Parents Are Weird
I had to bail from my house yesterday because my mom, in an unusual (but not unheard of) fit, went on a thirty-minute tirade about how I'm useless, pathetic, selfish, et cetera. Since I'm in my hometown with friends around, I saw no reason to stay in that environment and spent the night at a friend's house. We played games and had a good time all around, so I'm not really hung up about it, though I still want to journal.
My mom has been this way for a long time. She's wonderful when things are good (and I do love her dearly), but she seems to have trouble getting a hold of negative emotions in a healthy way. (Not that I'm necessarily one to speak, but still.) Her preferred coping method is keeping her mouth shut until she inevitably has a meltdown, with herself and me as the typical targets. So this wasn't the first time I've heard accusations that I'm selfish, lazy, egotistical, and so forth, but of course it still hurts and it's still distressing no matter how many times I hear it.
Having been raised in a household where my very ability to love others has always been in question, it seems unsurprising that I struggle with social anxiety and frequently worry about pleasing people. The thought of friends leaving, or people no longer liking me, brings me a great deal of stress. And my relationship with my parents is often strained because I don't often feel like I'm bringing them joy or fulfillment as their child.
I had the opportunity to talk about my relationship with my parents with my friend last night. It turns out I've been sitting on a lot of fucked-up stuff that's accumulated over the years that I used to just brush off as typical immigrant parenting. My mental health crisis this semester really brought out the worst in my parents—they often seem to resort to violence, whether physical or emotional, to fix problems they don't know how to fix. And funnily enough, in my mind, they frequently aren't problems that they can or need to fix, and yet my parents can't quite stand things being out of their control. I can't communicate this to them either, or at least I don't feel I can, since my parents sometimes weaponize my emotional vulnerability to shame and guilt me. It's happened enough that I don't feel safe sharing how I really feel. And in a sense I even regret telling them about my PTSD diagnosis and my suicide attempt, since it just stressed them out and motivated them to berate me (in my mom's case) or to provide dreary, circumlocutory lectures on Buddhist ethics and "getting stronger" (in my dad's case). I suppose they are both trying in their own ways, but neither approach feels particularly helpful. It's not that I'm shutting myself out from help, either—I have been incredibly proactive about seeking mental health treatment.
I hate that I hate being home when I don't feel great. It should be a place of love, support, and healing, but instead it's just another emotionally exhausting thing I have to deal with, and a source of a great deal of trauma I haven't even started to process. It's odd that I've hardly relied on my mom for emotional support this semester, yet she's called me crying more than once because she can't handle me not being okay. The logic is strange. At least I know where I got my neuroticism from.
The survival plan for now is to only interact with my parents when I am doing well and to be on my best behavior even when I'm not. I'd much prefer grinning and bearing it than having to deal with more demeaning insults and nonsense from my mom. They really don't have to know what's going on in my inner life, since they've repeatedly proven they don't know how to hold me in their hands without breaking me. They get happy, filial Bella, and people I actually trust get human Bella. That's clearly what they really want—a child who is perfect and never, ever has any issues of her own, even when theirs are so plentiful.
But I should count my wins. I'm finally getting on antidepressants soon. Amazingly, my mom also happens to be incredibly anti-medication, so she will not be hearing about my prescription. She did give me a bottle of multivitamins, though, so maybe I'll just tell her that beta-carotene and antioxidants fixed my depression.
Right. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening in the public library working on schoolwork and planning for the future. Hopefully I don't get an earful when I go home again.