Hate

I don't like hating, its counter productive, but I am so damn good at it sometimes it scares me. My mom talks about admonishing me (aka screaming/possibly striking me) when I said I hated something or someone for that very reason. "It's not nice to hate". She says she feels bad about that now, and in some ways I think she should, in other ways its a valuable lesson.

I hate the way I look and very often I actually hate myself. I ty to do things to remedy this, to break this cycle of self hatred. For two months I exercised every day, either riding an exercise bike, or when I could going on the treadmill at my boss'. I felt good about that other than the days that my ankles hurt from using the bike barefoot considering the history of planters facaeitis (that is so spelled wrong). I have found that I think regular exercise gives me a license to eat more. For the last week I haven't done any exercise at all.

Inside my head I can be terribly mean, beyond my usual sarcasm and cutting remarks. Many times it is with people that I see going along similar paths that I have gone down. Particularly when despite my dislike for someone I've tried to offer the best advice from my experience. That is the benefit of having the experiences that I've had.

I hate my inability to relate to my peers sometimes. I feel like I am lightyears away from them. I am still dealing in real life with feelings of social anxiety and in both my real and online lives my feelings of ongoing solitude even while in a crowd. It's a funny conundrum. The people who seek complete attention all the time irk me, at the same time when I feel vulnerable and share a piece of myself I fell angry if no one gives me that same attention. The problem is always the same, I don't connect enough. I have been rejected by the people in my life, including myself so often that I am afraid of opening up to people, and always keep myself just slightly removed from the group. At the same time the last time I became part of "the group" it felt like they did nothing but tear down other people, and that's not how I want to get my self esteem. Making other people hurt like I have hurt is not helpful.

I don't walk outside because in my head I still hear every taunt about my weight that I have ever heard. It haunts me and still continues to frighten me sometimes. I hate the weaknesses in myself. I hate this lack of control I feel. I hate that I have been so overtly negative lately.

I am a mess lately

Its not a physical hurt, there is an ache in my heart that I have always had, but sometimes it comes back more than others. All the pain, the anger, the loneliness in my life sitting in a ball in my chest. It aches so much that the slightest outside influence can bring me to tears. I have been touched y so much in the last few days in some ways, and in others I feel so lonely, so bereft.

I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I feel so lost. I feel like my life is slipping away from me again, and while I'm not mutilating this time, or suicidal I still feel out of touch. I am reading "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating" which is something of a mixed blessing, as well as trying to follow up on the advice that I've been given before, which is to write some of the stories of things that have happened to me down. This blog may wind up a spring board, or a catchment area for a lot of those ideas in the days and weeks to come.

My mother is on my case to make peace with my bio dad and to be duplicitous with my step father. I will not deceive my stepfather - well adoptive father to suit my mother's needs. So much I want to say, and not able to collect the thoughts at the moment.

My mother called me today, she's been having a string of good days since she went back on her MS medication, which is great. I am happy for her. Her doctors swear she's not in alzheimers that all of her problems are due to the MS. That's good, although she's told me her brain is shrinking and my boss (a doctor) has said that's part of dimentia. If there's anything that describes my mother its demented. (sometimes) She likes to talk to me and offer advice about my relationship with my biological father, and tell me how much they're communicating. That's great for her... so she can get her childlike fixation back on him again... and he can break her heart, again. At least this time he can't knock her up. She's in therapy now so she thinks she's this all knowing beacon of light. She had a major breakthrough today because she dealt with the fact that her mother died when she was young and she's had to deal with all the doctors and stuff for her MS herself. The way she talked about it she sounded like her mother would still be doing all this stuff for her. It was really weird. But her breakthrough was about being angry about it I think, and the quack she's going to told her that its made her that much stronger to not have that. That my mother always tells herself she can't, but she always does. She does because she has to like everyone else. We all survive because we need to. To me this is not a breakthrough, and she didn't do everything herself. She's clearly forgotten all that my grandfather did for her. He made it so she didn't have to work for years, be bought her vehicles that she never took care of, gave her (and me) a comfortable home that she subsequently punched holes in the walls when she was drinking and angry... and sometimes when she wasn't drinking. She also is having a breakthrough on how she needs to feel less guilty about having been a shitty mother in so many ways. Because it just wasn't her fault... She did the best she could... and I guess if that wasn't good enough too fucking bad.

