Posts Tagged ‘family’
Update
Posted on: January 31, 2014
Sorry I haven’t written for a while. I’ve been…coping. Just about, by the skin of my teeth, getting from one day to the next.
These past few days I’ve been feeling ill. Nothing serious, just a bug, but I feel all stuffed up and it’s stopping me from sleeping because every time I lie down I cough up a lung, so I know I’m being ratty and over-emotional.
I’m struggling at work. My performance has dipped. I’m alright at the simple, invisible, day-to-day things, but when it comes to anything involving confidence or chutzpah I just can’t do it any more. My boss keeps looking at me with his serious face and I feel like he’s gearing up to have a serious conversation with me and I am completely not in the right frame of mind for that. I can’t talk about myself at the best of times but lately I can hardly look myself in the face in the mirror without wanting to run away.
Today I came home from a busy, stressful, unproductive day at work. Feeling exhausted and vulnerable, wearing the dead-eyed, open-mouthed, nose-dripping stare of the cold-inflicted. Feeling sick. Feeling sorry for myself. Wanting to hide away. Told my parents I didn’t feel up to eating anything and was just going to bed.
Everything kicked off. I mean, World War 3 (only in my house alone we’re probably on World War 3 Million). My mum calling me an ungrateful bitch and threatening to force feed me. Calling me evil for upsetting her (is this what mothers do? I thought if your child was ill you would at least enquire what was wrong before making it all about you).
I really couldn’t cope. Couldn’t make my brain work properly. Couldn’t stop the horrible snivelling crying. Cut my arm with scissors for the first time in years. Hit myself on the head with my phone, which was probably a really bad idea as I now have a huge lump in the middle of my forehead and I don’t know how I’ll explain it (my phone still works though, it’s indestructible, although I’m not sure how that will help as I have no-one to contact).
All I can think about is running away. Got to leave, got to get away somehow, got to stop everything. I don’t know what to do.
Everything is dull and grey and out-of-focus, the horrible light of the early hours, when everything seems realer and duller and more miserable than at any other time of the day.
I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know what I’m doing.
At work, I’ve been reacquainted with a previous boss, and he’s so fucking good at his job. He’s trying to help me. Gently pushing, encouraging, praising. Making me feel like my contribution is worthwhile. Setting me special tasks – complex, challenging, new – because he knows I’d get bored otherwise, and if I get bored then I just give up. He wants me to have an aim, and he wants to help me move towards it. I don’t know how to tell him what I want. Sometimes I want to yell at everyone to stop movement, stop progress, just wait, stay still for a moment so I can gather my thoughts, this perpetual lurching forward makes me feel sick. Sometimes I want to collapse in a heap and finally admit out loud: I lack drive because I lack confidence. I lack direction because I have yet to convince myself that my future exists. I only survive by living completely in the present.
At home, everything is the same. I don’t have the energy to give details. It’s all just the same. Exhausting just to think about.
I feel…separate. Can’t connect with anyone. I can chat but not talk. I can make people laugh and listen to their problems and give them advice, but if they want to hang out with someone, it won’t be me they choose. I don’t know how to make a meaningful connection with anyone, and I don’t even know if I want to. I’ve spent my whole life struggling with that one: do I notice the lack of closeness because I want it, or because everyone else expects me to have it? I think I could probably live quite happily alone, never connecting with anyone, if only people didn’t insist on reminding me as regularly possible how weird that is.
I can’t sleep. I can’t think. Everything is a dream. A dull, pointless dream.
I’m too afraid to move.
Plans
Posted on: August 27, 2013
Optimistic Laura
I’m going to move out. I can buy a house, or a flat. I’ve been looking on property websites, and there’s a flat for sale in almost the perfect location for me – a short walk or bike ride from work, close enough to home for me to visit occasionally, for Sunday dinner or DVD marathons, but too far for my mum to walk over and cry on me when she’s annoyed. I can afford it, or something like it. I could buy it, get a mortgage sorted, live at home for a few weeks and go round to decorate and move in furniture, then I could move in and be surrounded by my own peace and silence.
