F*ck this Shit, Or: When I Could Post a Thread on Every Sub-Topic

[Kintsugi]

Things aren't exactly going so well in Simonland. Nothing superficial is really the matter. I mean, my job kinda sucks, but that's never really bothered me too badly before. I've had a lot of shitty jobs. Mostly my zeppelin turned to lead because I let my parents visit for the first time in 8 years. I refused to walk for my Master's just to keep them away... only to let them visit me a month later anyway. What the actual f*ck was I thinking? I was in a good place just then, I guess, and it was partially out of practicality, because of the wedding plans. Oh yeah, now there is no wedding. Why? Well... seeing my parents near my home for the first time in 8 years seemed to set my mental health on fire, so the idea of getting married and letting them attend as well as other family members freaked me right the f*ck out. I set to work sabotaging the f*ck out of my relationship, knowing full well I was just trying to get him to leave me so I wouldn't have to cancel the wedding I was so looking forward to just because I'm a f*cking coward who can't either not invite my family or just allow the show to go on and buckle up for the symptomatic catastrophe it was likely to induce... again. Who knows if I would have even recovered by then? It could have been Symptomatic Catastrophe X2.

So right. I'm in a space where I'm writing terribly constructed sentences within paragraphs that are even worse. If you know me, you probably know that's not a very good sign in and of itself. Not only that, but I normally only write threads with a very specific meaning, goal, or question. Well, not this time. This time I'm just here to word vomit and say this shit f*cking sucks and I f*cking hate you, PTSD, you motherf*cking bastard. I let my parents near me for a few days and everything just turns to absolute shit so quickly. I thought I would get over it after a couple of weeks, but it's been like six weeks and I'm just getting worse and worse.

I did cancel my wedding, and I'm desperately trying to stop sabotaging my relationship, tempting as it is. Shoutout to disorganized attachment for being a motherf*cker too. Cognitive distortions, you get credit as well. Depression? Why, you're my only constant these days, and you know it. Nightmares? Almost as consistent as depression and so much worse than they've been in years.

I dream about my brother and my mother constantly. The nightmares won't stop. Insomnia wants to kill me. I'm having panic attacks all the time.

How the actual f*ck was I ever supposed to pull off getting married when this is what happens every time my family comes anywhere near my home? It's not nearly as bad when I meet them in our usual places--neutral territories. Even the last time I visited their house wasn't as bad, and usually I'm so allergic to my home state I'm ready to kill myself by any means necessary after the first 48 hours. I guess part of me thought that because the last time I went "home" wasn't THAT bad, this visit wouldn't be, either.

Nope. It f*cked me up pretty good.

That is all.

 

[somerandomguy]

Shit. I'm sorry, Simon. Nothing much to say, but lots of ((hugs)) if you want.

 

[Ronin]

Heya Simie,

Do you want a tight hug first or a bucket to vomit to first? Since you are totally getting the tight hugs.

Botching own wedding is not the worst botching you could be doing, insert nonflashy sign of Weddings are overrated, and hell, that stuff is mega stressful even without trauma&stress disorders to wreck havoc. Can I tell your thoughts to please be kind to you & stop blaming you for it like yesterday?

 

[Deanna]

I'm sorry you're having a tough time in your home state. Surely your other half saw how fast u went down hill. Just explain it to him/her and get the you-know-what out of that state. Don't know ya but I think you can pull this off. Congrats on your masters! That's awesome!

 

[Kintsugi]

@Ronin

I agree wedding botching isn't such a bad thing. I'm just extremely bitter that my decision was mostly made because of the fallout from seeing my parents. Putting off a wedding is like putting off retirement... it's not like you can't always do it later, and in reality it boils down to a matter of money and benefits. Not my greatest similie, maybe, but whatever. I think you get it.

