How to keep good intentions from becoming toxic: just combine them with knowledge. Use your intelligence, and compare your assumptions with actual facts. By doing this, you are making sure that your assumptions are correct, and not time wasters. It does no one any good to run around, filling out forms, and making doctor's appointments, all for what you think will happen. Do this repeatedly, and the good intentions are not so good anymore. It's starting to feel like bullying.
There are a few people in my life who have good intentions, or at least what they think are good intentions, but have actually done more harm than good to me. More harm than just wasting my time. I feel like I can talk about it here, since no one really reads blogs anymore. This is essentially my journal, that can be accessed by strangers, only they don't.
So, let's detail some of the "good intentions" that was actually felt more like bullying:
I move back from Edmonton, after having failed out of a program at a community college there, and couldn't find a job that would have allowed me to stay. I move in with my parents, I eventually go on income assistance. I pay a low rent to my parents for living with them, and look for work. I remember I had a paper route during that time. I think I had it for about a year. After being on income assistance for about one and a half to two years, I start getting calls to come into the government office more and more. This starts to get annoying, so I apply for a job at a call centre. Call centre job doesn't work out, so I apply for a job at a local bakery/cafe. That job does work out, for a few years. While all this is happening, what else is going on? While I am on assistance, working at the call centre, and at least the first year working at the local bakery, my mother tries to get me going back to her church. Once. A. Day. For. Three. Years. She would try to create "moments", where she would try to make me "feel the spirit" or trick me into saying I believed, or tell me that I was missed. And yes, this happened at least once a day, most days. Sometimes twice. The days where it did not happen, were the days that my father was able to herd her off, or she was away visiting family in Alberta, or she could actually see that I was angry that she felt she could do this, and would give me a break of a day or so from her "missionary moments". Basically, she would appear, right out of the woodwork, preach me a sermon. Next day, same thing. The day after that, same thing. And the day after that, same thing. When this happened, I would act like it was some big punishment, which is exactly what it was.
My hell, after being forced to move back into my parents' house after moving back once it became clear that I couldn't find a job, and after I washed out of a program at a community college, was my mother repeatedly appearing out of the woodwork, and making it a "missionary moment". I tell my family about this? I got "She only has good intentions for you," basically every time I complained about this. Every angry outburst I had towards her was met with "How can you treat her like that?" by at least one of my sisters. They didn't know that I never got a break from the missionary attempts or the "good intentions".
I wish my mother and my sisters who are the most determined to push the "good intentions" agenda would do a smidgen of research. I wish they would take autism classes, or at least look into their "good intentions" to see just how good they are.
What they can't see about that form, is that it might have ended up on someone's desk. That person whose desk it was might have called me, and asked me why I thought I needed to fill out this particular form. The only answer I would have been able to give this person is that my mother and one of my sisters thought it was a good idea, that they thought it wouldn't do any harm. That I don't have any control over my life, that I let it be controlled by two women who can't be bothered to read the forms that they make me fill out. That they both think they know what they are doing, but they really don't.
My hell, after being forced to move back into my parents' house after moving back once it became clear that I couldn't find a job, and after I washed out of a program at a community college, was my mother repeatedly appearing out of the woodwork, and making it a "missionary moment". I tell my family about this? I got "She only has good intentions for you," basically every time I complained about this. Every angry outburst I had towards her was met with "How can you treat her like that?" by at least one of my sisters. They didn't know that I never got a break from the missionary attempts or the "good intentions".
I wish my mother and my sisters who are the most determined to push the "good intentions" agenda would do a smidgen of research. I wish they would take autism classes, or at least look into their "good intentions" to see just how good they are.
What they can't see about that form, is that it might have ended up on someone's desk. That person whose desk it was might have called me, and asked me why I thought I needed to fill out this particular form. The only answer I would have been able to give this person is that my mother and one of my sisters thought it was a good idea, that they thought it wouldn't do any harm. That I don't have any control over my life, that I let it be controlled by two women who can't be bothered to read the forms that they make me fill out. That they both think they know what they are doing, but they really don't.
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