Then I can start studying again. I’ve been looking at Open University courses. I’m interested in so many things, I just want to find stuff out, I want to get new skills and knowledge. Start small, don’t make too big a commitment until I know I’ll be okay with it, but just do something, a few hours a week, to make me feel like my brain is still working, like I really can learn something new every day. I can do other things, too. Maybe relearn the musical instrument I used to play as a child, and join a gym, and learn to cook. Tentatively, I might try writing again, like I used to always want to, although I’ll do it with the knowledge that even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world. I might learn a language. I might volunteer for a charity that helps people.
Every day, the not-getting-the-job thing gets easier. I can say it without the stabbed-in-the-heart feeling now. I didn’t really know if I wanted the job, so I can’t be surprised that I wasn’t really considered for it. But the whole incident has shed light on my life. I was right when I said it: everybody needs something. More than one thing is best, in case the one thing falls apart. I want to fill my life with activities, things that make me feel movement and progress. So even if work, or anything else, isn’t going particularly well, I can carry that with the strength I’ll gain by all the other things. I can build skills and knowledge and confidence and independence, and that’s happiness, for me.
I can write a timetable for every day and a budget for every month, and I’ll be happy. I don’t know what job I want to do, I don’t know where my future lies, but you build your future in the present, and that’s what I need to do. In the words of Malcolm Tucker, “life is just a succession of five minuteses”. If each five minutes is the same as the next, and they’re all dull and empty, then that’s my life. I need to stop worrying about the long-term, if I don’t have a plan for it, and focus on making now work.
Pessimistic Laura
The perfect opportunity is coming up. I need to take this time to withdraw money from my bank account. Small amounts, consistently, so I can build them up. Once I go, that’s it. I don’t want to be traced by my card transactions.
I have an old friend, who lives in a different city. I can say I’m staying with her. I haven’t seen her for ages, but I used to go to visit her regularly. My parents don’t even know she’s moved, so I could say I’m going to stay with her in the city she used to live in, to cover the trail further. She wouldn’t have to lie for me, my parents don’t have her number, so they wouldn’t be able to contact her. She wouldn’t have to know.
I’ll leave it open-ended, say, “a few days”, so they won’t be expecting me back at a particular time. I’ll take a bag and say we’re going to sight-see and have a few drinks and just hang out for a while and catch up. Then I’ll go to the train station, and get on a train in the opposite direction. I’ll head to the coast. My mind is full of sea and horizon and cliffs, and that’s where I want to be. I could stay for a day or two, get my head straight. Breathe fresh air and cushion myself in quiet, and think properly for a moment. I could send a postcard, maybe. Not a note in the traditional sense, just something to let them know where I am. Maybe an apology.
Jumping off a cliff seems a simple way to do it, but there’d be other methods available too, if for some reason that doesn’t work out. I will end it there, or else move on and find somewhere else to do it. No turning back. I want to be in a place where I’m a stranger. Somewhere calm. I will run until I can find it. No-one will mind, no-one will care, because no-one will know me.
The awful truth
I’ll probably do neither. Lately, I’ve been believing both of these things, pretty much at the same time. But this is me we’re talking about. I can’t change.
I’ll stay at home, doing nothing, and let my brain rot. Too scared to make my life better, too scared to end it. This is it, this is me – forever.
I wish I had the courage to do one thing or the other.
A difficult day.
Posted on: March 4, 2013
I went out with some people from work last night, had a few drinks and a bit of a laugh. It was an okay night – nothing special, but it’s nice to get out and do something, isn’t it? I wasn’t really drunk, just a bit tipsy, and I got home at a reasonable hour and went straight to bed. Read the rest of this entry »
Becoming a bad person
Posted on: February 21, 2013
As time goes by, I get worse. I’ve become the kind of person I hate, and I can only see it getting worse. I feel like there’s just a scooped-out hollow where my heart used to be.
Today, I made my mother cry. I made her cry by saying something cold and heartless and bitchy and true. (She asked, “don’t you like me?” and I looked her straight in the eye and, with a small smile, replied “not much”.) Now she’s downstairs sobbing and all I can think is that I hope she quietens down; the noise is disturbing my peace and quiet.
