Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

[littleoc]

I talked to my therapist about the OCD again and am making some headway, I think. I'm no longer "allowed" to use Google in the middle of an "OCD attack," as I've been calling them. Weird smell? Can't use Google. Phone a friend. It's probably not explosive gas, a giant fire hazard, or anything else that I'm sure will suddenly kill my family or animals.

I told a select group of people about my OCD and the fears and behaviors they cause, in hopes of diminishing people enabling my behavior. Mom didn't understand. She started out by saying that in my own home I should be able to do things however I want to be comfortable. She thinks she has OCD too so that might explain that statement. But when I discussed a different trigger with her, she went on to say that I'm being psychosomatic. That kind of hurt, as I WAS having an actual allergic reaction and just couldn't tell in the moment if it was serious or not.

I'm now very worried about getting invalidated if there is a real problem. I warned one of those friends not to use soaps that might cause an allergic reaction in a cat, and they replied, "Take you anxiety meds." They were right. But the point still stands, some soaps can do real damage. Even if the OCD is talking. I've seen that happen. So now I'm obsessively worried about their cat, though I shouldn't be, because I also trust them to not just use whatever random soap is lying around.

It's a confusing mix of feelings that I think I need to discuss with my therapist more, even though we've spent two sessions on OCD now.

 

[littleoc]

It's not transmisogynist to assume some trans women are predators, or in the very least predatory.

Thank you for this. It makes me uncomfortable to read. I suppose I need to bring it up in therapy.

The woman who did it, like I said, I feel it was somewhat unintentional. Somewhat. It's hard to explain.

She allowed her children to be kept in cages and laughed about it.
WTF????
This is abuse

I kind of misworded it, to be fair. But yes, it really felt that way and I had to really rationalize with myself about it.

What actually happened was this. When I was a toddler, my dad kept us caged up. My mom would get home from work and let us as close to the kitchen (where she was required to sit with my dad) as my dad would let us. (We weren't allowed in there.) Then we'd be put to bed. But since we'd been in cages all day, hanging out only with cats and getting very very very little socialization (and it got worse if my mom didn't come home), I would be restless out of my mind. My mom got the most interaction out of me during those times because of it.

So it would be midnight or one in the morning and toddler me would be running around the house exploring. I still do this as an adult. Sneak into building, pick locks, go into boiler rooms and things, specifically to explore. But at the time I was a toddler so without adult supervision, only cats around, I was getting into all kinds of trouble. My little brother was there too but I'd let him run, especially if I saw or heard my dad looking for us. I got very good at hiding from him -- not as hard when your dad is a hoarder.

One thing I liked to do was play with fruit. My dad hated this and would force me to eat fruit I messed with the next morning, while joking I would get worms. Tell me I was a bad kid who deserved to be locked up all day, etc etc. That's the reason he put a lock on the outside of my door, eventually, and made my windows hard to open.

I'd poke my fingers through banana peals, mostly. (Or cat carriers, which would almost require ER visits because I would wait until I had been stuck for hours to call for help for fear of my dad's behavior.) So my mom would know when I was out of my room at night as a toddler because she'd see little poke holes in the bananas. That brought her joy.

She has giant memory gaps so she can't seem to remember that that incidences surrounding that were negative. I guess.

It makes me uncomfortable when she talks about it but I don't know what I would prefer.

Stay on me about this because I don't want to forget -- but I will. So keep the feather duster handy :)

Thank you for this, by the way. I've been thinking about this since you posted it and it made me feel a lot better :)

 

[littleoc]

My grandmother has gotten me involved in her stupid "my son is entitled to his stuff he left at your house" and like she's clearly aware that he is not entitled. She even calls him Alex instead of "your father" now so she's clearly aware that he's only in my life because I'm trying to not upset my grandfather. Literally it and he (dad) and I aren't even on speaking terms.

My dad was clearly NOT counting on my grandmother trying to talk to my sister, who forwarded her to me. My dad is going to be sorry he involved me in this. I asked for the list. If I see things on it my dad wants that I haven't already trashed, I'm setting it on fire.

 

[littleoc]

Not all of it. The bulletin board of the cop he had a crush on? Definitely.

 

[littleoc]

To be fair, my dad has been better about boundaries. I told him he had to stop commenting on every social media post I did, and he cooperated. I told him he's not allowed to message my friends, and, as far as I know, he hasn't done it since. But. Big but. I don't get along well with child abusers. I don't find it as cute as the government does.

