u/ConditionStrict919

Warning. Do not read if you are concerned about your health. When things are going well my mind creates reasons and situations where things are actually going wrong. Most recently, as life has been going well, I have begun to worry extra about my health. My brain cannot give me a break. It's like...okay you think you have a future? Well guess what, that mark on your back is probably a skin problem because you secretly have kidney disease. I got over it a little bit with logic. I told my brain..."no, it's probably not that and whatever it is it's not acute so you have time to work on it and make it better. Also you have taken steps to better your health recently and that's all you can do".

And then when that was done with I found out that I got approved for an apartment and immediately my brain was like, "sure you got approved for the apartment but it's in another city and you have obligations in your current city and even though they end at such a time that you can take the apartment the reality is you shouldn't because something is going to happen to extend these obligations beyond when they are reasonably supposed to be done and then you will get in trouble."

I'm constantly making up reasons for things not to work out even though they frequently do. I live my life by attempting to avoid everything because of this feeling that everything is going wrong all the time even when it's not. I have avoided so much that you might even say I've avoided living life at all.

I wish I could see things more clearly.

Sometimes I just can't handle other peoples' feelings. It gets to a point where I feel I've done everything possible to help and change a situation but there is just nothing that can be done.

I listen

I am present physically

I offer help, actions and responses to what's happening

I enact those actions

Sometimes it gets to the point where I have nothing left and I say things that I truly regret.

That happened to me last night with someone I care about. They were going on and on and on and they wouldnt stop. They were crying and crying and crying and nothing was helping.

Finally I said some stuff I regret and I hurt their feelings with it. I just couldn't handle it. Days and days of the same stuff over and over. Days and days of them feeling this way.

I tried to leave at one point for a break. They said "so you are just going to leave me when I feel this way?"

And I was like..."what am I supposed to do. There is no way for me to alleviate this situation. There is nothing for me to do here. It's like when I was a kid with my drunk mother. Nothing can be done. Nothing is changing. It doesn't matter what I say. It's all the same if I'm here or not".

And that really hurt their feelings and I feel really bad. I'm not some fake matyr who needs to listen to others to perform being a good person but at the same time I can only do so much before I feel like it's a complete waste of everyone's time and my own feelings get hurt.

I was at my Dad's house as a kid. I didn't shower in God knows how long. When I came back my hair was literally dreadlocked. I was nasty.

I remember bringing this up years later to him and my stepmom.

Their response, "No that couldn't have happened. We never would have allowed that"

Well, actually guys, it did happen. Stuff like this happened lots in our house because you guys are extremely selfish and what little care I received was because you felt obligated to do it.

I know you felt obligated to take care of me because of all the times you yelled at me and acted like something you were doing for me was a giant favor.

Even stuff a child should expect like food. You acted like it was some favor that I should be eternally grateful for.

The results of this treatment went long into adulthood where anytime anyone did even the slightest favor for me or anytime someone was nice to me in the most basic and cursory way would cause me to be indebted to them emotionally.

That is what you taught me. How to be indebted to pieces of shit who treated me poorly at zero cost to them and every cost to me.

It sucks is all. It really really sucks. Being poked and prodded and fucked with and then all of a sudden you explode but the thing that made you explode is never truly addressed. It's bullshit. It sucks. I hate it.

My stepmoms favourite tactic with me was, whenever she did not like an emotion I displayed, was to essentially attack me physically in some way.

Then, when I grew too big for that and she began to fear I might fight back she would scapegoat my blood Mom and use the fact that my blood Mom was an alcoholic.

"You are only acting that way because your Mom is an alcoholic who fucked you up"

Nevermind the fact that stepmom was an alcoholic too lol. Nevermind the fact that my blood Mom's alcoholism was, in part, caused by the brutal way my Dad dumped her when he decided to cheat around with my stepmom.

It was my stepmoms favourite phrase, "Jesus your mother fucked you up".

Whenever I hear it I think...yeah...a little bit. It was her choice to continue to be an alcoholic for a bit but who is the one who helped wreck her life? You stepmom. Who is the one that is continuing to use a situation she helped cause as a "get out of jail free card"? You stepmom. Who never bothered to go to rehab? You stepmom.

My blood Mom may be a fuck up in some ways but at least she takes some form of accountability sometimes. You never did stepmom. You never did.

When I had a problem with the way she treated me and reacted to her abuse she would throw a giant tantrum and take my emotions out of context. When that was not enough she would scapegoat my real Mom and act as though any issue I had with her was because my Mom "fucked me up".

The reality is my Mom had alcoholism and was hard and scary to deal with but she never physically assaulted me or emotionally abused me in the same way my stepmom did.

The reality is my blood Mom's alcoholism pales in comparison to the physical assaults and the emotional abuse heaped on me by my stepmom.

Its like she uses my blood Mom's alcoholism as a get out of jail free card anytime I tried to hold her emotionally accountable for anything.

It's like...she scapegoated me for any issue I had with her or her treatment of me and when that wasn't enough she scapegoated a person who wasn't around.

Arguably you could also say that my stepmom was partially responsible for the start of my Mom's alcoholism in the first place because my stepmom was one of the reasons that her marriage to my Dad broke up because step Mom and Dad were fucking around behind my Mom's back.

Yeah...my stepmom is a malignant narcissist with a pretty big sadistic streak.

Can't believe I survived.