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erikaAll I could think a few hours ago, as my mom yelled at me that she had never ever treated me any differently because I was crazy——was I fucking hate the Golden Rule.
I guess I should probably back up a bit. Or a lot.
It all started fairly late in the morning, and I enlisted my mother's help with getting a bug off my dog's head. Gross, right? I'm trying to keep all the really disgusting details out. But, regardless of detail, someone had to hold the puppy still, in case she tried to make a break for it off the table, and someone else had to de-bug-ify my dog. I let my mom hold Teyla while I extracted the pest, and she didn't have to watch. That wasn't the troubling part.
The problem started when she noticed that the table had crumbs on it. She said something like 'I wish people would clean up after themselves,' sighing hugely while wiping things up. I agreed with her, jokingly saying that that was the reason I always eat in my room, because "the dogs know they're allowed to get anything I spill."
Maybe this, though intended as a joke, seemed like I was disavowing any responsibility for communal areas, because she then said 'you should really wipe the table when you get a drink.' I was taken aback and confused, because I really do try to clean up after myself, and I do wipe up when I've spilled something. Also, it doesn't make any sense to me to clean up after myself when I haven't done anything that should leave a mess. I said something about it, and ... yeah.
(As my dad pointed out later, though, the spills might not be visible when I'm pouring iced tea out of a pitcher into a glass resting on a brown table, and besides, what's easier, checking to make sure you haven't spilled anything [which you'd want to do anyway] and giving a quick swish of a cloth or napkin regardless... or having a giant fight? Ah, hindsight + advice from someone who isn't upset about whatever it is——how would I resolve things without you?)
Anyway, things got very bad from there. Voices raised gradually until we were both yelling at each other (it was definitely not one-sided, which becomes important later) and she said she always cleans the kitchen, I pointed out that that hasn't been true for the last month, which was dickish of me, no question, but she was quick to say 'how would you know? I do it before I go to bed!'
Um, because we're the only two people who are generally awake after midnight, I'm often still awake AFTER you've gone to bed (and thus making kitchen runs for iced tea), and even though I might wake up while you guys are at work, I can put together 'kitchen is slightly messier with breakfast/coffee making accoutrement, nothing has been moved, food is still out from last night and needs to be thrown out now' and come up with 'oh, guess no one picked up after dinner last night'?
It's not like I think that's her job, or anything, because I actually don't. I kinda feel like if you're going to claim that you Always Do Shit Around the House And No One Else Ever Does Anything (!!!!!!!!!!!), which is what tends to happen when people get bitchy about cleaning around here, I would not present as your prime piece of evidence something you haven't been doing, is what I'm saying, because I like to be logical and rational in arguments... aaaaaand apparently pointing this out inspires my mom to the level of rage which would be labelled 'go fuck yourself' if it were me.
That was probably the point at which she walked away and I started angrily cleaning. Angry cleaning is A Thing in my house; my mom only ever really cleans when a) people are coming over or b) she's pissed off and taking out her anger on scrubbing/laundry/vacuuming etc. This is established to the point where if no one's scheduled to visit and we see my mom cleaning, my siblings, my father and I have all been known to quietly slip out of the house (generally we do not do this en masse) so we don't get yelled at or, worse, enlisted.
The dogs just hide. They're maybe smarter about this, really.
Anyway so my dad came upstairs, he and I had a very calm discussion of what had happened, I started feeling guilty because hey, it's not like she was asking me to bleach the countertops every day, it was just "ugh, table's sticky, make sure you're wiping up after you pour your sugary tea into your glass, because that could be part of it!"
I hate the way fights inevitably get worse. I hate getting criticized even more, though, and the problem with my brain is that even "please wipe the table after you get a drink" is taken as criticism.
I can't really defend this, but the reason I do it is pretty simple, and that's because I grew up in an environment where that was a gateway to being attacked. If Voldemort (my abusive older brother) saw something he didn't like around the house and there was any way to pin that on me, it was go time. Verbal berating, physical abuse, anything he wanted to do——it sounds ridiculous, really, and I suppose it is, because I look back and I wonder, you know, weren't my parents home, weren't they around? But often times, no, they weren't home, they weren't around, they were doing their own thing, in another room, or at work or cooking dinner or it was summer and that gave him free rein.
Then I topped that off by living with an abusive fuckhead in California for two years, who DID THE EXACT SAME THING, came back home after that imploded, and lived with Voldemort again for 18 months or so.
