#because i hated feeling so naive and sheltered and oversensitive

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

maybe there's sort of like a grimy look and feel to them that i get? it's more haunting, especially from a perspective of now. i'm sad about a lot of things that happened years ago to me. i guess it's kinda soothing??

[allthebooksandcrannies]

i just need to vent here

NI’m going to put a read more link in here so its not just this extremely long post but i need to vent where no one i know is going to see it and get all offended but i also need to look like i’m doing gre prep. this is mostly me just yelling into the void but i’d also appreciate any advice or feedback anyone wants to give.

i don’t want to accidentally hurt someone so trigger warnings for discussion of eating disorders, depression, anxiety, emotional crisis, mention of rape, mention of homophobia, dead dove do not eat

so, my mom and i had another fight last night that kinda picked up again this morning and i feel really shitty but i’m not gonna stop obsessing over it and everything else it stirred up until i get it out so i’m just gonna stream of consciousness over here.

lately it seems all my mom ever do is fight and i made her cry again so i guess that makes me the asshole because the guilt is real right not but guilt and self-hatred is also my general default i think so maybe i’m being to hard on myself? like, its not like i also didn’t want to cry and i feel like she took my words and twisted them around into something i didn’t mean but i also don’t know what i meant. and we’re both so similar so maybe we were just both being defensive and oversensitive even though we both give Dad shit for that and great now i feel bad about that because i always take her side in fights because i feel like i need to protect her and my brother always takes his side but that’s a whole other can of worms. but also, so what if we are? like aren’t all emotions supposed to be valid? or does it matter even if they are?

we fight about everything these days and every joke i make offends her and i’m just teasing but she keeps taking it to the extreme, taking it as criticism on issues i’m not even talking about. and this time i was defensive and she was defensive because i was defensive and i tried to explain it and it just made it worse.

like, this time we were talking and i don’t remember how we got on the subject but i think it was because we were talking about this new diet my dad is going on because my paternal grandmother  won’t stop blaming my mom for my dad being so overweight and i know i should have been stepping lightly because dad had just been teasing her for saying she wished the nutritionist would have found some easy to fix problem other than his diet/activity levels so his mom would get off her ass about it. and like, i get why my grandmother is concerned, he is very overweight and needs an ankle replacement he can’t get until he loses like 150 lbs and she already has an unhealthy paranoia about her own weight after an entire childhood of her own mother fatshaming her and her sisters but also it’s ridiculous to just blame my mother and her cooking considering that when he put on all the weight originally it was when he was working for his uncle and only ate one meal she cooked a day and was going to fast food places twice a day, like the dude has some responsibility here, but also he carries it just like his dad, male cousins, and three paternal uncles so there’s obviously some genetics working against him, but most importantly right around the time this first started he fell through a roof at a construction site and completely shattered all the bones in his right ankle and was completely bedridden for over a year while on serious painkillers that probably didn’t help. but anyway she was already upset and in a weird headspace because she had an eating disorder in high school, so i should have been more careful and empathetic but she started talking about one of my roommates and how health conscious she is and how thin she is and how she probably has eating disorder and i kinda snapped because i know she means well but damn if it didn’t bring up so many other issues that i was just slammed right back into 

because she always has something to say about my friends. for as long as i can remember she has criticized my friends in ways that makes me question my relationship with them and i know she just is trying to protect me and be involved in my life but her good intentions are still a major cause of so many of my issues and i was end up lonelier and more self-isolating as a result. and my roommates are my best friends and the one she criticizes the most (like what feels like every time we talk about her, to the point where she’s convinced my mom hates her) has been so important in showing me how sheltered and naive i was and has brought me out of my shell and helped with my self-worth so much and is literally the first person in my life who told me i don’t have to always be looking out for other before myself. i don’t owe the world and its okay to live for me sometimes.

and this one, she’s so quiet and she doesn’t like to interact with people she doesn’t deem worth her time and maybe she can be a little cold and judgy but she’s always good to me and she’s been protective and as someone who has always been on the outside of every group the fact that she deems me worth her time and her advice really means a lot and i can acknowledge her flaws but just earlier this weak my mom was talking about how cold she thinks megan is so i was already primed to be defensive. so my mom starts talking about how megan probably has a body image issue since she’s so conscious of her weight and i’m like??? she never talks about weight. the only time she talks about food is when we’re comparing recipes and yeah she eats healthy and puts effort into that but she’s a lifelong vegetarian and she’s usually trying to balance that out with her needs as a cross country runner but because she’s not competing anymore apparently that means that the fact that she still runs every morning and eats like a cross country runner when she doesn’t have to (never mind that she still runs marathons, and she likes running) means she has body image issues and the when we go out for ice cream she’s overindulging because of it. and look at how skinny she is, even though she’s 4′ 10″ and all muscle, like i’d be worried if she wasn’t?

