brideoffrankenstein | Entries tagged with vent

One thing that has been really weighing on me lately is the question of agency. I keep feeling this sense of pressure, and this sense of entrapment, I suppose. It's not really about the pandemic. It's about the fact, I guess, that I've never spent this much time in my dad's company in my life. My mum, sure. I was homeschooled. I had years of being with her all the time, and I'm used to that. What I'm not used to is everything else.

It builds up in small ways. It's like: your father constantly misrepresenting your behaviour, not in a bad way as such, just in a way that makes you feel hidden. Saying that you must have really loved a sandwich because you had the remaining half so that it wouldn't go to waste. Saying "are you thirsty?" when you pass him after getting a glass of water. Saying "do you have a headache?" when you have a painkiller. Saying "I thought you liked hot curry?" when you went to get a glass of water in the middle of tea. Not asking how you wanted your eggs cooked and assuming you want them fried, and then admitting that he was assuming. Making a cup of tea while you're in the bath and not making you one - not even asking if you want one but you'll get out the bath to come get it, not asking if you'll be out of the bath soon. Assuming you want exactly the same things as your mother. Assuming the things you enjoy are the same things as your mother. Not letting you take a plate or a cup out of his hands and instead making you let him put it down - but taking things out of your hands when the situation is reversed. It's going into your room to sweep when he knows you hate people in your room. It's going into your space just to look out of the window. It's not telling you that he's in the process of putting lunch out so you have to rush to put your stuff away. It's when he puts your lunch down and then you move your stuff and he physically picks up the plate and moves it two inches closer to you - and you take a weird pleasure in moving it two inches back, because you hadn't actually finished putting your stuff away.

It's being talked to while you're working, no matter what. It's being asked if your partner is awake. If your partner got anything good at the shop. If your partner talked to you while you were in the bath. If you've spoken to your partner today. If you're working today. If you're not. It's assumptions like - like being asked about if your eggs are runny enough and saying you actually like them jammy and being told "well then you couldn't dip anything in them" and then every time after that you have eggs hearing "yay, I made it nice and runny!" when you specifically said that's not what you wanted. It's being asked every single meal if your food is okay while you eat it. It's hearing "[deadname's] laughing her head off over there" because you giggled at joke on a tv show.

I know they're all small. But there's so fucking many. And that's not even getting into all my mum's things - pick your feet up. what's that noise. what are you doing. come watch this video. why are there two towels on the towel rack. can you switch on all the lights, even the ones in rooms i'm not in. Take my plate. put this away. put that away. don't pick your lip. your poor beautiful perfect pretty little princess skin.

And - then when I try and explain why I feel bad. "I felt misrepresented and hurt by something dad said." "Well, he didn't mean it badly, so it doesn't matter."

I know. It doesn't matter. I ask for a specific simple lunch on a specific day so that I'm comfortably in time for my office hour. It goes on the schedule. And then the day comes around and I'm told we're actually having eggs on toast, isn't that wonderful?

It's things I used to like - getting a cup of coffee while I'm still in bed. Having pastries for breakfast on Sunday. Being pat on the shoulder when I get brought a cup of tea while I work - being turned into biting moments of being waited on.

And the reason it all bothers me so is - I can't think of a single thing in my life I control. I have to do certain things on certain days because of work. Stuff I'll get told off for if I don't do enough of, dad does before I can. It's where and when I get to do my hobbies. It's when I eat meals and what I eat. It's when I get up. It's when I clean my room, or do any chore at all. It's not just the pandemic. I've always had these problems. It's just now I have two full time parents policing my every move, and I can't even add anything in because either I don't have time or that would be policed too. "Why don't you come for a walk with me and the dog?" What, so I follow you around on whatever walk you want to go that I wouldn't have chosen, have an anxiety attack, be unable to talk to my partner for an hour at whatever time you choose, and have to hold your hand like a little girl because you insist on coastal paths that scare me because I'm disabled?

No, thanks.

I just wish I controlled something about my life. I wish I could express this to my parents and be heard and loved. But they don't mean it badly, so it doesn't matter. Be quiet. Sit down. Go away.

I did a boundary today.

( mental health below )

Keats said to me a couple weeks ago, don't convert to Catholicism just because you're sad, and it was a bit of a joke but it also wasn't, because i /am/ sad and I wrote a fuckin book about medieval folks (who are, thus, Catholics) and we made a modern au version of those characters because - well because Keaten was special interesting and I wanted, want, an escape, into somewhere I feel safe, and as I've got deeper and deeper into my anxiety and started thinking about all the stuff I've been posting about, I wanted to feel safe even more, and I romanticise things and i know, I don't need telling, that organised religion is a bad place for me.

But this post wasn't really supposed to be about me and religion, it's only that I was reading one of the snippets of the modern au version just now and it made me think of something which sort of connects to the religion thing, which is that I just want to be safe, and held, and loved, and rescued, and to feel a sense of community. I've...a lot of those things, I could have had a while ago, but I - due to circumstances and very much more than partly due to the way I act out of trauma, those things are not right now accessible and I'm a bit sad about that but also like, i don't know, like, I have to at least try to get better and stop repeating, or make progress at fighting, the way I act out of trauma, because I know I've - I can't find a fair way to say this and I made a promise I wasn't going to pick up any figurative knives and stab myself with them so we'll leave it at like. It's hard to look after a man who kicks and bites when you touch him, especially when you're full of open wounds yourself. So he has to make an effort not to bite. And he has to make an effort to interpret that not as earning love, but mutual aid.

