Sunday, January 5, 2020

A few things

Still having emotions and stuff about formerly posted stuff. But I have realized some things. I need to move out of my parents' condo. I think the only reason I moved in was because my parents and another, different sister said they were going to buy a condo together and rent it to me. That didn't happen. By the time I was finally told about it not happening, it not happening had become an afterthought. As if they hadn't realized that I was counting on living somewhere that wasn't with them. I actually did enjoy living alone, for the months that I did. It was actually fun, most of the time. No constant interruptions when I'm trying to study. No one wanting to play music or listen to a story when I want it quiet. No sudden noises. I want to live alone, not with my parents. That will mean getting a part-time job somewhere. I can't afford the rents around here with just what I get on Disability. There is also the added bonus of having a job makes me look better on a rental application.
I have also read a study that most people on the Autistic Spectrum think they are bad; as in, genuinely bad, and that's why some people close to us, not on the Spectrum, are so angry with us. It's why they feel like they have to control us. It's why they feel like we are their "duty" or their chore, or their burden. I often feel as if I am not human when interacting with my family. I literally feel as if I am burdening them just by existing. When my sister told me that I damaged her floor by not wiping out the windowsills, I believed it for exactly three minutes. In those three minutes, I wanted to die. I cringed at my stupidity, at my carelessness, at my neglect. I thought I was a bad person for not doing a household chore that I hadn't even known that people did. Well before the time I got home that day, I realized that the damage to the floor was actually due to two different things that had happened while I was living there, the emotions started then; but I didn't feel as if I could purge them. My youngest sister was getting married that summer, and I didn't want anything to happen that would cause enough drama that she would "uninvite" me.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Having good intentions does not always mean love

Still angry about the ridiculous form that my mother and my sister tried to get me to fill out. Still angry about the floor that I apparently "destroyed". Now, my mother is trying to get me to forgive her and the sister. In other words, she's trying to bully me, or at least it feels like it. She bullies the way her father did. It's not just that my sister thought that I should fill out this form, told me that I damaged the floor in the basement suite, and made a funky cat smell. It's also that she said this:
"But Kim, you just don't seem to notice some things."
I tried to respond, she interrupted me:
"But Kim, you just don't seem to notice some things."
I tried again to respond, but couldn't, because she interrupts me again.
"But Kim, you just don't seem to notice some things."
I can't remember if I have told anyone that she said that, to me, while trying to fulfill the "good intention" she was having that day; maybe it's anywhere from difficult to impossible to understand just how horrible it was for me. In that moment, I really did think that she thought I was one of the people she looked after at her work; mostly people with Down's Syndrome or low functioning Autism, not Asperger's, or high functioning Autism. She was saying that I was someone that I wasn't, based on something she thought I had done; but I hadn't done it. The damage was due to two different things: the water main breaking, and the washing machine leaking. Both things that her husband had a lot to do with. He was the one out in the bobcat, levelling the yard for some reason; he had started a load of laundry in a machine that he didn't realize was broken, and leaked everywhere. A good ten to fifteen minutes of actual thinking would have caused her to doubt her theory, maybe enough to not even mention it. Instead, she goes on about what an expert she is, and how much she knows about what I can get. Which of course, shows just the opposite; so many people who are experts on anything need to be prodded into talking about the subject they're experts on, and will usually only say a few words on it; but people who are only "experts" will talk at length at the barest hint of it.
When my mother brought the form home, she didn't just tell me to fill it out, again and again. And try to convince me that it might get me into a housing development that only takes homeless people. Or another development that's only for indigenous families. She also didn't believe me when I told her that filling out this form would basically lead to nothing, after I had read it for myself. I also went to the trouble to email a local housing society, asking them if I should fill it out. The response I got back was a bit snappish and snarky, but also clear. It plainly said that I should not fill it out, and that nothing would make me get into housing faster. Not even a sister and a mother willing to bully me into filling out useless forms, and gaslight and bully me into doing so. They can't bully the process either, no matter how hard they try.
Anyways, good intentions doesn't always mean love. Sometimes it just means control or meddling.