If he wanted to be actual friends he would apologize and do prison time and also not sell me to a pedophile.

Gonna think of a positive thing to post next now.

 

[littleoc]

Tomorrow, my plans are to finish my end of the taxes, do an outline, finish readings, write more of the next scene I'm working on.

And check to see if the store has crickets yet.

And do dishes. It's gotten too late to do that right now.

Ah, yeah, and also DO THAT COVER LETTER. I fear I may have missed out on the job I was hoping to apply to already but I will hang in there anyway. Or try. Very nervous now.

Okay. A positive. I hung out with my friend Scottie last night and we were talking about high school again, and in my email I noticed that we used to talk about the same things that we do as adults. So, we're just perfectly-jiving friends and even my ex couldn't ruin that, lol. Made me very happy.

My friend's bird is healthy.

My mom got a new dutch oven. It's VERY nice.

I'm looking at pajama bottoms for men (because they have pockets) and found some CUTE ones. Ones with frogs wearing santa hats. I think I'm gonna go for it :0

My cat Xavier is still enjoying being able to cuddle at night.

I remembered that I was protective of Scottie in high school without being a toxic f*ck and that made me feel better. Clearly I'm not a toxic friend.

My baby cousin turned three yesterday and she's doing GREAT.

My other cousin is graduating high school. Hard to graduate in a pandemic but she's strong af. Her dad was like mine, but she got adopted into my family and now she has us to celebrate with her. At an acceptable distance, of course.

We spent $400 in groceries. We have enough food for a while. :)

I think that's good.

 

[littleoc]

My OCD is messing with me a lot more than I thought it was. I'm obsessed with random fears that are completely illogical, and they are affecting some days so badly that I am barely functioning, because I am spending all of the day trying to using Google to either validate my anxiety or else find out what I'm supposed to do to prevent it.

Like the other day. I spent the entire day learning everything about what ideas are legal to publish, but not for any good reason. It was because I suddenly got obsessed with the fact that Brandi will try to sue me for my own ideas and somehow win? Irrational. Yet it was bothering me. The trigger seemed to be someone in another support forum with DID talking from another personality. It escalated into me looking at whether I would be sued. Somehow.

And today, I found out that a symptom of selective mutism is talking with an unusual tone of voice. When I'm talking to people normally, I have a medium to a deep voice. When I'm talking to my mom, I get so nervous that I can't say what I need to, even if my friend is there with me, and I speak in a really high tone of voice that feels unnatural even as I do it.

Yet I've been browsing Google for the last three hours -- instead of doing any actual work I really need to be doing -- because I'm pretty sure I'm faking it.

I think that about PTSD, too, a lot. I even doubt I behave like a person.

This is exhausting. Seeing some validation that the SM is real, though, is helping, but also heartbreaking. I suddenly uncovered a memory from fifth grade, when I was with that pedophile. I was not functioning in school anymore. I was spending entire days just staring at the floor, "ignoring" adults. Finally my teacher -- I've mentioned her, Ms. Frye -- kept saying my name repeatedly until the entire class was silent and just staring at me. She was talking through her teeth and I was terrified. Finally she screamed, "Stand up and get over here or I will grab your arm and drag you to my desk." I sat there weighing my options but the second she started to move I got up and went to her. I tried to explain my point of view but ended up having to simplify so much that the other kids laughed at how stupid I was.

That's what bothered me about that group in Iceland. All the ostracizing. I don't feel like a person.

 

[littleoc]

I also realized something horrible last week. I have trouble remembering the details behind the whole pedophile thing. I still can't say the pedo's name (he had an unusual name, and unfortunately it was both a common word and the name of a hotel chain, so I get funny looks sometimes when I can't say it and I get dizzy if someone tries to fill me in, and it's ridiculous and feels too dramatic), so it's not surprising that I have trouble accessing the memories of when I was "with" him. I still feel like I have to talk about him like he was a boyfriend, or a very close best friend, and first of all I really hate that.

But secondly, I know a few things from around that time period. I know my mom was dying, but I'm not entire clear on exactly when she started and stopped treatment. Despite a good memory otherwise. She had a terminal illness, so that was awful. She was going to just leave us with my dad, I guess. Because she'd told us the foster care system was worse.

I know that at some point at the start of the school year, the pedophile asked my sister and I to babysit his dog. My dad was pushing us to do so.