I'm trying not to blame myself, but I am haunted by the words of my ex. We were together for roughly seven years, you know. Whether or not I like it, he knew me extremely well. Well enough to say things meant specifically to destroy me, sure, and he finally copped to that at the end. But I don't think that's what his goal was the last time we spoke, when he told me he believed I was incapable of love. "If I read a book called The Life of Simon, and it was a transcript of all of your experiences, when I got to the end, I would think, 'This person has no concept of love.'" Something like that. I tend to have a superior verbal memory, but I'm not sure I caught all the words that time. The world was dissembling as he said them. There were a lot of things to be caught in that moment. But I'll never forget what he was saying: that it wasn't my fault, but I am incapable of giving or receiving love because of my life's events.

I have tried to vehemently disagree. I've tried to forget he said that. I've tried to rationalize how he is wrong. I've told myself that I couldn't listen to someone who was such a f*cking asshole. But part of me believes it. It's like he was speaking my own greatest fear, the secret dread I harbor in the pit of myself. If every time my symptoms spiral, I try to toss out whoever is closest to me as a reflex, do I actually love that person? I have amazed myself with my own capacity for needless venom over the past few weeks. I've said things I wouldn't have thought I could ever say in an effort to make my fiance hate me. I don't know how it's possible for anyone to love me when I'm ready to pack my shit every time the ghosts come back. It's all well and good to be a great partner when I'm winning the war. But after I lose a succession of battles with my own psyche, suddenly I become this rabid, wild thing.

Jane Eyre and the thesis I chickened out of will never stop hounding me. Bronte, thanks a lot. But she was so on point: like a bird wildly rending its own feathers, I meet the fear of abandonment and the ghosts of my past with an outrageous cocktail of hatred and destruction, most of all directed towards myself, but of course there's a splash zone aimed straight at whoever made the mistake of getting too close to me.

Dissociation is finally coming back to me, and I've missed it so badly. Numbness is the only thing I want these days. Emotion is too volatile. The hot and cold spots of my heart are too extreme these days. The best thing I can do for myself and my partner is to just ice over for awhile.

What a f*cking rant... I really am off the rails in this thread.

 

[scout86]

But part of me believes it. It's like he was speaking my own greatest fear, the secret dread I harbor in the pit of myself.

This may be your greatest fear, but that doesn't mean it's true.

Just sayin'

All of this reminds me of something my T says every now and then. "Yeah? And when, exactly, do you think you ever had the chance to learn THAT, before now?"

Your fiance sounds like a good guy. I'd suggest pleading temporary insanity and begging for mercy. And then elope. There's nothing messed up that can't, potentially, be fixed. (Sorry about the mess though!)

 

[Kintsugi]

I've been transparent with him about my mental health. Really, much of what I've inflicted was simply an over-the-top version of things that had to be sorted, anyway--that bearing of the emotional/mental load women so often do in relationships being unloaded. It's not like he didn't deserve anything I spouted off. It was just that I could start out with a valid criticism and end up trying to tank the whole relationship over a few cases of spilled milk on his end. Looking for excuses, and I found them, because there were plenty to find, and that's all well and good to express, but I would take those excuses and make them so much larger than they needed to be. He needed to wake up to his own shit behavior, but I didn't have to go nuclear about every little thing. He was the one begging for mercy, but no one should have been put in that position. I'm the one who turned relationship problem solving into a game of emotional battleship.

 

[Ronin]

Ok, even if we assume the ex was soomehow right (.... I want to do a lot of things to him, none of them nice, but imma assume that for a second because obviously, the SOB has some say in your reality, and I care about *that*): That means what about you, exactly?

Because incapable of love is on itself just a neutral statement, of one area you might not be doing that great with... which is so far from making you a cruel cold terrible fury. Or someone who should just vanish off Earth the soonest that can be. Or someone that will be always incapable of it. Or in every relationship.

Really, that pronouncement is so bullshit... Not even because it IS bullshit, but because it doesnt work across contexts that is all your interactions with everyone, across whole the life.