New Year Blues
Posted on: January 1, 2013
Christmas
Posted on: December 24, 2012
I’m sleeping really badly (it’s half past three in the morning and I’m wide awake and wired).
I’ve been going on long, rambling, self-righteous rants (mostly, but not exclusively, at my mother – pointing out hypocrisy and idiocy and everything that makes me angry).
I’m getting quite badly anxious, as well. My friend invited me out for his birthday, and before I could go I had to bombard him with texts: Who’s going? Will we be going on to anywhere else? What should I wear? What time should I arrive? When will I be going home? I’m so angry with myself that I can’t just get an invitation, say yes, grab a bag and go.
Another friend said she was going to come to my house to drop off a Christmas present. I stayed awake for 36 hours in blind terror that I might be asleep when she arrived. It made absolutely no sense, and I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t switch off my brain.
I’ve got some time off work for Christmas, and that’s probably a good thing because my head isn’t in the right place, and they’re all expecting me to be good at my job (I got the pay-rise, by the way. Now they keep asking me what I want to do next, and letting me coach other people, and stand in for managers) and I’m terrified of being found out, of them realising that it’s all a lie and I’m useless. But maybe if I was at work I’d have something to concentrate on and my mind wouldn’t be whizzing around like a Catherine Wheel stuck on a fence.
I just want to relax. I want to spend the Christmas period hanging out with friends and watching TV and eating and drinking too much and laughing and chatting, calm and lazy and enjoying that I don’t have anything to do. Instead I’m twitchy and irritable and nervous, biting people’s heads off and over-thinking everything.
A time for family
Posted on: December 17, 2012
Someone at work gave me a big box of chocolates for Christmas. I brought them home to share with my family.
A few days later, my dad peered into the box, and said, “Where have all these gone?” I was upstairs. They didn’t know I could hear them. My mum said, “Laura’s probably had them”.
I went into the room and told her that a) actually, I hadn’t had any other than those she’d seen me have, and b) even if I had had them, they were mine. She said it didn’t matter if I’d had them or not – but if it didn’t matter, why did she have to accuse me of it? Why couldn’t she have just said “I don’t know”, rather than choosing my name with no evidence?
She said that I was over-reacting, and that must mean I’m guilty.
Guilty was the word that really made me angry. She tries to make herself sound reasonable by saying it doesn’t matter, but no-one’s ever guilty of things that don’t matter, are they?
I went to my room and cried and scratched my arm with my fingernails, and now there are long, raised stripes up my arm. I sat in a corner with a makeshift noose around my neck, but there was nothing to hang from, there never is, and now I just feel numb.
It was such a small and insignificant thing, but I freaked out about it, I often do over things like this, because it’s a recurring theme in the story she tells me about my life: Laura is greedy and selfish and secretive, Laura is a liar, Laura can’t be trusted.
How can I live with her? How can I eat? How can I do anything when I know she’s always going to be there, waiting to attack me for something?
I know I’m probably overreacting. I know there’s nothing I can do. I just really want to disappear right now.
Something of a family drama
Posted on: March 21, 2012
Every time my mum is ill, she turns into a bitch. I’m not supposed to say that, am I? If someone’s ill, you’re supposed to call them brave and inspirational. If someone’s ill and you don’t like them, people think you’re tempting fate, and that if they die, it’s your fault for pointing out their flaws. I think people think it’s unreasonable to expect a person who’s unwell to be everything you want of them. They have more pressing concerns than keeping people happy.
Maybe it’s true. But I don’t believe in fate, and this is a cycle that has shaped my entire life.
I’m livid
Posted on: December 11, 2011
I know I’m not being a particularly nice person at the moment. I mean, I don’t think my friends mind. They see me being sarcastic and cutting and brutally honest and they think it’s funny. I suppose it is, a bit.
But anyone who knows my family, even a little, will know that my mum doesn’t take well to that kind of attitude.
Loopy, Lonely and Lost 
Recent comments.