and maybe i’m in denial but i think i would know. i’ve lived with her three years and my mom has met her like six times and never longer than an hour at a time. and she says she was just trying to help me be a good friend and her words fit but her tone came off as criticising and maybe i jumped to conclusions but it felt like one more thing that was wrong with me and my friendship. and maybe i’m just being defensive because on some level i’m worried that what if she’s right, that means i’ve been oblivious and a bad friend and  is she calling me a bad friend, like is that coming from me or just my own insecurities? because i am insecure about whether i’m capable of being a good friend because i always end up left behind and mom keeps saying that i intimidate them or make them feel judged or guilty because i always stick to the rules and do i come off judgy? i don’t try to i try so hard to be openminded but then i’m just accused of becoming a screaming liberal what do you want from me, i just don’t know how to be anything but a pleaser. 

anyway i made the mistake this morning of responding when she was telling me that she doesn’t understand why i’m so defensive and i told her the truth that she has always criticized my friends be it that “piper was obviously raised without enough supervision and that’s why she drinks and likes to push boundaries and wants to be older than she is which is why i’m worried about her influence on you” never mind that we’re 21 and she hasn’t done anything i don’t know for a fact my mom did at her age. and then courtney and jai-lyn and jessica and all the girls i hung out with in the library who were my only close friendships in middle school, they were just weird and had weird interests, even though all our interests were the same and i was also the “weird” kid at school, that’s why i didn’t have friends. we were weird because we were good at school, we were passionate about the books we were reading, we were stereotypical middle school fangirls, but at least we were happy? and we were age appropriate but it was never good enough and i should hang out more with the sort of girls on student council and on sports teams never mind that i tried that and we didn’t have anything in common, and they were mean and i was happy with my friends and i get she wanted to help but when i did have a problem with that group when i was upset that hope had been secretly pregnant in high school and had her sister lie to us for months and we only found out because she posted a photo at seven months on facebook and i was just upset she hadn’t trusted us to have her back when we had been so close and just wanted to vent to my mother and have her on my side it was all “well maybe you should have been more approachable and less judgmental like you’re being now” like i know that but i just wanted someone to acknowledge that the lying was shitty. and even if i did mess up, i was fifteen and just wanted my mom to be conforting. but i can never vent because all i get are suggestions on what to do better and i appreciate the intent, i do, but occasionally i would like to be told that i’m good enough.

so anyway i said that i was wrong to be so defensive i just felt that she was trying to criticize either my friend or my ability to perceive my friend because when she complains about my friends i feel like i have to defend myself and them. and she went off on my about how she was just trying to help me be a good friend so that i would be able to be there for her because her own friends hadn’t been there for her, and her mom hadn’t supported her, and no one believed her when she was raped and since i know that i should be a little more aware, and i should know that my mother is not an evil person, and that she is not trying to be malicious, and how hurt she is by me saying that she criticizes my friends when i have heard her say the same thing about her mother, and how dare i imply she’s a bad mom like her mother when i know how much she has hurt her” and this whole time i’m trying to explain that i know she’s not trying to hurt me, i know her intentions are good, i’m just trying to say how it made me feel but she’s talking over me and i’m also annoyed that she’s kinda implying that if we hadn’t had this conversation i wouldn’t be there for my friend when she needed me and also implying that i wouldn’t believe my friends if they came to me about a sexual assault. like, give me some credit here. i’m usually the one between my mother and i who’s saying we need to address rape culture, and women’s word should be more valued, but now i’m the bad guy because it hasn’t happened to me.

and i know my mom had trauma. so many of her parenting choices so obviously link back to what i know about her past.  She was the youngest of three kids and an accident later in life so her parents were kinda sick of the whole parenting thing and were almost completely hands-off, which let my mom get in a lot of bad situations, so she micromanaged everything. I was the textbook overachieving child has no idea what to do when everyone else catches up. i got good grades in school, so if my grades ever were less than perfect i apparently wasn’t trying hard enough and she knew i could do better so why was i letting myself down like this and when i got straight a’s or awards it wasn’t “i’m so proud of how hard you worked” it was “i’m proud of how smart you are” or “i wish i had been that smart” which sounded nice but ignored that i had to bust my ass for those grades, at the expense of extracurriculars and friendships and my mental health to the point that i had a breakdown in the middle of my senior english class over getting an 89 on essay because failing wan’t okay and anything that would drop my grade from an A+ was a failure. nevermind that my little brother was rewarded anytime he got a grade higher than a D because they expected them to fail. 