So with the right now, without you destroying yourself by the past on top of present that is gutting you: What happened was you made a big deal out of a couple things, and there were a few arguments going, which the beau took hard... yeah?

Sounds to me like something that happens even normally in relations, high stress periods for anyone in them?

 

[Kintsugi]

I’m probably just mad as hell that black and white thinking took over (I am such a denizen of this community that the thread title “Name That Cognitive Distortion!” plays like game show music in the background of my head even as I partake) after my symptoms spiked, and I focused all my vitriol on my relationship after just a couple weeks, guided by my terror at the idea of an upcoming wedding amidst my How the f*ck Am I Supposed to Face Family After this Experiment fallout, and then when we actually resolved the problems I was keeping myself busy with, I’m still in This Shit Sucks Hard Symptomland.

All my heavy “Must Prove this Whole Relationship Is Actually a Mistake” artillery is spent. Things weren’t nearly as bad nor a modicum so unfixable as I was trying to believe in my desperation to escape what I believed was bound to be a cataclysmic shitshow. Now the dust is settled, the problems are sorted, my relationship is back to where it normally is, the stupidly happy coupling, but my head is still a wreck, PTSD burning brightly as all the concrete grievances have already gone quite gently into their goodnight, and I’m still here with my precious sense of righteous indignation.

I’ve always found it easier to live with a constant onslaught of symptoms than to bounce from being mostly fine and then suddenly not at all. I just haven’t had to deal with that for a very long time without being able to point a finger at school or someone dying nearby. When you’re always so careful to craft a life that’s an infinite barrage of stress, it’s both easier to ignore myself and to blame circumstance when I finally tumble into myself headlong.

Putting the wedding off for a year was a good idea (there are so many reasons aside from what I’ve mentioned; it was a sound ass decision, period). But it didn’t suddenly fix what’s eating me. I don’t think I really thought it would, yet I did, too, somewhere deep down.

It doesn’t make it any easier to work with kids who so resemble me. I can tell them it gets better, because usually I think it does, and it has for me, but at times like this, my demons are all whispering at once: liar, liar.

As Diaz writes in his novel, “Ya te tengo. Ya.”

That’s what PTSD feels like, really: the fuku of the DR. A curse of doom. All my therapy zafas can only put it off for so long before I f*cking fall into its shit again.

And then the blame game commenced again. Listening to the new This American Life episode—it’s about Cognitive Processing Therapy. My head reels into thoughts of whether this shit keeps coming back because for all the f*cking therapy I’ve been in for fifteen years, I have yet to talk about it. I write about it. And I write about it. And I write about it. I can say the words (very casually, flippantly), “My brother raped me with about twelve other boys when I was in my preschool years.” But I’ve never actually talked about what happened, not unless you count the words spilling out of me during a flashback, garbled fragments I hear about afterwards. I can see the memories play through my head like a f*cked up flip book, but nothing comes out when I’m prompted.

The blame game is awesome because if I don’t like where the needle sits it’ll just spin again. Maybe I’ve never been able to talk about it because all I learned after my initial disclosure was that I became Family Enemy Number One. The Liar. The Monkey Wrench. The Schism. The Great Betrayer of Our Family Idol, Comfortable Denial.

And then I’m back, stuck on my parents again. Stuck on their coming here. The way my father kept telling me my memories were false. Oh, yes. I invited them here for a few days, and he found an opportunity to tell me I wasn’t remembering a day correctly that I will never forget. The way I walked out again, like the time when my mother said I was lying. Like the time they tried to trick me into dinner with my brother. Yes, I have a lot of practice walking out by now. My greatest achievement of that visit was to at least say “Oh, f*ck this shit” before I slammed the door behind me.

The shit thing about the blame game is it just keeps spinning anyway.

I get stuck again on letting my parents near me, and that’s a goldmine of the rage I crave until I remember to shit on myself for inviting them in the first place.