I know I am too old to be angry about some of this stuff still. At least that's what I'll be told, mainly by her, but this is the same woman who still talks about her emotionally bereft childhood and the boy that she loved that left her. Its kind of like ok it was 35+ years ago. Get over it. Sometimes it feels like my sister talks to me like a mom. My mother wants me to lie for her and keep her secrets which I have very mixed feelings about. One, I don't like lying to my sister or anyone else that my mother asks me to "cover for her" with. The other is why am I the one who has to hold the secrets, why don't I get to be protected, why don't I get to be the one she's afraid to tell. I am just as angry as everyone else would be, just as disappointed, and more so because I have to lie about it.

Tonight's cake taker was I needed my stepfather's address since he'd recently moved. She gave it to me but asked when I send the card if I could put A. Tucci on it instead of using an address label so his girlfriend might think it was from her. She's fucking insane.

She always seems surprised when I have so much anger at my biofather but doesn't realize a lot of that is the same anger that is directed at her. I am tired of the I have problems with alcohol or drugs whether I see them or not so the things in my life that are fucked up are not my fault. Poor me wah wah. I mean I get like that too, but half the shit I went through, most of the shit I've gone through has been from the path those two have set me on. i can't forgive that easily. And even if I try to forgive I can't forget. I am angry. I'm hurt that he's such an asshole. I hate that he reminds me so much of my past too. That he asked for so much right off the bat. That he wants this on his terms.

In any case, I'm being whiny and I'm tired. My boss is out of town and I keep horrible hours when I don't have to work the next day.

Parents... who needs them

(Warning: I am a whiny bitch tonight)

So when do you reach the point when you stop wanting parents? Well I have parents, and recently I have an abundance of parents. I have my mother, who has Multiple Sclerosis, and it is worsening, and I would love to help her. She just needs to understand that the same way her life did not stop for me when I needed a mother, I will not surrender my entire life to slave to her. I know that sounds bitchy, but you don't know my mother like I know my mother. Even before her illness progressed she used it when it was worthwhile to her. There is very little talking to my mother without screaming first, and there is something to be said for the woman who put me on my first diet when I was 9 years old. There's nothing that belittles self esteem like You'd be so pretty if you just lost some weight. We cannot agree on the level of physical violence in my childhood, although I get told on a regular basis that I was regularly alternately neglected and abused. She denies all of this, and has told me that I have made it all up. There is much more I can say about my mother, that I can continue to say about my mother, but the thing I guess that I still want the most, and the reason that I started writing this is I long to have that mother/daughter relationship that lets me be in the same room with her for more than a day without wanting to throttle her. I love my mother don't get me wrong, but the relationship we had was unhealthy at best.

My step-father is a psychologist. Not only did he have to deal with my mother, but he dealt with my troubled relationship with my mother, often mediating in way we'd never had before. He was a clear help in the physical aspect of my relationship with my mother, often coming between us when she appeared to be gearing for an assault. Still he was somewhat removed from the family, did not truly foster any of my likes, or desires in a nurturing way. When talking about wanting to be a chorus teacher the biting (and what he thought was humorous I'm sure) response was "Those who can't do, teach." A favorite game at family events would seem to be starting a discussion about how many mistakes I had made in my life.

Both he and my mother fostered my loneliness by limiting my access to friends and interaction with people. I was not permitted to much of the things that my peers did. Something that I still cope with. Something that has manifested itself in social anxiety as I've gotten older.

I've talked a lot about my biological father a lot lately. His non presence was a great influence in my life as well. I was not permitted to talk about him often because it might not sit well with my step father or my grandfather who was the guiding male figure in my life prior to my mother getting married when I was 13.

I struggle so much with the relationship with my mother, and the relationships with both of my fathers. My stepfather is still distant, which I can give a lot of reasons for, but it doesn't make it any less hurtful. Our family is just warmer, I'm just a warmer person. He truly does the best he can though I think.

I have been told for ever that my mother was just a poor 19 year old, she was the best mother she knew how to be, that she did the best she could, that she was good to me. I would like to believe all that, but I would also like to feel more bonded to my mother and I just don't. I wonder if its too late to fix that. She currently exhausts me. Everything is about her, it has to be. It always has been that way. She was incapable of being a loving supportive mother because of her disease, because of her own upbringing, but people make choices. At any time she could have chosen to rise above, something I struggle with every day.

I want to be better, I want to learn how to fix myself. I want to forgive the things that were done to me. I want to better appreciate the things that are done for me! I want to be more patient, and to be so frustrated when I am faced with whining and excuses from my parents that make them seem more of a child than I've ever been.

I think I am done whining for now. I was hoping this would prove more cathartic. Perhaps I am not finished with this topic...