Basically what I'm trying to explain is that for at least 18 years of my life, if I fucked up in ANY way, and it was noticed, it meant that I was going to get hurt, emotionally or physically. It's really, really fucking hard to take any potential criticism lightly after that, even if it's something as OBVIOUSLY BENIGN as what my mother initially said.
And... well, if you live with an abuser, the best defense is a good offense. If you point out how much shit they pile on you——sometimes, but not always——it triggers their "fuck, I have to make up for this" part of the cycle and you can escape the rain of shit that will otherwise descend.
That's not the only thing that led to this fuckup, though. Since Wednesday, two of the people in my life that are closest to me have basically said "you're being a dick" and then taken it back pretty much immediately, blaming it on their own stuff. This is legit, as far as it goes—I believe that they said it because they're stressed out, and/or in pain, and/or have dealt with a bunch of people against something because of what turns out to be sexist/racist reasons, and are therefore not evaluating what I've said from a place of true equanimity.
It still fucking hurts, though. As I said to a friend, and posted here, it makes me want to start Assholes Anonymous. If multiple people say to me that I'm a dick, I'm going to assume I'm being a dick. That's just how it is.
Plus, there's a girl in my group class at NAMI who hates my guts. Every week I go there and it's the same thing: she acts like recovery is a magical place where everyone will be normal again, and that all you have to do to get there is TRY HARDER.
Believe it or not, I don't agree with this. It's not my experience, it's not the experience of anyone else I know with chronic mental illness, and I think she's deluding herself. Not that I've said this in so many words, but I'm sure it's come through in some of the stuff I've said (which everyone else seems to agree with, by the by).
I'm also pretty sure she hates me because she's jealous of me, but that's something else entirely. Still, this week, she decided to continue refusing to refer to me by name (while conspicuously using everyone else's), and when I said something in a very thought-out attempt to be supportive (as opposed to my usual running of the mouth, I make a great deal of effort to be very nice to this person), she interrupted me to say "you're not borderline? You only have traits?"
Yes, um, but that wasn't my point, that was just a side thing...
At which point she interrupted me again to say something along the lines of 'THIS IS BULLSHIT, I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW SOME PEOPLE WHO ARE OBVIOUSLY BORDERLINE AREN'T DIAGNOSED WITH IT, I JUST THINK MY THERAPIST HATES ME WOE WOE WOE'.
She gets away with it because she doesn't use my name, basically. For extra fun bonus points, this woman isn't even in the class, she's just there as an assistant to the group leaders.
This isn't all in my head, either; I've had three separate people from the group ask me if [Woman's Name] and I had a fight at some point. Nope, she just hates me, I've never actually talked to her outside of group. I'm sorry, I guess? I don't really know what to do here. I've talked to one of the group leaders and apparently she got talked to, but it doesn't seem to have actually done anything, so... whatever.
IF YOU SKIPPED ALL OF THAT BECAUSE I'M VERY TL;DR: people have been criticizing me at least once a day for the last three days, and I'm apparently now at the stage of "fuck you, fuck me, I hate everyone, I'm going to start crying and hide in my room forever and never talk to anyone again."
For the sake of your own mental health and mine, I suggest that if you would like to tell me to change anything about myself, you maybe wait a few weeks if possible. Otherwise I'm probably going to flip the fuck out.
ANYWAYYYYYYYYY——so I go to apologize to my mom, and I knocked on her door and told her I wanted to apologize. What I should have done was say "I'm sorry, that was going to extremes on my part, I'll make sure to wipe up the table after I'm done" and Get The Fuck Out.
What I did was try to explain, you know, I realize I was way too upset about this, I'm going to do what you asked, but here's my reasons blah blah blah.
Bad idea. God forbid I "blame" any of this on my older brother, who my parents still love, not even explicitly but just by MENTIONING that I've been around abusive people for a long time and so I tend to get extremely upset at criticism. See, I joked with my writing tutor yesterday that I could murder people and my mother would probably say they had it coming——true, probably, but the thing is that she loves all of my siblings like that, and some of the worst fights we've had are when I had to get her to realize that YES, VOLDEMORT IS AN ABUSIVE DICKHEAD, SORRY TO TELL YOU THIS ABOUT YOUR SON, BUT IT'S REALLY FUCKED ME UP.