See, this thread, it’s about this f*cking spiral. It’s about wanting to get off the carousel I forgot I’m always on, whether or not I feel it under my feet. Knowing I have to manage my symptoms is all well and good when it’s not spinning faster than the earth can orbit. It’s always so easy to say I’ve got my shit together when really I’m just in between rides.

Obviously this isn’t going anywhere. The roulette wheel keeps on keeping on. I feel like the title is fitting. That’s all I’m really saying with my endless pouring out of words. f*ck this shit. For real.

 

[Ronin]

I can tell them it gets better, because usually I think it does, and it has for me, but at times like this, my demons are all whispering at once: liar, liar.

Believing in things better, even with hard evidence things go to shit, over and over again... Does not make one a naive delusional liar.

It makes them a strong person, who not only fights the hard shit on shifting grounds... But who does not let that primitive f*ckery destroy who they are.

But I’ve never actually talked about what happened

Some things have no words, no real words that talk, anyway...

& Trying to find them and failing is not wrong.
Even the close words, and Not Really It, But Hey, are a lot.
Lot better than deafening silence.

Oh, yes. I invited them here

So you are not only a good daughter,
You are also an awesome host. :sneaky:

You invited them, but that was not inviting their bullshit, and that they went the road is on them, just on them. You aint to be blamed for your parents actions, nor does it make their vitriol anyhoo true... just because they are parents.

My greatest achievement of that visit was to at least say “Oh, f*ck this shit” before I slammed the door behind me.

So proud of you.

I get stuck again on letting my parents near me

You invited them -as parents-.
Not as gaslighting blaming douches, who also happen to be your parents.

So the rage is right on... except for the target.
Be mad at them, not at you.

It’s always so easy to say I’ve got my shit together when really I’m just in between rides.

So many dont have it together even in the in betweens...
Or when no ride is going on.
So having it together in the all betweens is a series of wins, not a loss, nor lying to yourself.

 

[Kintsugi]

What a lovely thing it is to have people like you to live inside my head along with the demons, dear @Ronin. You and so many others here not only whisper to me within my darkest hours, as the demons do, but you shout over them here, in reality, when my head is rolling through these digital pages.

In pulling all the poison out here, my faculties seem to be at least trying to come back. It feels as if there's one Simon on the ground and another on her chest, thumping. The one doing the resuscitation at least has the good sense to focus on some actual problems that can be solved in the here and now while the one on the floor wades with her eyes closed in her sea of nightmares. That former one got an interview tomorrow for a job that will not make me feel like such shit all the f*cking time. Whether tis nobler in the mind crap does like to poke at me for wanting to abandon a job working with teens who remind me so much of myself, but you know what we say around here: secure your own oxygen first. And everyone can see this job isn't doing me any favors. I've had so many other offers at places I know I would be happier. It's ridiculous to deny myself a better lifestyle just for the sake of sparing myself a little guilt. I'm no good to anyone the way I am now. It's delusional to try and guilt trip myself into staying somewhere "for the sake of the children." I'm not Mother Theresa, and no one is asking me to be except for sometimes me.

 

[Ronin]

while the one on the floor wades with her eyes closed in her sea of nightmares.

... Which means she is doing good, too.
Because if her brain has the time to focus on nightmares, she is asleep.
Not unconscious. Not dead.
She has so much time on her hands to focus on something like dreams. True, bad ones, and that were her life, so its a bit of a shitstorm, but hey, even that could be worse.

That former one got an interview tomorrow for a job that will not make me feel like such shit all the f*cking time.

No wonder you are stressed.
Good luck on that interview, you will do awesome. (hugs)

You are not abandoning these kids, either. You did so much for them, when you could. That you discovered you cant, meantime, is not failing them, and wrong estimates.

Their actual guardians owe them the care to their most... Not you.

You owe the care to you, younger you, and then, with the O2 mask on already, to yours.