Today I had a psychiatrist appointment, and tomorrow I have an appointment with a new therapist. I'm going to be honest, I hate going to any sort of appointments related to my mental health. I think that therapy is important, everyone should have access to it, and people who can't cope with life should be able to get whatever help they need. The reason I don't like it myself is just that I don't find that conventional medicine is all that effective at helping me deal with my issues.
I've struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life. On a good day my mood is "meh" but on a bad day I feel like I should just kill myself and get it over with. I can't honestly remember a time when I was "happy", I just sort of remember times when I wasn't quite as depressed as I am now.
I remember it getting really bad when I was in about the forth or fifth grade. I specifically remember one day when my mother and I were moving stuff that wasn't going to fit in our new apartment into a storage unit. It was hot as hell, and I was feeling extremely cranky and complaining about how much I didn't want to be there. I'll be honest, I don't even remember what I said at this point, all I remember is that at some point my mother snapped and yelled at me, "Kristen, I'm working." before going back to moving heavy boxes into the storage unit.
I don't remember people or places very well. What I do remember is emotions. I remember feeling scared, because mother had never yelled at me like that before, upset that I'd made her mad, and worried that she would hurt me if she got angrier at me.
I wish I could say this was the only time she did something that made me feel that way, but there were several more instances after that where similar things happened. In all those instances, something happened that caused mother to fly off the handle, but I didn't know what happened and what I'd done wrong.
Things went back to normal after about a year of this, but it was never the same. Before the storage incident, I loved my mother more than anything in the world, and was convinced she would be there to protect me no matter what. Afterwards, I still loved her, but I was always scared that I would do something that would make her mad.
Something you don't know about mood issues unless you live with someone who has one, you can reach a point where you're so angry you don't care who you hurt or how badly you hurt them. If you're on the other end of that, you have two choices: make it so the can't hurt you or make it so they won't hurt you. I chose the latter. Over the years I fought back in whatever way I could. Knowing that she could get angry at any time, for any reason, it rather made it hard to have any motivation to do anything that would make her happy, when it was better to just save the energy for the next tantrum that would come my way.
I should make this clear, I'm in no way blameless. If I wanted to, I could have kept our house clean, done my schoolwork without being asked, supported my mother during her down moments, tried to keep an open mind, remembered that even if she gets upset, she's just acting out how she was taught to behave by her parents growing up.
That's what she expects of me. The reason I don't do it is that honestly, I don't want to. You know how in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Yoda says that fear leads to anger, hate and suffering? That's what's happened to me over time. I don't know if she loves me anymore, or if she even did. I don't know what her hopes were for me, or if I failed her. Quite frankly I don't care. Ever since that day in storage I've tried to ignore her behavior, or justify it, or just put my pain to one side so I can do what I need to do.
That all stopped a week ago. I don't want to go into details, but mother told me what she was feeling that time, and rather than feeling sorry or upset, it just pissed me off. It was the kind of thing that you don't take out on your child who had nothing to do with it, you get therapy and work to fix it. But instead she made me her scapegoat.
So I'm done playing the bad guy. As soon as I get a steady income and move out of the house, I'm cutting off all ties with her. Probably the rest of my family to. My cousin's still cool though.
No comments:
Post a Comment