Nasty Parents :'(

Oh gosh I hate my parents...my mother and stepfather just treat me like shit, I don't know what to do.


All day today my mother has just been giving me dirty looks and making nasty comments about how much she hates me and she can't stand being in the same room with me. It's been like this for days and weeks now. She just tells me how ugly I am and how I need a haircut and my eyes look all black and horrible. All she does is criticize and make negative remarks incessantly. All I asked was for her to just have a positive attitude for once, why we can't we just be nice and get along, but that's too tall a request for these people.

This past month I killed myself working two jobs, I didn't have time to breath (never mind get a haircut), certainly didn't have time to spend on Empty Closets (sorry to all the people I didn't get a chance to reply to in a timely fashion!). I finally have a weekend where I think I'm going to be able to just relax, but no, instead I have to argue with my mother and stepfather calling me a lazy piece of shit. My therapists and I were all proud thinking of what progress I was making, going from being unemployable with severe social anxiety to having two jobs, but to my parents it was all just a joke and they tell me I'm worse than ever before.

I really want to move the hell out of this place, but I don't have the money to be able to afford living on my own. I don't know anyone around here, I don't have any friends I could even call, I'm just stuck in this nightmare and it seems like only death will liberate me from this hell. A few weeks ago was another big fight like this, I almost killed myself, I couldn't reach any of my four therapists, ended up calling a suicide hotline (1-800-LIFENET), and just barely made it through the night.

I just finished off my last klonopin and I'm still hyperventilating, I feel like I'm having a panic attack, I don't see the doc again until Monday, I don't know how I'm going to survive the weekend home in the house with these people. :tears:

 

I don't even know what's true or false anymore. Maybe I am just a lazy ugly piece of shit. It's just constantly repeated to me day after day by my mother and stepfather. And since I am a pathetic loser with no friends, they are pretty much the only people I have daily contact with.

I'm working with my psychologist to try to map out where my terrible social and generalized anxiety disorders and depression came from, and it keeps coming back to the toxic environment I live in, and my mother's constant criticism and putting negative anxiety-and-depression-provoking thoughts in my head for 23 years. Like I felt so happy to finally have a job after over a year of rotting away in my room terrified of job interviews... and my mother makes me feel like shit about it telling me "it's not like you're working full time and making a real salary to afford living in your own apartment".

My psychologist has hinted numerous times that I need to put distance between my mother and myself, and I've realized, even though I still love her and want a mother-son relationship with her, that we're probably better off living apart. Unfortunately her denigrating comments about my job are true, I don't make anywhere near enough money to afford living on my own.

So right now I'm stuck in this hellish nightmare, dependent on the pills the psychiatrist gives me just to numb the pain and survive.

 

Yep, it's a totally toxic environment. (Coincidentally I'm listening to "Toxic" right now since it seems like a fitting song for my current situation...listening to Britney, knowing what she's been through, has been one effective way of coping with all negativity! )

But yeah I've tried diplomacy, I tell them to just step back and re-evaluate the situation and tell me exactly what I did wrong to justify their vitriol towards me. I say, why can't we just get along and be positive. But their reactions are always hostile and brush off my attempts to try to make peace.

My psychologist told me that when my mother starts in, I should just disengage from the conversation and walk away. But it can be tough since I live in the same house with them, they can easily follow me to my room to continue the attacks. Not to mention I'm completely dependent on them still, I'm eating the food she cooks, I have to sit with them for dinner, or else I don't eat. Sometimes I choose to not eat, and I'm slightly underweight already.

But thanks for the congrats, I really appreciate it. For me it was a great personal triumph to be hired for not one but two different jobs, because after being unemployed for over a year I really felt like a hopeless loser who was unemployable and couldn't even get hired for the most basic retail job after going into so much debt to become a college graduate. I'm only continuing with one job (because the other job, at Macy's, was hell and was the reason why I had no free time to get a haircut or even to sign on to Empty Closets), but I'm still thinking of looking for a second job in retail, preferably at a smaller store, to supplement my measly income, and maybe finally be able to afford independence.

