Loopy, Lonely and Lost

There was a small thing that went missing from my room. Nothing particularly important. I went away for my last week of work, and when I got back, it was gone. And my mum had tidied my room (not at my request, I hasten to add). It didn’t really matter. I didn’t mention it.

Only, today, I really could have done with it. I mentioned that I didn’t know where it was, suggested that perhaps my mum had moved it or thrown it away.

She got very angry and started shouting at me, saying she was going to go into my room and find it. Now, I don’t like people going into my room. I’m a very private person, and tend to feel violated when people go through my belongings. I told her it didn’t matter, asked her not to go into my room. Politely. With ‘please’ and everything. Several times.

She kept saying it, though, over and over again, and I kept telling her not to bother, asking her to please stay out of my room.

She went upstairs to do something else. Walking through the house, I glanced upstairs. The door to my room was open. I went upstairs. She was there, going through my things.

I got…angry. Shouted a bit. Asked her why she couldn’t pay me the courtesy of not doing one thing that I’d asked her not to do. She started shouting back, telling me I need to respect her more. I laughed, quite bitterly, in her face.

In this house, this is what it always comes down to. We have to earn her respect. We owe her ours.

We left my room and went downstairs and she just kept shouting, saying so many things. You’re a bitch, you’re stupid, stop being such a silly cow.

She said that the only reason I don’t want her going through my room is that I have things to hide. She made me feel ashamed, made me feel guilty and wrong for wanting a space that is mine.

She asked if I’d done anything about signing on for benefits, but she didn’t believe me when I told her the truth (I had, I’ve already been looking, filling in forms, resigned to the fact that I am unemployable. I’m a bit scared about actually submitting the forms – scared of the meetings and the scrutiny and always being reminded what a failure I am – but I have been getting it all started, and it is less than a week since I last worked). She said, you’ll still be here in twelve months’ time, doing nothing.

It’s strange, the things that can turn tears on like a switch. I ran from the room, crying, like some ridiculous, melodramatic thirteen-year-old.

She makes me feel thirteen, though. Misunderstood and righteously angry.

Then she and my dad started arguing, and I feel responsible for that, too. If I wasn’t so over-sensitive, he wouldn’t feel the need to stand up for me.

I feel…pathetic. She’s right, of course she is. Perhaps it’s not nice to say it, but there’s no denying I’m stupid, lazy, worthless. And it’s not so much that she said it that hurts, it’s that it’s true. I’ve spent so long trying not to be a disappointment, and I’ve failed miserably.

I’m thinking a lot about running away. I probably won’t do it, of course. I’d be rubbish at it, and it’d cause at least as many problems as it’d solve. But I’ve got a few hundred pounds, and people I know in various parts of the country. They wouldn’t necessarily be happy to see me, but I could get on a train and stay with them for a week or two, and then just…disappear. It’s not like it’d be any easier to get a job, and I’d always be worried that my family would find me, but in some ways it would be easier to live like that, away from here.

I know it’s not right to think it, not right to so desperately want to get away, but I long for it so much. Whatever my problems have been when I was away from home, when I am here I feel like there is something rough and spiky inside me, like I’m always catching on things and making things worse. I feel uneasy, uncomfortable, and endlessly guilty.

It’s nearly my birthday and the thought that another year has gone by with no change and no progress really stings.