13 july 2021
Well, it's been an... interesting day, let's call it that. Not going to get much done, but that's okay. We need time to process things.
Possibly depressing mental health talk ahead, specifically regarding questionable parenting. No pressure to read.
We're finding out that a few more things our parents did raising us weren't normal, which isn't really a new thing but still not a fun realization to be having. I still can't really emotionally process it. It's more of a "huh, weird." If I think about it too much, then it comes right back and sets off emotional overload until it's too much and I shut down, and it's hard to think about it non intellectually at all even though I probably need to. Especially since I know other folks in-head have been stuck in those moments and could be helped if it's at least partially processed. It's just a lot, you know? There's a reason I don't remember the emotions of it at all by default, and why the worst of it is totally inaccessible. I still don't quite believe half of it happened or wasn't totally typical, and I feel bad for even considering it being abusive behavior because these are our parents I'm talking about. It makes me feel like a bad kid to realize that their behavior is something other people look at and call abuse, intentional or not. I struggle with that. On one hand, they did their best (I think). They were working with a chronically ill autistic kid while dealing with mental health issues and abuse histories themselves. I mean, our mom emancipated herself when she was 17 because her dad was a drunk and her family fought all the time, and her mom refuses to talk about her childhood (though we do know she was abused as a kid). It goes back a ways. But on the other hand, it's not an excuse for how we were treated, and it's definitely not an excuse for blaming us for that treatment and refusing to change their behavior or seek help for mental health issues. A kid isn't a therapist for their parents- we know that much for sure. But it's hard not to feel guilty for not being able to handle it because of how often we were shamed for being "sensitive" or "selfish" for not wanting to listen to mom ranting about how we were probably going to be homeless because our dad was horrible to her (which he wasn't- we've talked to both sides here, and our dad had solid evidence from the divorce paperwork to back him up), or not wanting to be an emotional prop, or wanting affection and to be listened to. It feels like we're not allowed to have negative emotions, or that it's outright unsafe to have feelings in front of people. Like making anything about ourselves makes us horrible people. Honestly, we feel bad for venting in feels but it's more manageable online since there aren't any faces and no one has to read anything. It's not burdening people if they're free to ignore it.
We really need to process things that happened but it's hard when it feels like being emotionally stabbed every time. It's easier to start when people tell us "no, that's not normal, what the fuck?" about things we thought were normal because at least then we can confront it and realize that yeah, it hurt us and fucked us up one way or another. But it's still hard and exhausting. We don't have a therapist to help because mental healthcare here sucks, so we have to keep doing this solo and make what progress we can.
And then on top of that whole mess, two people at our mom's workplace have COVID and they've been in contact with everyone else. Lovely. We're high risk. Vaccinated, but still high risk.
Sorry for the negativity. Hope the ASCII cat helps.
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