Anyway, I started crying after she yelled at me about how it was all my fault for starting to yell at her (and she was never yelling, nope, never)... see, this is why I hate fights, it inevitably becomes NOTHING about the actual issue and more about your tone and volume or the way you made the other person feel and that means it's totally okay for them to get way pissed off at you despite mistakes being made on both sides—— I don't even know really how it goes after that because I'm so freaked out I'm crying and starting to disassociate at that point.
But ——I was the one who tried to explain, you know, I'm crazy, and that means that I'm not going to react well to some things that other people deal with as a normal everyday thing.
I wanted to go on to say that I was working on it, etc, but... that was the point where the beginning of the entry started, which is her literally yelling at me that she had never ever treated me any differently because I was crazy——was I fucking hate the Golden Rule.
For those of us who have memory problems, or just don't want to google it, the Golden Rule is: "Treat others the way you wish they'd treat you."
Here's the problem with that: I don't want to be treated the way you'd treat yourself. You're not me! I probably need different things from you than you need from other people! I want to be treated with as much kindness and consideration as you'd give yourself, maybe, but tailored to my needs.
It's not that I think my mom should expect less from me because I'm crazy, but ... it's not fair to expect me to be able to easily cope with everything that someone who DOESN'T have mental illness can easily cope with. That's pretty much the definition of a disorder, there——the things that bother me don't bother other people, and it severely impacts my life.
I don't want her to stop telling me to clean up after myself, or whatever she needs to tell me, regardless of whether it's going to be hard to hear it, just like I don't want my friends to stop calling me out on things if they think it's necessary. I just want some recognition that maybe there's a better way for everyone who has to deal with me here, and that's, you know, asking me how they can tell me things that THEY KNOW are difficult for me to hear.
I'd love to come up with some general rules, but I don't know that there are any. It varies so much depending on the person with MI, in this case me, and the place that the person who wants to tell me something occupies in my life——I'm going to have different advice for friends at varying levels of closeness as opposed to my boyfriend as opposed to my parents as opposed to one of my siblings. It just fucking varies.
Stop treating me like you want to be treated. Treat me like I want to be treated, to the best of your ability.
And, just so you know, I feel like shit about writing this, posting it, and whatever. I really cannot handle any criticism right now. Advice is fine, but please keep in mind: I know my parents love me and make a lot of allowances for me, I know my friends care about me too, that's not the problem, the problem is that I can't fucking handle daily life and the way people are acting towards me is exacerbating this. Alright? Alright.
I guess I should probably back up a bit. Or a lot.
It all started fairly late in the morning, and I enlisted my mother's help with getting a bug off my dog's head. Gross, right? I'm trying to keep all the really disgusting details out. But, regardless of detail, someone had to hold the puppy still, in case she tried to make a break for it off the table, and someone else had to de-bug-ify my dog. I let my mom hold Teyla while I extracted the pest, and she didn't have to watch. That wasn't the troubling part.
The problem started when she noticed that the table had crumbs on it. She said something like 'I wish people would clean up after themselves,' sighing hugely while wiping things up. I agreed with her, jokingly saying that that was the reason I always eat in my room, because "the dogs know they're allowed to get anything I spill."
Maybe this, though intended as a joke, seemed like I was disavowing any responsibility for communal areas, because she then said 'you should really wipe the table when you get a drink.' I was taken aback and confused, because I really do try to clean up after myself, and I do wipe up when I've spilled something. Also, it doesn't make any sense to me to clean up after myself when I haven't done anything that should leave a mess. I said something about it, and ... yeah.
(As my dad pointed out later, though, the spills might not be visible when I'm pouring iced tea out of a pitcher into a glass resting on a brown table, and besides, what's easier, checking to make sure you haven't spilled anything [which you'd want to do anyway] and giving a quick swish of a cloth or napkin regardless... or having a giant fight? Ah, hindsight + advice from someone who isn't upset about whatever it is——how would I resolve things without you?)
Anyway, things got very bad from there. Voices raised gradually until we were both yelling at each other (it was definitely not one-sided, which becomes important later) and she said she always cleans the kitchen, I pointed out that that hasn't been true for the last month, which was dickish of me, no question, but she was quick to say 'how would you know? I do it before I go to bed!'
Um, because we're the only two people who are generally awake after midnight, I'm often still awake AFTER you've gone to bed (and thus making kitchen runs for iced tea), and even though I might wake up while you guys are at work, I can put together 'kitchen is slightly messier with breakfast/coffee making accoutrement, nothing has been moved, food is still out from last night and needs to be thrown out now' and come up with 'oh, guess no one picked up after dinner last night'?