I guess there's something here about - wanting to be loved and looked after and handled gently is about wanting to be passive for a while, but I can't keep....idolising that as the way for me to recover because recovery is Hard and Takes Work and I know that, I've been through it with social anxiety (and then I developed a generalised anxiety disorder so THAT'S FUN but nevermind that that's not the point) I know it's hard, and I'm trying to be gentle with myself, because recovery....well, recovery for me takes a certain level of self-care, if not self-love, to get started. To react out of healthier places and not use things to stab myself all the damn time.

It takes self care, to put the knives down and keep them down. It takes self-confidence not to buckle and be passive. But I gotta show I can put my own bandages on, I guess. And ask for help when I can't, and let myself be helped.

I was gonna talk about this the other day but I forgot. I'm sorry for how dark my blog is getting I guess.

I keep thinking about dying, but not really about dying. I'm irrationally convinced and have been for like a month that I'm gonna develop toxic shock (off like.....lint. off a dildo I used a month ago. like a single hair and a bit of fluff or whatever.) and it scares me a lot to think of that. But that's just the silly contradictory thing I wanted to start off with because the main thing really is I keep thinking about suicide. I know I said that my pill seemed to be doing me good and it is I think because I can banish these thoughts easily-ish but it keeps coming back and I wanted to...describe it, somewhere.

I keep thinking of leaving. Not doing anything specific. Just leaving my stuff and walking. Maybe going in front of a van. I think about what might scare my parents. I don't want them to be scared but I want proof that I matter. I keep thinking about getting a certain distance and - if anyone would stop me and try to talk to me. If they'd call the police to take me home. If I'd be taken to hospital. If I'd just - dissolve into the air. If I'd be missed. I shouldn't do it and I wouldn't do it but I keep thinking about it and I can't convince myself I'm necessary, really.

It's not pressing. It's just there, lingering, intruding when I feel An Emotion. I just wish I didn't have to exist. I know I have to sort things out and process my crap and develop as a person beyond all this maladaptivity but it's hard and it hurts and I wish it could be simple.

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.

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.

Current Mood: sore

My parents have been married for thirty two years and neither of them have ANY idea how to communicate. My mum's having a bad time with her depression so she's being a lot more angry and easy to annoy, but she's taken weeks to understand why she's having such a hard time and not communicated it to dad, dad's acting like this is normal anger and getting pissed off, and now he's making accidentally mean jokes and having to be told off by ME, his SON that's LESS THAN HALF HIS AGE. If you make a mean joke you apologise and you mean it. God I'm reassessing my whole childhood. Like fuck i'm not actually oversensitive it's just that NEITHER OF THESE PEOPLE KNOW TO APOLOGISE

My mum'll yell at people and then a month later you'll find out she knew she was being unreasonable and couldn't stop herself but she won't, either then or at the time, apologise. IT'S NOT ME. My dad'll say mean things by accident and not understand why it was mean and will get pissy if you tell him off for it! IT'S NOT ME.

My parents are emotional disasters! It's no fucking WONDER i'm the way i am but I, unlike SOME PEOPLE, am learning to APOLOGISE and TAKE THINGS ON BOARD and COMMUNICATE and LISTEN and okay! yeah! I'm not great at it! but if I'm being real with you I'm having to work from the ground up here! I only started to realise my emotional patterns when Keats and I got together (circa five years ago) but I wasn't able to properly start digesting it until a little while after and then I emotionally shut down for a Long Time (in large part because of the emotional patterns I hadn't digested) and now I'm waking up again (it's a process) and digesting stuff more, but that's been...five months maybe? It's like I'm learning the stuff you're supposed to learn as a kid and a young teenager all over again. Better late than never I guess but still.

Like I know both my parents have emotionally neglectful backgrounds but So Do I because of THIS VERY SHIT. and I'm figuring it out!

This is petty but i just want to write it down because things stew. So my mum gets a /lot/ of post. At least one parcel every post day, usually more like three or four. I think she probably has the same buy-things dopamine that I do. But the deal right now is that I have a parcel on order, not come yet, might be another day or so. I thought it might come today. But I have been banned from fetching the post, because I didn't follow the Coronavirus Post Collecting Protocols even though I asked if there were any and was told it was just to spray the outsides with alcohol spray. And then today my dad went and got the post and took the outside packaging off without looking who they were addressed to and just gave them to mum, which is statistically accurate and was accurate today, but I felt...weird. About that.

And then when I do bring in post, if there is anything there not for mum, she goes 'is that not for me?' and gets this sad look on her face, so if something is for me I feel like I have to like, intercept it before she sees it. And then the fact that this parcel is taking a while to arrive is just making me want to buy more things, and it's so hard to control that impulse without getting distressed because I have nothing else I can do whatsoever. I don't even feel like I can bake any more even though I could because the kitchen has become Mum's Kitchen and I'll use up resources and I'll probably fuck everything up and waste stuff anyway.

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Page Summary

A Musing on Agency.
mental health stuff again sorry
(no subject)
this isn't a pressing issue this is an intrusive thought
An Addendum
Trying to process some shit
Parental Annoyances
RSD Vent Diary 2

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Page generated Jun. 20th, 2025 09:30 am

while the light lives yet

Entries tagged with vent

A Musing on Agency.

mental health stuff again sorry

(no subject)

this isn't a pressing issue this is an intrusive thought

An Addendum

Trying to process some shit

Parental Annoyances

RSD Vent Diary 2