November Second, Two Thousand Eighteen
In two thousand thirteen, I had my next big encounter with depression and anxiety. I had started working at Bank of the West, in their collections department. I was stressed out, and it was the holiday season, so things were chaotic around me. I recognized that I needed help, but I did not take advantage of services through my insurance at the time. And at that time, I was not nearly as bad as I got a few years later. Toward the end of that year, my electricity got turned off, and it took me a couple weeks to get the money together to get my power restored.
I was incredibly pissed off, because I had planned on cooking a Christmas Turkey, and because the power had been turned off, I had a fridge full of food that got ruined. I was lucky enough to have friends who had a spare room in their apartment that they allowed me to stay in while my power was out. At the start of the new year, I stayed in my apartment, because I was stubborn. A few months later, I was evicted, due to rent not being paid, and I ended up staying with another friend for a few months.
In July of two thousand fourteen, I drove down to Kansas City, and the Overland Park area. I spent July to January two thousand fifteen sleeping in the back of my car and working wherever I could find work. I was hired by Express Scripts through West, just before West became Alorica, and for almost half a year in two thousand fifteen, I had a steady job. In July of two thousand fifteen, my part of the Express Scripts line group was moved to being handled solely by Express Scripts, effectively making my job obsolete.
By then, I had moved back in with my parents, because I needed a "safe" place to stay. There were many instances of conflict between my mother and myself during that time, and several points of contention between my dad and myself. I became involved in a long-term relationship with the very awesome and understanding man who is now my boyfriend, and the younger sibling got married in August of that year.
I still do not get along with the younger sibling, and his wife is similarly headstrong and a bit toxic in behavior. I do not like the holiday season because there is at least one holiday where I have to spend some time with the younger sibling and his wife, and they both bully me, whether they seem to realize it or not.
The year I met the extended family of my boyfriend, the younger sibling decided to restrict my wifi access unless I could "prove" I was not just dicking around on the internet. I ended up reacting very negatively, cursing at him and actually raising my voice, in front of our parents, no less. It was not that he restricted my ability to effectively job search, he cut me off from my support network of online friends.
Ever since that holiday season, I have gone out of my way to actively avoid the younger sibling. As a result, I get whined at that I do not spend time with him and his wife, but he fails to acknowledge or even admit that his behavior is why I choose to minimize my contact with him. I get villianized, and the toxic behavior is not addressed. The younger sibling is the favorite child in the family, because he is neurotypical, and has been "successful" in the eyes of our parents.
I am ostracized, and I deal with emotional abuse and the occasional verbal abuse. When I was younger and more fearful of my parents, I was on the receiving end of physical abuse as well. When I was about 17 or so, the younger sibling and I were fighting and I was the one who got physically punished. Dad came roaring down the basement stairs and grabbed me by the ribs hard enough to leave bruises. The next day, he acted as though he had not done anything wrong or hurtful to me. Another time, Mom was angry with me for something (I do not remember now what it was, or whether it was something I did or did not do), and ground her knuckles into my scalp while rapping them on my head.
I now have to mentally psyche myself up to get my hair cut, because hands near my face will send me into a panic if I am not expecting them. I also get panicky if people are yelling at each other in anger. Because of my dad having a nasty temper and tending to yell when he is upset, I do not like to be around people yelling at each other in anger. I will literally start panicking and crying, if I do not just flee outright. I also find myself apologizing profusely if someone seems to be angry with me, and I cannot handle being yelled at. I will break down into tears and full blown panic. I cannot help the reaction.
I have become very good at identifying my triggers. I have already stated the major ones, but I also react to being stuck in very large crowds, especially very noisy ones. I also dislike having people standing on the edges of my peripheral field of vision. It makes me uneasy because of past abuse.
I know what I went through was not how normal families interact with one another, but I also know that my family members do not see anything wrong with how they behaved in the past or how they continue to behave. If I could understand the "why" behind their behaviors, I would still likely be upset with them, but I would know why they chose to behave so cruelly toward me. I think it is simply a desire to understand things, but I know that it is not likely that I will ever get a satisfactory answer to why my family members treated me like shit and continue to be somewhat shitty to me. I simply try to be a decent human being, and I try not to continue fueling the cycle of abuse.
I will never be a parent. I know that my mental state would deteriorate rapidly if I were to become a mother, from the sheer stress. I also know that my parents and the younger sibling would do their damnedest to sabotage my attempts to raise a child to be a decent human being and not an entitled piece of dumpster fire.
I try to not be an entitled piece of dumpster fire, but I know that I am only human, and that I will mess up sometimes. I accept this, and I try to make amends and do better if I unintentionally hurt someone, but I have a hard time knowing if I have done so if I am not told outright that I have hurt someone, and what it is that I did or said that is hurtful. Thankfully, my friends understand and are quick to tell me when I mess up, so I know what I did, and I can apologize and work on doing better next time.
I suppose all I can do is try my hardest to be a good person. I can only hope for fellow good people to find me or for me to find them. So far, I think I have been succeeding in finding good people. I try hard to be kind, to be fair, and to not let people take advantage of my kindness. I do tend to find the occasional bad apple disguised as a good one, and I have trouble with letting them go if they are not inherently bad, but they choose to side with people who hate others for being not white, not male, not heterosexual, not cisgender, not Christian, and other ways of discrimination.
Part of me wants to try and convince them that they are wrong and to help them do better, but part of me knows that they have decided that they are unable to change their ways of thinking. And knowing that they basically hate a fundamental part of who I am is quite upsetting. So for now, I try and work up the courage to break off ties with them, and I do not talk to them as often as I used to. I do not like having to cut ties to people who have been a part of my life for a while. I have a hard time with friendship, despite trying my best to be a good friend.
For some reason, I have had a couple of friendships with people who
ended up being toxic and bad for my mental health. The first one ended because the other person had been raised in a household where she was constantly blamed for everything, so that was how she learned to interact with others, and we had a fight because she was trying to tell me how to spend money I had earned. She refused to acknowledge that we were both responsible for the fight and I later learned she would actively try to talk shit about me to other people who were not having any of her nonsense.
The next is the person I mentioned before the prior paragraph. I found out that they are not "comfortable" with the "idea" of people like me, who are not heterosexual or heteroromantic, who do not identify as strictly male or strictly female, who are Muslim, or who are not Christian like them. I am having a very hard time cutting ties with them because they have been there for me when I have
been at my lowest, and we have a lot of shared interests, but they are convinced that because they are older than me, they are pretty stuck in their ways.
I know people are more than capable of change, if they are willing. It is upsetting to me when people are not willing to change, even though I understand how completely and utterly terrifying facing change can be. I have been through quite a lot of change since I first went to college back in two thousand and five. My world view has changed and expanded, and I have memories that I would never trade for anything, including a stable job and a "normal" life.
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