(no subject)
Feb. 28th, 2006 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabethI can understand why my mother is worrying about me. I mean, her elder daughter has always, always, always, been academically successful and motivated and bright and confident and, you know, everything a feminist, strong, powerful daughter is supposed to be. And to see her fall apart, and I do mean fall apart in one month, must be terrifying. I get that, I really really do. Perhaps not on a visceral level, but I do get it.
But it's just -- do I not get any credit for almost nineteen years of not fucking up? I have given my mother the least stressful raising of a teenager possible. No, really. I basically never had a teenage rebellion, never stayed out late, never gave her cause to worry about boys, never did stupid, reckless things physically, never got into a car accident, never got a tattoo, a piercing, none of that. But I feel like one -- one! -- month of depression (and, yes, I've probably been moving toward it for a few years, so it's partially my fault I was stupid and stubborn enough not to get help when I needed it), and now I feel like she's gone all clingy. This may, in part, due to the fact that my mother has a very close relationship with her mother, almost a parasitic one, one I couldn't survive if it were me, and I think she thinks we're going to have the same one, but we can't. I can't do that. I can't and I won't.
This weekend, I was stressed and hateful and tense and trying so hard to keep going, to be productive, to be the person I want to be, and I ensconced my self in the library to work, and forgot to call home on Sunday, the way I usually do, and since I saw my stepfather on Saturday, I wanted to take Sunday to focus. She flipped.
I got two voicemails and an email.
I just -- I called today, and she yelled at me, and she always claims she doesn't understand why my sister & I hate her yelling at us, but this is why. She doesn't guilt-trip, not exactly, but she knows all my fucking buttons, and she pushes every last one, and I'm not at my best on the phone anyway, and it was one call! One!
Do I not get any slack now? One month of fucking up, and nineteen years of credit are erased justlikethat? It's not even that she apparently doesn't trust me, although that's part of it -- I mean, I don't know if I trust me, in a lot of ways anymore -- it's that I have no room, no space, I can't breathe, and she won't fucking let go.
She's clinging to me, and I'm fucking drowning in it. This probably has a lot to do with her father, who's dying, and she's seeking to reassure me that she's not going to leave and herself that she isn't, either, and I get that; I get that it must be frightening not to have me there where she can see me every day; I get that she doesn't know what else to do but cling when I screwed up so spcetacularly last time.
(Of course, I want her to go away, but if she actually ignored me, I'd freak.)
All that's going to restore my credit is a long period of not fucking up, and I am putting myself under such pressure to produce that, the last thing I need is outside stress. I can't tell her about the bad days. I can't. She'll go postal. But, at the same time, there are going to be bad days in my life. And I don't want to go through life feeling I have to censor what I say to my mother.
Plus, to make this even more fun, she genuinely doesn't understand that what I went through in december was depression. Granted, I had only articulated that to myself at the time and possibly Liza, granted, she can't know if I don't tell her, granted, granted, granted. But she could see I was unhappy. Deeply, deeply unhappy; and she said to me, several times over break, that I was no fun to be around when I was like that.
HELLO?
I'm sorry I wasn't a fucking Pollyanna, mum, I'm sorry I couldn't be cheerful every fucking minute that I wasn't actually being told good things like you get to cook today, but do you really think that guilting me about how unpleasant I was being was going to help?
It felt as though if I stayed in my room, I would be told I was being anti-social; if I came down and assaulted myself with people, I'd be making everyone around me miserable because I can't fake happy very well. There was no way to win, none at all. And it wasn't as though I was having such a great time myself -- no matter how bad it was for her, she didn't have to live inside it. I'm sorry, but there is no way she was feeling my unhappiness the way I was.
Did she really think that I was enjoying it? That I wanted to be like that? Because if there is one wish I could make, right now, it would be never to feel like that again, that no one should ever feel like that.
