a shipment from aliexpress which had quickly-scribbled notes inside asking for help in broken English, and I'm having an intense emotional response to that which is completely shutting off the rational part of my head that knows there's nothing I can do about that, and so I am now feeling sad and vaguely disgusted when I look at my many material possessions, esp. accessories I ordered from China. And then feeling annoyed that I get to seek comfort on the internet and enslaved people in sweatshops don't? It's like layer after layer of unshakeable morality badfeels.
@wixbloom /hugs. Yeah, the existential stuff is hard. You can only try to improve your own corner of the world; none of us can fix everything, and it doesn't help to get so overwhelmed and miserable that you're paralyzed. So... you're doing things that make you happy, and making people happy here; that's something, at least.