 

Well I feel ugly and lazy. I hear it every day from them, and again, I don't really have any friends or any other people in my life to give me positive messages other than my therapists.

But thanks so much for the hug! (*hug*)

 

Well, as I've told my therapists (psychologist and social worker), my conscious mind recognizes that my parents have no credibility and the mean things they are saying have no basis in reality and should be ignored. But hearing it day after day after day about how ugly and lazy and useless and horrible I am still hurts; it sears my soul. Even if my conscious mind says to ignore them, on an unconscious level the things they say definitely sink deeply into my mind and contribute greatly to my chronic depression and anxiety.

In fact that pretty much characterizes my whole life situation right now. Being an ardent cynic and misanthrope, my conscious mind tends to say IDGAF about any negative things people say toward me. My conscious mind in fact tends to even seem kinda arrogant, I think "oh I'm so much smarter than this idiot, (s)he has zero credibility and I couldn't care less about anything (s)he says". But my unconscious, I have no control over, and the hurtful things people say definitely sink in deep on an unconscious level.

 

Yeah, I guess independence is the prize I should be focused on attaining....the only problem is that I'm actually kinda terrified of the thought of living by myself. I'm 23 but I don't feel like a real adult, I don't know how to deal with adult things like paying rent and paying utility bills and taxes and all that.

Also, as I've mentioned, I'm a pathetic loser and have no friends, so if I'm living by myself, I would basically have no human contact and would feel totally isolated from the world.

That's why I wish so badly that I had a boyfriend, or even just a friend, that I could move in together with as roommates.

But my chance of making a real friend is 0% and my chance of finding a guy who would want to be my boyfriend is less than 0%.

But thanks for the tips, I'll keep them in mind. Next time I have an argument, maybe I'll try playing a video game to get my mind off of it.

 

Well it's kinda true, I AM a pathetic loser. I lost at the game of life.

I wasted all of my teenage years being a self-loathing closet case paralyzed by social anxiety, having no friends or life in high school. I can never get those years back and have normal teenage experiences.

Then I took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to go to college, where I had no focus or direction and wasted my four years.

Then after graduating I spent over a year wasting away with no job or direction or any social life beyond a few first dates with guys I met online that never went anywhere. After wasting an entire year of my life (22, which should have been a fun and productive year of my life), I finally got a job, but it's part-time and I'm making very little money- I'm earning less as an annual salary than one semester of college cost.

And I still have zero friends, no boyfriend, no social life at all. I'm wasting my 20s away just like I wasted my teenage years.

So I think I qualify for the 'loser at life' title.

Well I was on my own for four years while away at college. I was hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts for 3-and-a-half years, and then I was thousands of miles away studying abroad in Europe. (Rome and Moscow).

I even went on a weeklong trip all by myself to Vienna, Austria, and I was quite proud of myself for accomplishing that. Booking the airline ticket and hotel, packing my luggage, traveling by train in Rome to the airport, flying by myself, then saving money by taking the train in Vienna (rather than pay for a car-pickup) and walking to my hotel to check in and being all by myself in a hotel room for a week, navigating the city and coming up with daily plans to go and see the sights all on my own. I didn't even have a cell phone, I was totally on my own and cut off from family and anyone I knew. It was probably the most 'independent' I've ever been in my life. My first night there though I was paralyzed by anxiety, I almost didn't eat any dinner, afraid to walk into a restaurant by myself, until I finally worked up the courage to just walk up to a Würstelstand to order a hot dog to bring back to my hotel room... and that first night I felt incredible depression and loneliness.

I'm afraid of having that feeling again if I were to go live by myself.

The problem is I have no idea how to meet and make friends. I'm not in school anymore, so I don't even know how/where to meet people to make friends.

As for a boyfriend, I doubt I'll ever find a guy who's really interested in me as a boyfriend. There's a reason why I went on a bunch of first dates, but not second or third dates.