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Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

Good news: for the first time ever, I saw my childhood bedroom and didn’t have a massive panic attack. In fact, I can see the end of cleaning it out, sort of. Like, I’ll need help probably, but my disabled dog can get comfortable without problems, even with a cone on.

Bad news: I’ll descibe evidence later when I feel less overwhelmed (I’m sorry), but I’m starting to think my mother can’t take care of herself. And is in denial about that, and every and all disorders/disabilies/diseases feeding into it

I think I will be the one responsible for that
 
And you, too, @Sietz

More good news: I have a new car

Weird news: my dad just sent me a strange text.

Paraphrasing, “I love you! Where do you live? Do you need me to keep your bird? I have a spare room.”

Seems so... fatherly. Is he getting help suddenly? Is he just trying to find out why my little brother he disowned (for “lying” that he sexually abused him) is going to New York? Is he trying to lure me in? Is he trying to get me on his side on the drama he started just today with trying to get “his” property back from this house? Is he getting a new girlfriend and hoping to use me to make himself look friendly? Is he actually missing me? I didn’t wish him a happy father’s day.

I’m not really sure how to respond to his text.
 
Is he reading this diary and saw I saw the Dean as a father figure? Are you the one leaving me oddly specific gifts, at my doorstep? I’ve moved. I’m in the middle of the woods. Please stop stalking me. Please stop trying to get a job wherever I am. Of course I love you, but you ruined everything and I’ve never heard you apologize except for one time. One time, and it’s a strange memory that makes me wonder if some part of you is still human.

See? In the woods. It’s beautiful :)
 

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I know he hasn’t found this diary. For the record. (Not that it would matter if he did.) I’m just giving myself a little power before I try to figure out how to respond to the text. Sorry for any confusion.

The picture in the woods is for y’all, not him :p
 
Thanks, @Freida :D


I’m hoping he actually wants to talk and connect, but I doubt it too, and doubt I’d be comfortable reconnecting right now, but I’m also not sure if I have a choice, due to financial things I don’t want to talk about immediately.

But he did a double attack. He texted my mother, who divorced his sorry ass ten years ago, saying he wanted to get his stuff from the sheds. Then his father, my grandfather (he’s a good guy, quite an enabler though and expects things to be done quickly and easily), texted my mother also and said to follow through. This happens every couple of years. My father’s father is our landlord, because of my dad’s idiot self. (At least he and my grandmother saved their grandkids from being homeless. It’s one thing I don’t have to add to my trauma list, and I’m very thankful for that.) It’s difficult to avoid.

Then he texted me, after more than five months of no communication, starting with “I love you.” Not, “I miss you,” not, “I was just thinking of you,” not, “I couldn’t donate to Nestle but I hope she’s doing well, I have a dog right now and know that must be hard.” (He hates dogs, why did he get a dog?)

And how am I supposed to take that?

He’s incredibly underdeveloped socially though. Or, thats been his excuse, though I know it’s true because I’ve seen him interact with other humans. They usually get extremely uncomfortable and know something is wrong with him right away. (My mother may be undiagnosed autistic (unconfirmed) so she was not able to pick up on these cues.)

My mom snapped at him once, after their divorce. He had banned her from caring for us, but now she had to bring us to him for visitation, because the Order of Protection expired and she hadn’t done some things to make it keep lasting. (In her childhood, her jealous mom banned all her kids from seeing their father, so I think she really wanted it to work out for us.) He would always go to her window, and talk to at her for thirty minutes nonstop, and ignore us.

He responded that he was awkward and did not understand how to talk to children.

His own children.

I do know he’s mentally a child. But even children have shown more understanding to me than he has.
 
There is a scientist who is also a professor at my university who is known as “the man who discovered the crocodile and alligator penis during his project he was only doing because he thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t, and then published it on Valentines Day like a true professional.”

Before he was a scientist, he was in the NFL. I used to sit in his class (microbiology) as he argued with a guy who had been a scientist for more than sixty years (mix of physicals and microbio, particularly how all cells (many species) and also the human immune system use electricity) about basic cell biology. As is a theme in my life, that guy let me get away with a lot of stuff, but luckily I was great in his class. I always felt like a dwarf next to him. He is almost two feet taller than me, maybe about two feet taller.

I started avoiding him after I had that almost-cancer diagnosis, which I don’t want to talk about here, but long story short it turned out to be something much less scary. But I was doing a lesson for a grade from him on cancer, and that movie based on John Green’s book about a girl with cancer came out, and it was all overwhelming.

He let me avoid him though. And then when I needed his help to prove that my work performance was not going down because I was slacking, but because I had too many brain injuries, he just nodded knowingly, snapped at his son for making sounds, and then pulled out my tests from two years ago that he hadn’t unfiled yet.

I have been thinking about that a lot this week. My doctor says I’m in a unique situation with these brain injuries, and that’s why I should have called the ambulance when that headache got so bad that I considered suicide and couldn’t move.

A therapist (not my regular trauma therapist) after my first real TBI diagnosis informed me in 2017 that I was having a textbook example of an identity crisis, not knowing about Fungus or about Brandi. He said I was used to being a top-of-the-class researcher, and now I couldn’t even read. It made sense I was unable to cope. He’d known people to commit suicide after major life changes like that, when they couldn’t do their career anymore because of an injury — which he said I should consider doing something that didn’t involve reading, thinking, etc. Said I’d be a good farmer with my previous experience.

But I don’t think I’m that alone. Nor do I think that was good advice. First of all, I can read most of the time now. Second of all, I can get through a lot of shit. It’ll just be slower. And third, a guy in the NFL probably gets a ton of concussions, not even trauma-induced, and discovered something that changed the herpitology field. I’m not even a little alone.

Some people need to be more careful before they speak “facts.”
 

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