It's not like I think that's her job, or anything, because I actually don't. I kinda feel like if you're going to claim that you Always Do Shit Around the House And No One Else Ever Does Anything (!!!!!!!!!!!), which is what tends to happen when people get bitchy about cleaning around here, I would not present as your prime piece of evidence something you haven't been doing, is what I'm saying, because I like to be logical and rational in arguments... aaaaaand apparently pointing this out inspires my mom to the level of rage which would be labelled 'go fuck yourself' if it were me.
That was probably the point at which she walked away and I started angrily cleaning. Angry cleaning is A Thing in my house; my mom only ever really cleans when a) people are coming over or b) she's pissed off and taking out her anger on scrubbing/laundry/vacuuming etc. This is established to the point where if no one's scheduled to visit and we see my mom cleaning, my siblings, my father and I have all been known to quietly slip out of the house (generally we do not do this en masse) so we don't get yelled at or, worse, enlisted.
The dogs just hide. They're maybe smarter about this, really.
Anyway so my dad came upstairs, he and I had a very calm discussion of what had happened, I started feeling guilty because hey, it's not like she was asking me to bleach the countertops every day, it was just "ugh, table's sticky, make sure you're wiping up after you pour your sugary tea into your glass, because that could be part of it!"
I hate the way fights inevitably get worse. I hate getting criticized even more, though, and the problem with my brain is that even "please wipe the table after you get a drink" is taken as criticism.
I can't really defend this, but the reason I do it is pretty simple, and that's because I grew up in an environment where that was a gateway to being attacked. If Voldemort (my abusive older brother) saw something he didn't like around the house and there was any way to pin that on me, it was go time. Verbal berating, physical abuse, anything he wanted to do——it sounds ridiculous, really, and I suppose it is, because I look back and I wonder, you know, weren't my parents home, weren't they around? But often times, no, they weren't home, they weren't around, they were doing their own thing, in another room, or at work or cooking dinner or it was summer and that gave him free rein.
Then I topped that off by living with an abusive fuckhead in California for two years, who DID THE EXACT SAME THING, came back home after that imploded, and lived with Voldemort again for 18 months or so.
Basically what I'm trying to explain is that for at least 18 years of my life, if I fucked up in ANY way, and it was noticed, it meant that I was going to get hurt, emotionally or physically. It's really, really fucking hard to take any potential criticism lightly after that, even if it's something as OBVIOUSLY BENIGN as what my mother initially said.
And... well, if you live with an abuser, the best defense is a good offense. If you point out how much shit they pile on you——sometimes, but not always——it triggers their "fuck, I have to make up for this" part of the cycle and you can escape the rain of shit that will otherwise descend.
That's not the only thing that led to this fuckup, though. Since Wednesday, two of the people in my life that are closest to me have basically said "you're being a dick" and then taken it back pretty much immediately, blaming it on their own stuff. This is legit, as far as it goes—I believe that they said it because they're stressed out, and/or in pain, and/or have dealt with a bunch of people against something because of what turns out to be sexist/racist reasons, and are therefore not evaluating what I've said from a place of true equanimity.
It still fucking hurts, though. As I said to a friend, and posted here, it makes me want to start Assholes Anonymous. If multiple people say to me that I'm a dick, I'm going to assume I'm being a dick. That's just how it is.
Plus, there's a girl in my group class at NAMI who hates my guts. Every week I go there and it's the same thing: she acts like recovery is a magical place where everyone will be normal again, and that all you have to do to get there is TRY HARDER.
Believe it or not, I don't agree with this. It's not my experience, it's not the experience of anyone else I know with chronic mental illness, and I think she's deluding herself. Not that I've said this in so many words, but I'm sure it's come through in some of the stuff I've said (which everyone else seems to agree with, by the by).
I'm also pretty sure she hates me because she's jealous of me, but that's something else entirely. Still, this week, she decided to continue refusing to refer to me by name (while conspicuously using everyone else's), and when I said something in a very thought-out attempt to be supportive (as opposed to my usual running of the mouth, I make a great deal of effort to be very nice to this person), she interrupted me to say "you're not borderline? You only have traits?"
Yes, um, but that wasn't my point, that was just a side thing...
At which point she interrupted me again to say something along the lines of 'THIS IS BULLSHIT, I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW SOME PEOPLE WHO ARE OBVIOUSLY BORDERLINE AREN'T DIAGNOSED WITH IT, I JUST THINK MY THERAPIST HATES ME WOE WOE WOE'.