and its like that in so many areas. nothing i ever do is good enough on its own. its just “okay, now what are you going to do next” and I feel like i’m drowning here. If its not my friends, it’s my lack of a dating life. My whole childhood, she told me not to get married or have kids young because it would ruin my life (she was twenty when she married my dad and 21 when she had me) and how disappointing it was to see all these young girls more focused on dating and romantic validation instead of school or their careers. She was happy i didn’t date in high school (I didn’t have the time to date and still get perfect grades, even if i had wanted to). but now i’m about to graduate college and have still never been in a relationship (i still don’t have time to get good grades, have a job [since i’m mostly on my own for school costs], write a thesis for the honors program she wouldn’t let me drop, hang out with friends and date, and i’m pretty sure i’m ace) and suddenly she wants to ask me about whether i’m seeing someone every time i call home and is getting progressively more frustrated that “i’m too shy and not willing to make this a priority”. and 1) why the hell would you think it was going to magically become a priority when my whole life you have told me it shouldn’t be, and 2) i’m pretty sure i’m asexual, and have no fucking clue what my romantic orientation is but i might be into girls a little because the closest things to crushes I've ever had have been toward my female friends, and that’s a whole other can of worms since when i experimentally float the concept of asexuality or not being interested in sex i get dismissed and while she says she’s okay with my cousin being gay anytime someone makes a joke about the possibility of my brother or I being on the LGBT spectrum the whole family makes really homophobic comments. and i’m torn because if she ever found out i was scared to come out to her she’d be really pissed and hurt about “how dare i think she would react badly” but i’m pretty sure she would react badly, either in anger or in dismissive “you’re being ridiculous, you just don’t know what you’re missing”. i get that one a lot. I've talked about how i have no interest in ever being pregnant and she just keeps telling me i’m wrong to not want that experience regardless of the fact that i have really bad type 3 EDS that i get from her (though her case isn’t as bad) which is a connective tissue disorder that goes hand and hand with POTS and i already have chronic dislocations, severe scoliosis, am in constant pain, and a heart arrhythmia. Plus, we know that my symptoms already get worse when my hormones get out of wack during my period, and pregnancy is known to make eds so much worse, permanently (since its a degenerative condition). And she’s always dealing with consequences of being pregnant that are worse because of the eds, like how the scar-tissue from her c-section is much worse than it should be and keeps causing adhesions that cause her a lot of pain, and pelvic floor keeps trying to collapse, and i almost died during labor because the stress fucked with my heart so bad. and i know of women with eds whose joints were permanently fucked or who know have to walk with a cane because of how much damage their pelvises went through in childbirth, so yeah i’d rather not risk it when i’ve always wanted to adopt anyway but anytime i express any of this she gets upset because either “i’m so sorry your mother is an idiot! It’s not like she speaks from experience” <- exact quote, or “you need to stop letting this illness dictate your life, i didn’t raise a victim but that's the problem with your generation, you always think you’re a victim” which argh. and i might be okay with that last argument if she didn’t constantly tell me that i need to be more proactive about taking care of my body because of my condition (which is exactly what i’m trying to do with the not wanting to be pregnant thing, but apparently this just applies to how i need to eat better and exercise more ]even though most exercises hurt and use up too many spoons for me to work out and do everything else i need to] because i can’t afford to gain anymore weight [again, this is why i have so much fucking guilt every time i eat], or to how i apparently need to tell everyone in my life that i could faint at anytime [but stop making everything about your condition, Nicole]).

Anyway, long story short, i feel like nothing i ever do is good enough and i always have to be the bigger person and let it go when i’m upset. and i do love her, and i know she loves me but it just feels conditional even if i’m pretty sure its not. and i never know if i’m being too hard on, since i know she has trauma and is trying to help, but i have trauma too even if a different kind, and i have diagnosed but unmedicated anxiety and depression and i need validation from others and i just want to be told one time that i’m enough or that she’s sorry for all of the pressure she constantly puts on me, and i feel guilty for being so selfish when she needs me but, also, she’s my mom? i’m sick of having to parent everyone around me and then getting told its none of my business and i need to be more respectful. I just can’t win and i feel like i’m going to explode and i feel so guilty and so angry at myself and at her and then more guilt and anger for feeling guilt and anger to the point that i don’t know how to feel anything anymore. today’s just a really bad day and i feel like i keep getting more and more broken and conflicted about everything from politics to sexuality to religion i don’t know what to feel or what i think anymore...