I know that either before or after the pedophile and cancer, my sister was found in the pedophile's ditch medically dead, so technically two people in my family came back from the dead, so that's cool I guess. I'm very sure this was during or after my mom's cancer treatments. But I can't pin it down.

And then of course at some point during all this mess, my performance at school went to 0, I couldn't study at home, my teachers were judging me for being a lazy and bad child and I couldn't speak. I just stared at the ground and when pulled aside I'd say in a rush how much I hated myself, but that was it.

One of the teachers who actually went out of her way to help me, she lives in my current neighborhood. I feel I owe her so much and I really, really appreciate her but when I saw her going on a walk with her husband, the old feelings from then came back and I was overwhelmed and had to just smile and wave. I tried to say, "Hey, how are you?" and barely managed the hey and ended up with a worried glance.

With others I'm talkative as heck.

Anyway, the horrible thing I realized. When my mom was dying, my dad's sister-in-law Michelle, who (fun fact) was a midget stripper and that's how he met my dad's brother (lovely family, dad's side) -- when my mom had cancer Michelle came over to take care of us because my dad wouldn't. I've mentioned her here before but a long time ago. I am disappointed in her because she was cruel to my mom, kept asking me and my siblings if we wanted to talk about sex, and kept being... odd. Long story short. Doesn't matter here. What matters is that she's largely missing from my memory.

That concerns me so much because I can't remember the time frame of the pedo. That has previously been something I avoided discussing because I feel like if I can't name a real trauma anniversary surrounding this, I must be faking the PTSD. But, now that I'm properly thinking about it, I realize that it is incredibly likely that Michelle was either around and LIVING with me when the pedo was someone I was "visiting" every day, or else I'm even more confused about the time frame...

But if Michelle was there, that would be worse. She said it was my little brother sexually abusing me to a courtroom. Which is incorrect and probably something my dad told her, but I've been uncovering some WEIRD memories about her lately. Like, asking me to take off my shirt and see my breasts, kind of weird, during a time (I guess?) when the pedo might have been trying to alter them because they were growing in too quick. And asking to read a book to me and reading allowed the sexual parts.

As in, I'm worried she was in on it and didn't get reported properly. She refused to divorce her husband, who was exactly like my dad, when he got charged with child sexual assault, which caused her to loose all her children to the state. After Eric's death she started re-adopting the ones she could.

Maybe she shouldn't have been allowed to do that. That makes me feel incredibly guilty. Even though I'm not sure what I could even do about it now.

I'm so confused about everything and I wish I could ask anyone around me for a timeframe, but I feel I can't trust anyone and I can't open up about this. If I try and I go mute, and try to get away from the conversation, it will continuously come back and I'll never feel safe around my family ever again.

But is that the OCD telling me I need answers? Or what? It's confusing. I want to know if Michelle was living with us when pedo was a part of my daily life. I was to know if I was acting that depressed at school AND at home.

Michelle cleaned out my dad's hoard at the time. She threw out all my favorite toys.

I have to stop. This is too hard right now.

 

[littleoc]

The "blank stare" my mom used to mock me for and make fun of me for -- turns out that's just SM too. Fun fact

 

[littleoc]

I'm so upset. Two days in a row now I've spent over six hours when trying to sit down and work just doing bullshit related to my disabilities. I'm so anxious, tired, and upset. It's almost three in the morning and I now can't wake up earlier and am not closer to getting my work done. I doubt I'll even do it in time at this rate. I've been trying to apply for the same job for two months and I'm starting to doubt I'll get that done either. And I can't talk about this over the phone with my therapist. I'm too worried someone will overhear us. Arrrghh.

Clearly having another anxiety problem. Couldn't pick up the new anti-depressant they want me to take, though, because the state pretend-insurance isn't working right now and better yet it can lower a "seizure threshold" so the pharmacist wasn't sure I shouldn't call the doctors back and ask for something else.

 

[littleoc]

I need to think of something positive. I'm really upset. Hang on though because my memory is blanking out on me now.

 

[littleoc]

I regret looking into the above memories. I clearly wasn't ready and now I smell the pedo's cigarette smoke on my clothes and I know that isn't true.

Edit to add: at least that's more confirmation that the PTSD isn't fake and I probably didn't just make up my memories about him. Been working through fake memories Brandi left me with and sometimes they feel too similar.