She gets away with it because she doesn't use my name, basically. For extra fun bonus points, this woman isn't even in the class, she's just there as an assistant to the group leaders.
This isn't all in my head, either; I've had three separate people from the group ask me if [Woman's Name] and I had a fight at some point. Nope, she just hates me, I've never actually talked to her outside of group. I'm sorry, I guess? I don't really know what to do here. I've talked to one of the group leaders and apparently she got talked to, but it doesn't seem to have actually done anything, so... whatever.
IF YOU SKIPPED ALL OF THAT BECAUSE I'M VERY TL;DR: people have been criticizing me at least once a day for the last three days, and I'm apparently now at the stage of "fuck you, fuck me, I hate everyone, I'm going to start crying and hide in my room forever and never talk to anyone again."
For the sake of your own mental health and mine, I suggest that if you would like to tell me to change anything about myself, you maybe wait a few weeks if possible. Otherwise I'm probably going to flip the fuck out.
ANYWAYYYYYYYYY——so I go to apologize to my mom, and I knocked on her door and told her I wanted to apologize. What I should have done was say "I'm sorry, that was going to extremes on my part, I'll make sure to wipe up the table after I'm done" and Get The Fuck Out.
What I did was try to explain, you know, I realize I was way too upset about this, I'm going to do what you asked, but here's my reasons blah blah blah.
Bad idea. God forbid I "blame" any of this on my older brother, who my parents still love, not even explicitly but just by MENTIONING that I've been around abusive people for a long time and so I tend to get extremely upset at criticism. See, I joked with my writing tutor yesterday that I could murder people and my mother would probably say they had it coming——true, probably, but the thing is that she loves all of my siblings like that, and some of the worst fights we've had are when I had to get her to realize that YES, VOLDEMORT IS AN ABUSIVE DICKHEAD, SORRY TO TELL YOU THIS ABOUT YOUR SON, BUT IT'S REALLY FUCKED ME UP.
Anyway, I started crying after she yelled at me about how it was all my fault for starting to yell at her (and she was never yelling, nope, never)... see, this is why I hate fights, it inevitably becomes NOTHING about the actual issue and more about your tone and volume or the way you made the other person feel and that means it's totally okay for them to get way pissed off at you despite mistakes being made on both sides—— I don't even know really how it goes after that because I'm so freaked out I'm crying and starting to disassociate at that point.
But ——I was the one who tried to explain, you know, I'm crazy, and that means that I'm not going to react well to some things that other people deal with as a normal everyday thing.
I wanted to go on to say that I was working on it, etc, but... that was the point where the beginning of the entry started, which is her literally yelling at me that she had never ever treated me any differently because I was crazy——was I fucking hate the Golden Rule.
For those of us who have memory problems, or just don't want to google it, the Golden Rule is: "Treat others the way you wish they'd treat you."
Here's the problem with that: I don't want to be treated the way you'd treat yourself. You're not me! I probably need different things from you than you need from other people! I want to be treated with as much kindness and consideration as you'd give yourself, maybe, but tailored to my needs.
It's not that I think my mom should expect less from me because I'm crazy, but ... it's not fair to expect me to be able to easily cope with everything that someone who DOESN'T have mental illness can easily cope with. That's pretty much the definition of a disorder, there——the things that bother me don't bother other people, and it severely impacts my life.
I don't want her to stop telling me to clean up after myself, or whatever she needs to tell me, regardless of whether it's going to be hard to hear it, just like I don't want my friends to stop calling me out on things if they think it's necessary. I just want some recognition that maybe there's a better way for everyone who has to deal with me here, and that's, you know, asking me how they can tell me things that THEY KNOW are difficult for me to hear.
I'd love to come up with some general rules, but I don't know that there are any. It varies so much depending on the person with MI, in this case me, and the place that the person who wants to tell me something occupies in my life——I'm going to have different advice for friends at varying levels of closeness as opposed to my boyfriend as opposed to my parents as opposed to one of my siblings. It just fucking varies.
Stop treating me like you want to be treated. Treat me like I want to be treated, to the best of your ability.
And, just so you know, I feel like shit about writing this, posting it, and whatever. I really cannot handle any criticism right now. Advice is fine, but please keep in mind: I know my parents love me and make a lot of allowances for me, I know my friends care about me too, that's not the problem, the problem is that I can't fucking handle daily life and the way people are acting towards me is exacerbating this. Alright? Alright.