I need a drink. I need a drink and I need to cry a little and I need to sleep, honest-to-goodness sleep, with no dreams and no alarm clocks and no stress. I'm making Dana give me liquor and I'm taking a hot shower and crying in the shower and then I'm going to bed and I'll work in the morning and I'll check my email and I'll go to class, and I will be fine.
I think.
But it's just -- do I not get any credit for almost nineteen years of not fucking up? I have given my mother the least stressful raising of a teenager possible. No, really. I basically never had a teenage rebellion, never stayed out late, never gave her cause to worry about boys, never did stupid, reckless things physically, never got into a car accident, never got a tattoo, a piercing, none of that. But I feel like one -- one! -- month of depression (and, yes, I've probably been moving toward it for a few years, so it's partially my fault I was stupid and stubborn enough not to get help when I needed it), and now I feel like she's gone all clingy. This may, in part, due to the fact that my mother has a very close relationship with her mother, almost a parasitic one, one I couldn't survive if it were me, and I think she thinks we're going to have the same one, but we can't. I can't do that. I can't and I won't.
This weekend, I was stressed and hateful and tense and trying so hard to keep going, to be productive, to be the person I want to be, and I ensconced my self in the library to work, and forgot to call home on Sunday, the way I usually do, and since I saw my stepfather on Saturday, I wanted to take Sunday to focus. She flipped.
I got two voicemails and an email.
I just -- I called today, and she yelled at me, and she always claims she doesn't understand why my sister & I hate her yelling at us, but this is why. She doesn't guilt-trip, not exactly, but she knows all my fucking buttons, and she pushes every last one, and I'm not at my best on the phone anyway, and it was one call! One!
Do I not get any slack now? One month of fucking up, and nineteen years of credit are erased justlikethat? It's not even that she apparently doesn't trust me, although that's part of it -- I mean, I don't know if I trust me, in a lot of ways anymore -- it's that I have no room, no space, I can't breathe, and she won't fucking let go.
She's clinging to me, and I'm fucking drowning in it. This probably has a lot to do with her father, who's dying, and she's seeking to reassure me that she's not going to leave and herself that she isn't, either, and I get that; I get that it must be frightening not to have me there where she can see me every day; I get that she doesn't know what else to do but cling when I screwed up so spcetacularly last time.
(Of course, I want her to go away, but if she actually ignored me, I'd freak.)
All that's going to restore my credit is a long period of not fucking up, and I am putting myself under such pressure to produce that, the last thing I need is outside stress. I can't tell her about the bad days. I can't. She'll go postal. But, at the same time, there are going to be bad days in my life. And I don't want to go through life feeling I have to censor what I say to my mother.
Plus, to make this even more fun, she genuinely doesn't understand that what I went through in december was depression. Granted, I had only articulated that to myself at the time and possibly Liza, granted, she can't know if I don't tell her, granted, granted, granted. But she could see I was unhappy. Deeply, deeply unhappy; and she said to me, several times over break, that I was no fun to be around when I was like that.
HELLO?
I'm sorry I wasn't a fucking Pollyanna, mum, I'm sorry I couldn't be cheerful every fucking minute that I wasn't actually being told good things like you get to cook today, but do you really think that guilting me about how unpleasant I was being was going to help?
It felt as though if I stayed in my room, I would be told I was being anti-social; if I came down and assaulted myself with people, I'd be making everyone around me miserable because I can't fake happy very well. There was no way to win, none at all. And it wasn't as though I was having such a great time myself -- no matter how bad it was for her, she didn't have to live inside it. I'm sorry, but there is no way she was feeling my unhappiness the way I was.
Did she really think that I was enjoying it? That I wanted to be like that? Because if there is one wish I could make, right now, it would be never to feel like that again, that no one should ever feel like that.
I need a drink. I need a drink and I need to cry a little and I need to sleep, honest-to-goodness sleep, with no dreams and no alarm clocks and no stress. I'm making Dana give me liquor and I'm taking a hot shower and crying in the shower and then I'm going to bed and I'll work in the morning and I'll check my email and I'll go to class, and I will be fine.
I think.
Reposted from LJ, 20 March 2009
