Trying to process some shit

I feel....kind of weird, making this post, because it feels very personal and maybe a bit too personal and I don't...I guess I feel like I'm cheating on Keats by not talking to them directly but this also feels like something that has to be a vent and not a conversation. I'm also gonna try and use as little negative self-talk as I can because that's part of my shit, really, I think, and it doesn't help me to process my crap by telling myself i'm a piece of shit failure.

The thing is, I have fucked up a lot. A Lot. And the thing that is pressing on me at the moment is like - I forget stuff. I forget important emotional things that people tell me, the specifics if not the general shape, and I know I have to write things down to make myself remember but it's hard, it's not just like writing things down really, there's a block I have to overcome, a track I need to change to do that. And that sounds - okay Bowman no negative selftalk - I feel like that sounds like an excuse. Like "No I'm not going to put the work in, because it's hard." I've been told I make a lot of excuses in my life. Stop making excuses. Stop lying to me. Who else could have done it. I don't care. I guess it just happened by magic then. But equally because of that, I take a lot of responsibility no matter what. Things are my fault, even if I didn't know what I was doing, even if I don't remember doing something, even if I'd swear it wasn't me. I'm getting off topic. It's hard to do that and it makes me feel like a bad person. It makes me feel like - if it's important to you, you'll remember. And then I don't remember. Often I don't even think that consciously. I just have a conversation, and I'm following, and I'm paying attention - and then time blurs, and conversations blur, and I lose track. And then I cling to the most recent thing because it's the thing I remember best and also like, in my head, new things overrule old things, unless I can specifically see how they interact.

Another major thing that I'm trying to deal with is like - this is connected to where I went off track last paragraph. When someone is angry with me, I assume they want to hurt me, so that they can feel better. And then my role is appeasing, and then acting completely normal so that they don't get angry again. That's how anger works, when people are angry at me. It's also how anger works when I'm angry at people, in complete reverse. My role doesn't change. I have always - I just realised this while I was in the kitchen making a brew before I sat down to write. When people are angry with me, I expect them to physically hurt me. I don't really remember being smacked as a child because my Mum stopped when I was too young to know either way. But I remember my dad, the angriest I've ever, ever seen him, dragging me up the stairs for something that wasn't even about me. And I remember my mum yelling at me, yelling at my dad, I remember her shoving my dad, I remember thinking she was going to throw something at him. I know how she breaks things when she's angry. I remember once when I was, I don't know, thirteen maybe a bit younger, and I was so terrified of swallowing pills that my dad used to grind them up in drinks for me, and my mum once was just so sick of it, and would get so angry about it, that she forced me to put them in my mouth and then grabbed my neck to force me to swallow as if I were a dog (and she'd been a bit humiliating, threatening to do that). And so I was standing in the doorway, with my mum's hands around my neck, and I was for a fragment of a second convinced if I made her any angrier she might really, really hurt me. I spat the pills out even though she'd told me not to and then I think i ran away to my room and shut the door. I think I might have put something under the handle but I might be making that up.

Anyway. Anger means that people want to hurt me. Anger means people want me to cry and beg for forgiveness. Anger means people will hurt you and they won't love you and they will hate you so much they can't contain it, unless you admit fault quietly, don't make excuses, don't explain, apologise, validate their anger, and then be normal. Can't even go in your room or the bathroom to cry. Can't even do either of those things for innocent reasons until a decent timeframe has passed.

And the point is, Keats isn't like that, but - but I reacted like that so much, and expected that so much, and responded to things in a way that shut it all down because i was so fucking scared that they would want to hurt me, that they wouldn't love me, that I was going to get screamed at if I didn't immediately admit all fault, that I made it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And now I don't really get to feel love, not because they don't love me but because I don't, in myself, feel they could possibly love me until I was forgiven, but forgiveness is a cruel thing to ask in this sort of long-running situation. They do not have the emotional energy, because of so many factors, because we haven't dealt with things and I haven't processed much, to forgive me, which to me means I am not deserving of love yet, because I haven't made amends. And so I have to - it feels like - sit in this space of feeling like I am completely unloveable, until they have the emotional wherewithal to absolve me.

But - that doesn't work. I can't make their pain about my pain, again and again and again and again and again. I can't ask for forgiveness, because that means they can't work on their feelings because they have to process mine for me because i have no self-awareness. I have to - I have to try, really hard, to believe I'm worth love and that I am loved, when they're angry with me, otherwise, I don't know.

I think at the moment I feel like my brain is just the wrong shape. Like, I can't not hurt people because my brain is just, wrong. It's all chewed up and spat out and I feel like it makes me selfish and self-centred. All I want to do is make people happy and be loved and the only way I know how to do that is so so fucked up that it spins everything around and makes everything about me.

An Addendum

So I was talking to Keats earlier on and they pointed something out that I just had never seen and I think I need to record this.

This is what I remember. It was lateish, or it was late enough in the year that it was dark outside. I was young; we left that house when I was nine or so, and this was much earlier than that. I was very small, physically, the kind of size where it pulls your arm a fair bit to hold your dad's hand, so I think I was maybe five or six. I was sitting in the corner of the living room, my mum was sat down, my dad was standing up. They were yelling at each other. My mum's anger, I don't remember being weird. I remember it being weird that my dad was yelling just as loud. I remember her saying get out. And then, a few seconds later, get out again. Really screaming it. I remember then my dad, really angry, grabbing my wrist and dragging me, scared and I think crying, out of the room and up the stairs. I think he'd told me to go to my room and I hadn't, because I was confused. I thought mum was telling my dad to get out. He dragged me up the stairs, and then I remember my mum saying I was talking to you, to him, and feeling - vindicated.

I was talking to Keats about this. I was talking about what I said this morning, and about my mum, and how she's...quite physical when she's angry, though I don't remember her actively throwing things at my dad.

And Keats said that they found it telling that that was the most angry I've ever, ever seen him. And they said something that i never considered, that I think it's telling that he was uh, at his most rough with you trying to protect you from her anger. I thought he was angry with me, because I wasn't doing what I was told. I never considered he might have been worried about me. I never ever considered that he might have been worried I was going to get hurt, even though I've sometimes been scared she might hurt me.

I'm reeling, a bit.